Sweet boxes on Facebook?! 🤢

[Thewiseoneincognito]

I’m a member on a local Facebook buy swap group and it’s constantly spammed with people selling pizza boxes filled with sweets often photographed on a fluffy dog hair infested rug. Does anyone else see them? Does anyone even buy them? The same with the strawberries dipped in chocolate that look absolutely disgusting are another thing I see a lot. What delights do you see on your FB groups?

‘Old skool’ tray bakes and layer cakes in jars, with a back drop of a grubby, cluttered kitchen...

‘Old skool’ tray bakes and layer cakes in jars, with a back drop of a grubby, cluttered kitchen...

Or my personal favourite, which I think came from a MN thread: a photo of a cake with a lit fag in an ashtray in the background. Mmmmmmm....

I keep saying to my friends let's start selling "shit in a box" as there's money to be made! Our local FB group is full of it!

Someone posted about doing tapas so I asked, nicely, what their food hygiene rating was as I knew they weren't registered. Plenty of people seemed happy to buy food from them without bothering to check.

I don't like anything about this trend. I appreciate pigging out at the weekends myself, but most of this is just horrible, processed food of epic portions chucked in a box and overpriced. I don't see anything positive about thinking of a 'treat' as being binge eating crap, certainly not the right attitude to foster in kids. What's with the 'graze tables' as well? Why is it appealing to treat people as cattle?

"What I really hate about this stuff is that it normalises binge eating. Unless it's being shared among a pretty big group of people, eating all the sweets in one of these boxes is a full-on binge. It's disordered eating."

Are you somehow forced to eat them all in one go?

This is a thing but do any of them actually sell anything? I have tried to sell genuinely useful stuff on FB e.g new school uniform, new Wellington boots etc and have never sold a thing. So would be amazed if anyone sold repackaged jammy dodgers

We seem to get a lot of sweet cones in our area. These ones are £3 but the exact same thing is £7 if it’s personalised. Basically just Poundland letter stickers stuck on the front!

There are quite a few (very good) cake makers in our area. (Established for years) The cakes are expensive because actually to make a large cake is expensive in terms of time, skill and ingredients. I've spoken to a few people who've said it's actually quite hard to make a living out of making cakes because they are so time consuming.

A local teenager is selling some pretty impressive looking cakes for I think £15 each, to raise money for a very expensive school trip abroad. I cant imagine she is making very much at all when you take out the cost of ingredients!

All she'd need to do on the cat front is keep the cat out of the kitchen - which really means a permanently closed door (preferably with an automatic closer on it, but that's fine tuning really). With dogs you can use baby gates but cats tend to waltz straight through those!

The fundamental of the law is that animals (live ones, anyway) need to be kept out of food preparation areas - hence why it's legal to have dog friendly cafés.

I wonder if your friend misunderstood some of the requirements? I'm running an entirely legitimate food business from a rented home and have a dog.

On a separate note, I can count on the fingers of one hand how many people have asked if I'm registered / insured, so I'm not sure how many people care. Of course, it could be that everyone checks the FSA ratings website, but somehow I doubt it...

Who in their right mind is buying these naff hot choc cones?

I think I can beat the others...fried mushrooms, sausages, eggs and beans mixed in with croissants and strawberries

@Beseigedbykillersquirrels what the fuck????

That picture with the fried egg makes me want to heave.

The boxes where food is unwrapped and touching make my stomach turn. Eg meat slices, cut up cheese, sandwiches, cup up fruit, all unwrapped, heaped in together.

Surely it all goes stale and dry quickly?

It is from an actual cafe, not just a random on FB. I just imagine the mess it might be in when it arrives and dry heave 🤢

The pictures 😂 please, keep them coming!

In my local fb group they were constantly advertised by a local catering company. Some of the stuff did look nice. But 2 fruit boxes were 40 eur . And all of the fruit were peeled, chopped. Yuck. Anyway our local health inspection did an inspection on their premises as they are, clamping down unless regulated, registered . To which I agree with for the above safety. It turns out they found cat litter on the floor near the prep area and astray, it turned me off buying anything after that

all of my information is completely Googlable and they previously found an operator doing sushi out of a bedroom with no proper water facilities both were shutdown down with immediate effect.

I love it when people quadruple the price of some pastries and artfully display it in their garden bush

Who in their right mind is buying these naff hot choc cones?

I wouldnt neccessarily buy one but being "naff" or not to your taste isnt a crime. I think there is a market for them, maybe people put them in a MN favourite Christmas eve box?
The croissant and fruit next to fried egg and sausage I think is questionable but I cant see the harm in sweet cones, hot chocolate cones or boxes of sweets (without any savoury element!)

I havent bought anything like this on fb but I feel theres obviously a market for it or people wouldnt do it (quite who the market for fried egg , sausage and strawberry combo is, I have no idea...?)

Like everything else some will be good some will be bad. All this horror here about obesity, sugar etc is hilarious to. Luckily I have people on my Facebook that do afternoon teas like this!

@Beseigedbykillersquirrels

I think I can beat the others...fried mushrooms, sausages, eggs and beans mixed in with croissants and strawberries

Thanks I need to bleach my eyes now

I make these I don’t sell them. I make them as gifts for my loved ones filled with their favourite sweets and chocolate. Lucky for them I don’t have a dog.

People are trying to make a living so who are you to judge? Yet another bitchy MN thread.

What an awful fucking thread.

@IceSwallowCome

"What I really hate about this stuff is that it normalises binge eating. Unless it's being shared among a pretty big group of people, eating all the sweets in one of these boxes is a full-on binge. It's disordered eating."

Are you somehow forced to eat them all in one go?

If they're out of the packaging (which many appear to be), then they'll go stale/soft if not eaten quickly.