Raise A Toast
by Quinn
I bring good news for those of you fortunate enough to be within spitting distance of a Sayers or Hampsons bakers.
Introducing new “Toast Plus”, a bold and startling innovation. Just in case, whether through failing eyesight or sheer laziness, you are unable to read the accompanying photograph (left), “Toast Plus” re-imagines the humblest of breakfasts by offering the delighted consumer the possibility of “thick cut toast with a choice of toppings”. Interested? Better still; each topping retails for a mere 15 pence each.
I’ll level with you. I really don’t think that coming up with the concept of selling toast and toppings is worthy of branding the whole experience “Toast Plus”, still less of designing a little accompanying logo of a stylised half-eaten slice of bread. I always thought that toasting some bread and slapping on some spread and jam was a pretty open-sourceish, public-domainy kind of thing. Just what have the bakers done to claim it as their own? Should they really be troubling the patent office? Sure, they boast of their toast being “mega thick”, but that is an option only denied most of us because of the tyranny of the sliced loaf that some of their fellow baking brethren have foisted upon us.
I am not disparaging bakers in general, I acknowledge that they are vital to the production of bread, which is an important ingredient in toast; but if we allow one of their number to get away with this, then we can only imagine what could happen next…
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The Obscurer 
I am not disparaging bakers in general,
That’s hardly the Blitz spirit: strive and struggle against the tyranny of your local baker!
That’s what I was going to say. I can buy UNSLICED bread at my local family baker and I’m supporting the local economy rather than some faceless corporate retailer that bakes bread from “redidough ® ™” 😉
Got to admit though – who the hell thought of redesigning toast and then marketing it to an unsuspecting public? Mark my words, in 20 years time today’s kids will have grown into consumers who believe that toast comes from the local supermarket in a seal-wrapped packet.
smallbeds: Nice suggestion, though if I were to wear a hat insulting a particular type of shop I think I would go after greengrocers, with their silly plastic bags and rows of inedible vegetables. Stick to fruit and I’d be fine.
OccupiedCountry: I don’t much mind Hampsons to be honest, but all their stuff has a uniform factory-made look to it. I much prefer Beeley’s with their massive chain of two shops round our way, where all the pasties have a ramshackle look as if made by a partially-sighted work experience lad, clumsily crimped with spilt gravy. But they taste bloody gorgeous.
As for toast, I await the inevitable court case when Greggs announce “Toast Extra”, and Sayers sue them for infringing their patent. Meanwhile, we old-timers sneekily carry on regardless, grilling our “hooch toast” in the safety of our own homes, using that old Morphy Richards we hide at the back of the cupboard.
It’s a very good point, and one I had considered myself before dismissing it at first…surely the butter or spread of your choice can’t count as a topping, can it?
It’s an assumption that could really bugger up your monthly budgeting as you leave the bakers some 15 pence lighter than you had expected. Of course, all those 15 pences mount up, and we shouldn’t be surprised; you never see a poor baker, do you now?
It is also suspiciously vague – as it fails to mention whether the all important butter which needs to be spread nice and thickly under yer Marmite counts as a separate topping and therefore an extra 15 pennies or not.
In short, I need to see the small print.