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The coffee shop that’s worth more than its profit margin
Every morning follows the same rhythm. Finish my gym session, towel off, and head straight to the M&S café for my coffee. It’s not just about the caffeine – though God knows I need it. It’s about the ladies behind the counter who greet me with genuine warmth, who remember my order, who take pride in their work. In a world that often feels rushed and impersonal, their kindness has become my daily reset button.
But this isn’t really a story about my coffee ritual. It’s about what I’ve witnessed in that café—something far more important than any morning black americano.
The tables are always dotted with elderly faces. At first, I didn’t think much of it. But over time, as I’ve chatted with them, “I come here every Tuesday and Thursday,” one gentleman told me in the queue, staring at his menu. “Meet up with whoever’s about. Talk football, moan about the weather.” He smiled. “Beats sitting at home staring at the four walls, doesn’t it?” It’s beautiful, really. Watching strangers become friends over scones, toasties and crosswords. Seeing lonely people find their people, even if just for an hour.
The gentle hum of conversation about politics, memories, grandchildren, postwar Britain, the price of everything these days. This is what community looks like – unscripted, unglamorous, essential. I’ve become friends with some of them myself. They’ve told me about children who live too far away, partners they’ve lost, days that feel too long and too empty. For many, this café visit is their main activity. Their reason to get dressed. Their connection to the outside world.
A couple of days ago, I was at the gym when I overheard a conversation that stopped me mid-rep. They’re closing the café. The M&S café. Our café. I asked one of the staff members – one of those lovely ladies who makes this place what it is. She confirmed it quietly, almost apologetically, but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) share the details. The rumour mill says it’s about profit margins. The official line from M&S is that they’re repurposing spaces to create room for more popular products. More popular products!. And I felt something crack inside me.
If this is truly about profits, then we need to have a serious conversation about what we value as a society. Yes, businesses need to be viable. Yes, companies have shareholders and bottom lines and quarterly targets. I understand economics, I used to work in the financial services – a Bank to be precise, so I understand numbers. But when did we collectively decide that every single square foot of commercial space must justify its existence purely through revenue? This café might not be their most profitable location. But what’s the cost of closing it? Where exactly do we expect these elderly people to go?
“Just go to another café,” someone might say. But you’re missing the point entirely. This isn’t about coffee. It’s about familiarity. It’s about the staff who know your name. It’s about the community that’s been built, brick by brick, conversation by conversation, over months and years. You can’t just transplant that somewhere else. Community doesn’t work like that.
My elderly friends at the café (many of them in their 80s) represent a growing crisis we’d rather not acknowledge. Let me give you some numbers. According to a recent report on Age and loneliness in the UK, nearly 940,000 older people in the UK are often lonely – that’s one in fourteen people over 65 (Age UK 2024). And here’s the truly heartbreaking bit: 270,000 older people go an entire week without speaking to a single friend or family member.
Do you know how crazy that sounds? Not speaking to a single friend or family member!! A whole week!!
And loneliness doesn’t just make people sad—it kills. It increases the risk of depression, heart disease, stroke, dementia etc. This isn’t just about comfort or quality of life. This is a public health crisis. And yet, we’re closing the very spaces where people find connection. Where will they go? Costa? Starbucks? Even if they could afford the higher prices, those chains don’t foster the same sense of belonging. They’re designed for laptop workers and quick takeaways, not for lingering conversation and community building.
Councils cut funding for community centers – libraries operate on skeleton hours, now commercial spaces that accidentally became social lifelines are vanishing too.
I’m not naive. I know M&S isn’t a charity. I’m also aware they do good work by partnering with food banks and donating surplus food to people who need it. They clearly have a social conscience. But they brand themselves on quality, trust, and British values. Well, here’s a British value: looking after our elderly. Not abandoning them.
M&S, you have an opportunity here. An opportunity to position yourselves as a company that doesn’t just talk about community values but actually lives them. You could be the retailer that says, “We’re keeping our cafés open because we recognise they’re tackling one of the biggest health crises facing our aging population.” Imagine the goodwill. Imagine the respect. Imagine being the company that genuinely helps combat loneliness alongside all the good work you’re already doing – that’s how you truly stand tall amongst your peers.
There’s such thing as enough profit. There’s such a thing as being a responsible corporate citizen. There’s such a thing as recognising that some things – like providing a warm, safe space for lonely pensioners to find friendship – might be worth preserving even if it means slightly less room for those “more popular products.”
Our very own café will probably close. The space will be repurposed – maybe more retail shelving, maybe nothing at all. The decision-makers will never meet the people affected. They’ll never know about the Tuesday regular who’ll now have nowhere to go, or the widow who found a reason to leave the house, or the gentleman who finally made friends after his kids relocated to another country. And my morning ritual? I’ll find another coffee shop. I’ll survive.
But what about the people for whom this was so much more than coffee? What about the 270,000 older people who might go another week without speaking to anyone? What about your chance to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem?#
This is what the world is turning into: a place where community is a nice-to-have but never a must-have. Have we forgotten that sometimes the most valuable things can’t be measured on a balance sheet. We can do better than this.
What do you think? Are there spaces in your community facing similar threats? I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts.
Reference list
Age UK (2024) Age UK’s new report shows ‘you are not alone in feeling lonely’. Available at: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/latest-press/articles/age-uks-new-report-shows-you-are-not-alone-in-feeling-lonely/ (Accessed: 27 October 2025)
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LET THEM EAT SOUP
Introduction
What is a can of soup? If you ask a market expert, it is a high-profit item currently pushing £2.30 (branded) in some UK shops[i]. If you ask a historian[ii], it is the very bedrock of organised charity-the cheapest, easiest way to feed a penniless and hungry crowd.
The high price of something so basic, like a £2.30 can of soup, is a massive conundrum when you remember that soup’s main historical job was feeding poor people for almost nothing. Soup, whose name comes from the old word Suppa[iii](meaning broth poured over bread), was chosen by charities because it was cheap, could be made in huge pots, and best of all could be ‘stretched’ with water to feed even more people on a budget[iv].
In 2025, the whole situation is upside down. The price of this simple food has jumped because of “massive economic problems and big company greed[v]. At the same time, the need for charity has exploded with food bank use soaring by an unbelievable 51% compared to 2019[vi]. When basic food is expensive and charity is overwhelmed, it means our country’s safety net is broken.
For those of us who grew up in the chilly North, soup is more than a commodity: it is a core memory. I recall winter afternoons in Yorkshire, scraping frost off the window, knowing a massive pot of soup was bubbling away. Thick, hot and utterly cheap. Our famous carrot and swede soup cost pennies to make, tasted like salvation and could genuinely “fix you.” The modern £2.30 price tag on a can feels like a joke played on that memory, a reminder that the simplest warmth is now reserved for those who can afford the premium.
This piece breaks down some of the reasons why a can of soup costs so much, explores the 250-year-old long, often embarrassing history of soup charity in Britain and shows how the two things-high prices and huge charity demand-feed into a frustrating cycle of managed hunger.
Why Soup Costs £2.30
The UK loves its canned soup: it is a huge business worth hundreds of millions of pounds every year[vii], but despite being a stable market, prices have been battered by outside events.
Remember that huge cost of living squeeze? Food inflation prices peaked at 19.1% in 2023, the biggest rise in 40 years[viii]. Even though things have calmed down slightly, food prices jumped again to 5.1% in August 2025, remaining substantially elevated compared to the overall inflation rate of 3.8% in the same month[ix]. This huge price jump hits basic stuff the hardest, which means that poor people get hurt the most.
Why the drama? A mix of global chaos (like the Ukraine conflict messing up vegetable oil and fertiliser supplies) and local headaches (like the extra costs from Brexit) have made everything more expensive to produce[x].
Here’s the Kicker: Soup ingredients themselves are super cheap. You can make a big pot of vegetable soup at home for about 66p a serving, but a can of the same stuff? £2.30. Even professional caterers can buy bulk powdered soup mix for just 39p per portion[xi].
The biggest chunk of that price has nothing to do with the actual carrots and stock. It’s all the “extras”. You must pay for- the metal can, the flashy label and the marketing team that tries to convince you this soup is a “cosy hug”, and, most importantly everyone’s cut along the way.
Big supermarkets and shops are the main culprits. They need a massive 30-50% profit margin on that can for just putting it on the shelf[xii]. Because people have to buy food to live (you can’t just skip dinner) big companies can grab massive profits, turning something that you desperately need into something that just makes them rich.
This creates the ultimate cruel irony. Historically, soup was accessible because it was simple and cheap. Now, the people who are too busy, too tired or too broke to cook from scratch-the working poor are forced to buy the ready-made cans[xiii]. They end up paying the maximum premium for the convenience they need most, simply because they don’t have the time or space to do it the cheaper way.
How Charity Got Organised
The idea of soup as charity is ancient, but the dedicated “soup kitchen” really took off in late 18th century Britain[xiv].
The biggest reasons were the chaos after the Napoleonic wars and the rise of crowded industrial towns, which meant that lots of people had no money if their work dried up. By 1900 England had gone from a handful of soup kitchens to thousands of them[xv].
The first true soup charity in England was likely La Soupe, started by Huguenot refugees in London in the late 17th Century[xvi]. They served beef soup daily-a real community effort before the phrase “soup kitchen” was even popular.
Soup was chosen as the main charitable weapon because it was incredibly practical. It was cheap, healthy and could be made in enormous quantities. Its real superpower was that it could be “stretched” by adding more water allowing charities to serve huge numbers of people for minimum cost[xvii].
These kitchens were not just about food; they were tools for managing poor people. During the “long nineteenth century” they often fed up to 30% of a local town’s population in winter[xviii]. This aid ran alongside the stern rules of the Old Poor Laws which sorted people into “deserving” (the sick or old) and the ‘undeserving’ (those considered lazy).
The queues, the rules, and the interviews at soup kitchens were a kind of “charity performance” a public way of showing who was giving and who was receiving, all designed to reinforce class differences and tell people how to behave.
The Stigma and Shame of Taking The Soup
Getting a free bowl of soup has always come with a huge dose of shame. It’s basically a public way of telling you “We are the helpful rich people and you are the unfortunate hungry one” Even pictures in old newspapers were designed to make the donors look amazing whilst poor recipients were closely watched[xix].
Early British journalists like Bart Kennedy used to moan about the long, cold queues and how staff would ask “degrading questions” just before you got your soup[xx]. Basically, you had to pass a misery test to get a bowl of watery vegetables, As one 19th Century writer noted, the typical soup house was rarely cleaned, meaning the “aroma of old meals lingers in corners…when the steam from the freshly cooked vegetables brings them back to life”[xxi].
For the recipient, the act of accepting aid became a profound assault on their humanity. The writer George Orwell, captured this degradation starkly, suggesting that a man enduring prolonged hunger “is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs”[xxii]. That is the tragic joke here, you are reduced to a stomach that must beg.
By the late 19th Century, people started criticising soup kitchens arguing that they “were blamed for creating the problem they sought to alleviate”[xxiii]. The core problem remains today: giving someone a temporary food handout is just a “band-aid” solution that treats the symptom but ignores the real disease i.e. not enough money to live on.
This critique was affirmed during the Great Depression in Britain, when mobile soup kitchens and dispersal centres became a feature of the British urban landscape[xxiv]. The historical lesson is clear: private charity simply cannot solve a national economic disaster.
The ultimate failure of the system as the historian A.J.P. Taylor pointed out is that the poor demanded dignity. “Soup kitchens were the prelude to revolution, The revolutionaries might talk about socialism, those who actually revolted wanted ‘the right to work’-more capitalism, not it’s abolition[xxv]” They wanted a stable job, not perpetual charity.
Expensive Soup Feeds The Food Bank
The UK poverty crisis means that 7.5 million people (11% of the population) were in homes that did not have enough food in 2023/24[xxvi]. The Trussell Trust alone gave out 2.9 million emergency food parcels in 2024/2025[xxvii]. Crucially, poverty has crept deeper into the workforce: research indicates that three in every ten people referred to in foodbanks in 2024 were from working households[xxviii]. They have jobs but still can’t afford the supermarket prices.
The charities themselves are struggling, hit by a “triple whammy” of rising running costs (energy, rent) and fewer donations[xxix]. This means that many charities have had to cut back, sometimes only giving out three days food instead of a week[xxx]. The safety net in other words is full of holes.
The necessity of navigating poverty systems just to buy food makes people feel trapped and hopeless which is a terrible way to run a country[xxxi].
Modern food banks are still stuck in the old ways of the ‘deserving poor.’ They usually make you get a formal referral—a special voucher—from a professional like a doctor, a Jobcentre person, or the Citizens Advice bureau[xxxii].It’s like getting permission from three different people to have a can of soup.
Charity leaders know this system is broken. The Chief Executive of the Trussell Trust has openly said that food banks are “not the answer” and are just a “fraying sticking plaster[xxxiii].” The system forces a perpetual debate between temporary relief and systemic reform[xxxiv]. The huge growth of private charity, critics argue, just gives the government an excuse to cut back on welfare, pretending that kind volunteers can fix the problem for them[xxxv].
The final, bitter joke links the expensive soup back to the charity meant to fix the cost. Big food companies use inflation to jack up prices and boost profits. Then, they look good by donating their excess stock—often the highly processed, high-profit stuff—to food banks.
This relationship is called the “hunger industrial complex”[xxxvi]. The high-margin, heavily processed canned soup—the quintessential symbol of modern pricing failure—often becomes a core component of the charitable food parcel. The high price charged for the commodity effectively pays for the charity that manages the damage the high price caused[xxxvii]. You could almost call it “Soup-er cyclical capitalism.”
Conclusion
The journey from the 18th-century charitable pot to the 21st-century £2.30 can of soup shows a deep failure in our society. Soup, the hero of cheap hunger relief, has become too pricey for the people who need it most. This cost is driven by profit, not ingredients.
This pricing failure traps poor people in expensive choices, forcing them toward overwhelmed charities. The modern food bank, like the old soup kitchen, acts as a temporary fix that excuses the government from fixing the root cause: low income. As social justice campaigner Bryan Stevenson suggests, “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime”[xxxviii]. No amount of £2.30 soup can mask the fact that hunger is fundamentally an issue of “justice,” not merely “charity”.
Fixing this means shifting focus entirely. We must stop just managing hunger with charity[xxxix] and instead eliminate the need for charity by making sure everyone has enough money to live and buy their own food. This requires serious changes: regulating the greedy markups on basic food and building a robust state safety net that guarantees a decent income[xl]. The price of the £2.30 can is not just inflation: it’s a receipt for systemic unfairness.
[i]Various Contributors, ‘Reddit Discussion on High Soup Prices’ (Online Forum, 2023) https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/1eooo3o/why_has_soup_gotten_so_expensive
[ii] Philip J Carstairs, ‘A generous helping? The archaeology of Soup Kitchens and their role in post-medieval philanthropy 1790-1914 (PhD Thesis, University of Leicester 2022) https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/thesis/A_generous_helping_The_archaeology_of_soup_kitchens_and_their_role_in_post-medieval_philanthropy_1790-1914/21187117?file=37564186
[iii] Soup – etymology, origin & meaning[iii] https://www.etymonline.com/word/soup
[iv] Philip J Carstairs, ‘A generous helping? The archaeology of soup kitchens and their role in post-medieval philanthropy 1790–1914’ (Summary, University of Leicester 2022)(https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/thesis/A_generous_helping_The_archaeology_of_soup_kitchens_and_their_role_in_post-medieval_philanthropy_1790-1914/21187117)
[v] ONS, ‘Food Inflation Data, UK: August 2025’ (Trading Economics Data) https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/food-inflation
[vi] The Trussell Group-End Of Year Foodbank Stats
https://www.trussell.org.uk/news-and-research/latest-stats/end-of-year-stats
[vii] GlobalData, ‘Ambient Soup Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics, 2023-2028’ (Market Report, 2023) https://www.globaldata.com/store/report/uk-ambient-soup-market-analysis/
[viii] ONS, ‘Consumer Prices Index, UK: August 2025’ (Summary) https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices
[ix] Food Standards Agency, ‘Food System Strategic Assessment’ (March 2023) https://www.food.gov.uk/research/food-system-strategic-assessment-trends-and-issues-impacted-by-uk-economic-condition
[x] Wholesale Soup Mixes (Brakes Foodservice) https://www.brake.co.uk/dry-store/soup/ambient-soup/bulk-soup-mixes
[xii] A Semuels, ‘Why Food Company Profits Make Groceries Expensive’ (Time Magazine, 2023) https://time.com/6269366/food-company-profits-make-groceries-expensive/
[xiii] Christopher B Barrett and others, ‘Poverty Traps’ (NBER Working Paper No. 13828, 2008) https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c13828/c13828.pdf
[xiv] Philip J Carstairs, ‘A generous helping? The archaeology of soup kitchens and their role in post-medieval philanthropy 1790–1914’ (Summary, University of Leicester 2022)(https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/thesis/A_generous_helping_The_archaeology_of_soup_kitchens_and_their_role_in_post-medieval_philanthropy_1790-1914/21187117
[xv] Philip J Carstairs, ‘A generous helping? The archaeology of soup kitchens and their role in post-medieval philanthropy 1790–1914’ (Summary, University of Leicester 2022)(https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/thesis/A_generous_helping_The_archaeology_of_soup_kitchens_and_their_role_in_post-medieval_philanthropy_1790-1914/21187117
[xvi] The Soup Kitchens of Spitalfields (Blog, 2019) https://spitalfieldslife.com/2019/05/15/the-soup-kitchens-of-spitalfields/
[xvii] Birmingham History Blog, ‘Soup for the Poor’ (2016) https://birminghamhistoryblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/04/soup-for-the-poor/
[xviii] [xviii] Philip J Carstairs, ‘A generous helping? The archaeology of soup kitchens and their role in post-medieval philanthropy 1790–1914’ (Summary, University of Leicester 2022)(https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/thesis/A_generous_helping_The_archaeology_of_soup_kitchens_and_their_role_in_post-medieval_philanthropy_1790-1914/21187117
[xix] Journal Panorama, ‘Feeding the Conscience: Depicting Food Aid in the Popular Press’ (2019) https://journalpanorama.org/article/feeding-the-conscience/
[xx] Journal Panorama, ‘Feeding the Conscience: Depicting Food Aid in the Popular Press’ (2019) https://journalpanorama.org/article/feeding-the-conscience/
[xxi] Joseph Roth, Hotel Savoy (Quote on Soup Kitchens) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/soup-kitchens
[xxii] Convoy of Hope, (Quotes on Dignity and Poverty) https://convoyofhope.org/articles/poverty-quotes/
[xxiii] Philip J Carstairs, ‘A generous helping? The archaeology of soup kitchens and their role in post-medieval philanthropy 1790–1914’ (Summary, University of Leicester 2022)(https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/thesis/A_generous_helping_The_archaeology_of_soup_kitchens_and_their_role_in_post-medieval_philanthropy_1790-1914/21187117
[xxiv] Science Museum Group, ‘Photographs of Poverty and Welfare in 1930s Britain’ (Blog, 2017) https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/photographs-of-poverty-and-welfare-in-1930s-britain/
[xxv] AJ P Taylor, (Quote on Revolution) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/soup-kitchens
[xxvi] House of Commons Library, ‘Food poverty: Households, food banks and free school meals’ (CBP-9209, 2024) https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9209/
[xxvii] Trussell Trust, ‘Factsheets and Data’ (2024/25) https://www.trussell.org.uk/news-and-research/latest-stats/end-of-year-stats
[xxviii] The Guardian, ‘Failure to tackle child poverty UK driving discontent’ (2025) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/10/failure-tackle-child-poverty-uk-driving-discontent
[xxix] Charity Link, ‘The cost of living crisis and the impact on UK charities’ (Blog) https://www.charitylink.net/blog/cost-of-living-crisis-impact-uk-charities
[xxxi] The Soup Kitchen (Boynton Beach), ‘History’ https://thesoupkitchen.org/home/history/
[xxxii] Transforming Society, ‘4 uncomfortable realities of food charity’ (Blog, 2023) https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2023/12/01/4-uncomfortable-realities-of-food-charity-power-religion-race-and-cash
[xxxiii] The Trussell Group-End Of Year Foodbank Stats
https://www.trussell.org.uk/news-and-research/latest-stats/end-of-year-stats
[xxxiv] The Guardian, ‘Food banks are not the answer’ (2023) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/29/food-banks-are-not-the-answer-charities-search-for-new-way-to-help-uk-families
[xxxv] The Guardian, ‘Britain’s hunger and malnutrition crisis demands structural solutions’ (2023) https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/commentisfree/2023/dec/27/britain-hunger-malnutrition->
[xxxvi] Jacques Diouf, (Quote on Hunger and Justice, 2007) https://www.hungerhike.org/quotes-about-hunger/
[xxxvii] Borgen Magazine, ‘Hunger Awareness Quotes’ (2024) https://www.borgenmagazine.com/hunger-awareness-quotes/
[xxxviii] he Guardian, ‘Failure to tackle child poverty UK driving discontent’ (2025) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/10/failure-tackle-child-poverty-uk-driving-discontent
[xxxix] Charities Aid Foundation, ‘Cost of living: Charity donations can’t keep up with rising costs and demand’ (Press Release, 2023) https://www.cafonline.org/home/about-us/press-office/cost-of-living-charity-donations-can-t-keep-up-with-rising-costs-and-demand
[xl] The “Hunger Industrial Complex” and Public Health Policy (Journal Article, 2022) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9437921/
Thoughts from the criminology team 