Is there any more evil influence on the world than Gail’s the bakery? It has thrown thousands of poor people out of their homes by gentrifying their neighbourhoods; it has destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of hard-working owners of independent coffee shops by drawing away business; it has scorned the poor by throwing away its old sandwiches rather than give them to the homeless; and it allegedly supplied a box of pastries to the White House for tea last Friday, which so poisoned the atmosphere between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump that it could quite possibly lead to world war three.
OK, I made the last one up. But as for the others, Gail’s stands accused of them all. Enlightened liberal opinion has never had such a target for its ire since the Vote Leave bus wound through its plush neighbourhoods. It doesn’t help, either, that Gail’s founder and chairman, Luke Johnson, was himself a Brexit campaigner. That fact cropped up at the demonstrations in Walthamstow, Bath, Bristol and elsewhere. Funnily enough, when I pop into my local – independent – bakery to pick up my weekly bread order, it has never occurred to me to question the owners on their views on Brexit, the economy or anything else. I just like the bread.
Gail’s real crime, of course, is to be successful. It provides people with what they want, where and when they want it. And that is what raises the ire of the liberal left. They have the same aversion to trade as their grandparents did when – as I recall – posh families refused to sully themselves by watching commercial television; their televisions would only ever be tuned to the BBC. They are not socialists – God, no, when many of them have lucrative careers in law, accountancy and other professions. But they have an idealised image of tradespeople as ruddy-cheeked working-class folk who deliver their wares by bicycle or stand around getting cold while they flog them on market stalls. You can’t have them getting above their station by being so successful that their shops expand into chains.
There was a similar outcry a few years ago when Waterstone’s started opening small-format shops under a different branding in minor towns that had long since lost their last bookshop. The irony was that the company’s critics actually wanted local bookshops – but only if they were dusty emporiums run by impoverished proprietors like the one in 84 Charing Cross Road.
The latest broadside against Gail’s – that it is throwing away old sandwiches rather than giving them to the poor – is confected outrage. If Gail’s were passing them on to the homeless, that wouldn’t please its critics either – they would be moaning that Gail’s was trying to fob off the homeless with stale food. In fact, Gail’s says it has donated 900,000 items of food to charities over the past year – so perhaps there is the basis for the next scandal involving the company.
Gail’s has a business model of selling very fresh food. Rather than stuffing them in a chiller cabinet, it will only keep them on sale for a few hours. But if it were stuffing them with preservatives, wrapping them in plastic and keeping them chilled for a few days, it would be accused of ruining our diets with junk food. Once a business becomes the subject of a demented liberal-left pile-on, it really cannot win. Part of me wants a branch of Gail’s to be driven out of a liberal neighbourhood – just so they end up with Starbucks in its place.
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