A QUIET FOOD CRISIS IS GATHERING PACE AND I FEAR THE NATION'S FOODBANKS ARE ABOUT TO BE COMPLETELY OVERWHELMED.

On Monday morning I chained myself to my laptop and forced myself to get on with a put off task - the dreaded accounts. It didn't take so very long for me to be reminded of a lesson once hammered into me in the days when I was a company director.

If you can't measure, you can't manage.

As I worked through piles of receipts, a sense of unease started to take hold. And slowly but surely the spreadsheets started to look more than a little alarming. 

So fair enough, we have been a bit busier over the first four months of this financial year. But not that much busier. 10% up, I guess. And fair enough the amount of food donations coming in through the back door has dropped a little. But once again, not by that much. Maybe 10%. It isn't like we have lost any of our donors. The same volunteers from the same churches and offices still arrive with car boots filled with the same carrier bags. But there are 10% less bags.

So. 10% more going out through the front door and 10% less coming in through the back door. A 20% swing. A fifth. So OK. A fifth is quite a lot.

But I knew this already. I knew we were placing more and more orders for deliveries from Tesco and Asda and Morrisons. But I was pretty sure this wasn't another 2010 when the numbers of parcels headed out through the front door jumped fivefold. Now that WAS a wild ride. This year has been more gentle.

But the spreadsheets were starting to tell me a very different story. The line which was screaming at me was the one I had labelled up as 'Food Costs'. 

April 1 - 31 July 2017 - £4000

April 1 - 31 July 2018 - £8000

WHATTTT!!

Something here was making no kind of sense. A 20% swing should have meant a 20% rise in the cost of purchased food. Obviously. Duh. But there was no way the figures in front of me were lying. In four months, we had spent twice as much money on buying food in 2018 than we had in 2017.

Well I had my measurements. Time to manage. Time to get some flesh onto the bones. Time to try and make some sense of it.

It didn't take very long. I started comparing receipts from the summer of 2017 with receipts from the summer of 2018. And it only took a few minutes of doing this before I sat back in my chair, lit up a cigarette and uttered words my mother wouldn't be happy about at all. 

So here's the thing. Every now on the news we get to hear about how inflation is trending. Sometimes it is 2.5%. Sometimes 3%. Never more than that. And these figures lodge in the brain and we kind of buy into them. Things are going up a bit, but not that much. 

My piles of receipts told a very different story. A hidden story. A seriously alarming story which seems to be unfolding a long way below the radar. I guess you won't be so very surprised to hear First Base doesn't shop at Waitrose when we buy in our supplies. No chance. We live at the very bottom of the market in the land of the 'Value' ranges. We fill our boots with 'Loss leaders'. No wonder the supermarkets hate us. We're the customer from Hell. 

Over the years, they have tried to come up will all manner of reasons for not supplying us when we place our online orders for deliveries. It has become a familiar stand off. They say they can't supply us because it leaves them holding less stock for their other customers. We threaten them with the press. You know. How do you think your boss will feel when he sees a front page reading 'Supermarket giant refuses to sell to embattled Foodbank!!' Not a good look, right. A career killer. They always back off. Well, they have so far. God bless the power of the press.

So why do they hate our orders so much? It is because we fill our boots with their 'Loss Leaders'. It goes something like this. I gather the cost price of a tin of beans is about 40p. So if a supermarket sells a tin of beans for 25p, they are making a loss of 15p which of course is pretty lousy business in anyone's book. Well they see it differently. Baked Beans are one of those core products which people know the price of. So if a retailer is selling expensive beans, we punters assume they are expensive for everything else. If on the other hand they knock out cheap beans, we assume they are equally cheap for everything else. So if the retailer loses 15p on a tin of beans but makes £15 on the rest of the trolley, then all is well.

Things obviously don't look so good when the likes of First Base order in £150 worth of stuff and almost all of it is made up of 'Loss Leaders'. They don't like it at all. I bet their computers are set up to make loud Klaxon noises.

Anyway. Things are changing. All of a sudden the old 'Value' ranges are slowly shrinking and disappearing. And I am sure you can guess what is coming next. Oh yeah. Here's what happens next.

July 2017 - 500g of Tesco Value Range Corn Flakes - 31p

July 2018 - 500g of Tesco Own Brand Corn Flakes - 55p

Same product, different box. A cool 77.5% increase.

July 2017 - One packet of Tesco Value Custard - 20p

July 2018 - One packet of Tesco Own Brand Instant Custard - 40p

Same product, different packet. A cool 100% increase.

Now this hasn't happened with every product. But it has happened with most of the stuff we buy in. A similar comparison of the prices on branded, non 'Value' products would probably show a 3% increase along the lines of what the government is telling us.

So. If you CAN measure you should be able to manage.

Food parcels out - Up 10%
Food donations in - down 10%
Cost of bought in food - Up 100%

Now maths has never been one of the big guns in my armoury, but these stats suggest to me that on average, the cost of the items we buy in must have gone up by 80%. 

Think about it. If this is happening to us, then the same thing is happening to everyone else who shops at the bottom end of the market. Take someone trying to eke out a living on £70 a week of State Benefits. This time last year, a week's worth of shopping from the 'Value' range might have cost £10. This year? Probably nearer £18. An increase of 80%. £8. And what does £8 mean to them? 

It means 11.5% of their disposable income. I'll expand this. A working family where both parents are pulling in the average wage has about £44,000 a year after tax coming in. About £850 a week. If they had to swallow a similar price hike to the lad on benefits, it would mean an extra £100 a week. How many could deal with such a hit? Not many.

I wonder how many out there depend on the 'Loss Leaders' in the 'Value' ranges to keep body and soul together? Millions. And each and every one of them is going to have to find a way to deal with these huge price hikes.

Lots won't make it. For many people, these increases will be the straw to break the camel's back. For years the outgoings have been quietly bossing the incomings. Credit cards are all maxed out and family can't help any more. And power bills are also on their way up.

All of this is about to hit the nation's foodbanks like a runaway truck. It is worth pointing out at this point how First Base is different to most foodbanks. We have a set list of items for our food parcels. If we don't receive enough donations, we buy in the extra items. And right now this is costing us an extra £1000 a month. Most foodbanks don't work this way. They simply give out whatever food they receive. This is why there are often queues at the doors of many foodbanks because they work on a 'first come, first served' basis. If you get there late, you go away empty handed.  

Well it isn't rocket science, right? If numbers go up by 10% and donations drop by 10%, then 20% more people will go away empty handed. 

And this is probably only the beginning. The July heatwave hammered the grain crop. Maybe recent rain will have gone some way to rescuing it, but the odds are on expensive wheat this winter. Which means expensive bread and pasta.

The nearer we get to a lunatic Tory Brexit, the more the pound is going to take a hammering. If Sterling goes down another 10%, the cost of imported food will go up by 10%. And 60% of the food we eat is imported.

Ouch.

More and more people are about to feel the pinch. Millions will lack a spare pound to spend on a four pack of baked beans for the collection box for the local foodbank. Hundreds of thousands will be confronted with the sight of empty kitchen cupboards and empty purses. And a first visit to the local food bank. 

The nightmare scenario. More people at the front door. Less people at the back door. It's the outgoings outstripping incomings thing. It always is. And it is the same for foodbanks as it is for everyone else. And when the cupboards are bare.....

Well, the cupboards are bare.

Ever since 2010, Britain's foodbanks have achieved miracles. Millions have been fed when they would otherwise have gone hungry. Governments have taken us for granted. They seem to think we will always be able to meet any kind of demand, no matter what. 

This is a pretty dangerous assumption made by men and women who have never shopped the 'Value' rage in their lives. The quiet food crisis which gathers pace with every passing week threatens to completely overwhelm the nation's foodbanks and I am not sure anyone is paying much attention.

So there it is. August 2018. The canary in the coal mine is starting to find it hard to catch it's breath. In a perfect world, people in power would be making contingency plans right now. If the public are unable to supply foodbanks with enough food to feed everyone who needs it, then at some stage the Government is going to have to step in to help out. 

And if they don't?

Then we all about to live through a bit of a nightmare.