How struggling families found a lifeline with £4 groceries amid the cost of living crisis

Two twin toddlers are happily babbling and playing together in the Parish Church of the Apostles’ hall in Miles Platting.

They’re surrounded by toys, clothes for sale, and old ladies nattering. It’s a heartwarming scene of community cohesion.

But these twins are here out of necessity, not community. They’ve been brought to the Ridgway Street church by their mum to use its Social Supermarket, where she can get £30 of groceries for £4.

She’s not the only one in need of cheap food. In fact, the hall is full of Social Supermarket customers – old ladies, young families, and mid-twenties professionals are all here – each sipping complimentary tea or coffee waiting for their number to be called so they can go shopping.

The cheap supermarket in Manchester’s poorest neighbourhood

The Social Supermarket is a four-year-old initiative, open on Wednesday, Fridays, and Saturdays.

Here, customers pay £4 for a variety of items like fresh fruit and veg, branded cereals, bread donated by Warburton’s or Martin’s Bakery, frozen ready meals bought from charity FareShare, and one sweet treat.

There are limits on what they can grab — this week, it’s only four apples and bananas, and one loaf of bread or pack of bread rolls each — but if you bought as much as you could, you’d walk out with about £30 worth of groceries, staff believe.

Lucy McCoulough is the project worker overseeing this operation. Even though she’s only 29, she’s being pulled in all directions as volunteers set up for another day’s trading before any customers arrive.

Taking a break to tell I Love Manchester how it works, she explains: “We started doing food parcels in Covid with council funding.

“As they scaled that money back, we realised there was still a need for [low cost food], so we found money to carry on doing it. We wanted it to feel like a community so towards the end of Covid we started doing the Social Supermarket.”

This short break was ended abruptly, but not by another request from a volunteer. It’s at this point Lucy sees the toddler twins being pushed into the hall in their pram.

She runs over shouting ‘yay the babies are here!’, before hugging them and their mum. The tots cackle in delight.

Their mum looks relieved and it’s little wonder, because demand in this part of Manchester for cheap food is high.

According to charity Resolve Poverty’s latest data, more than one in ten households in the Miles Platting & Newton Heath ward experiences deprivation in three or more categories.

You can check out this data here.

Those ‘dimensions’ include education, employment, health, and housing.

“This is a godsend to them”

Lucy has worked at the church for four years. In that time, she says demand for the Social Supermarket ‘has increased’ and ‘there’s not been a drop-off’ at all.

Now, new faces come in who have stable incomes and mortgages. And what customers need is bigger than ever.

“We have a couple from the new build houses and they pay more as they pay it forward too,” Lucy continued. “At first, people were after tins of soup and bread to bulk up their shop. Now they want something for dinner.

“People want the big stuff, like meat, now. They essentially want stuff that’s more expensive in the supermarket.”

Tina Quinn, who’s seen it all here by living on Ridgway Street for 40 years and volunteering at the church for 25, agrees: “People are really, really struggling,” she sighs while surveying the modest shop. “This is a Godsend to them.”

“I work full-time on a decent salary, but it does not allow me to live comfortably”

Customers here come from all walks of life. While the mother of the toddlers declined to speak to I Love Manchester, 26-year-old ‘Hannah’ agreed to.

She was the youngest adult customer there, at 26, and earns roughly £30,000 working for Bury council. But that’s not enough to make ends meet, she says: “I live in a one-bed flat by myself, so my rent takes up all of my paycheck. My rent bills are £1,300 per month.

“I work full-time on a decent salary, but it does not allow me to live comfortably… I was sharing a flat paying half the price, but I ended up living by myself.”

It’s the third time she’s used a service like this, and after initial misgivings that she’d be welcome, she’s come to accept her attendance ‘is okay’. She adds: “Even though I work full-time and live in a fancy flat in the middle of Manchester, this is still for me.”

Chanice King, 30, is there with her husband and mother-in-law. To her, the shop is ‘quite useful’.

“We come twice a week,” she goes on. “Normally we would spend £50 per week on shopping. Now it’s £20 per week.”

Regular shopper Carmel Eccles, 53, calls it ‘amazing’: “For £4, I have got a trolley full,” she beams.

A glance down at her basket suggests that the ‘amazing’ service in Miles Platting is providing its residents with the day-to-day essentials necessary to survive.