Too busy to make a jam sandwich? M&S can help

Those readers who are a) too busy to remove bread from a packet, b) physically incapable of opening a jar or c) untrained in the use of a knife, will be relieved to learn that as of next Thursday Marks & Spencer will be punting a 75p jam sandwich featuring, er, bread, butter and strawberry jam. According to the Telegraph, the …

[sjc]

Not just M&S

Pret a Manger have been selling jam butties since December.

[BlueGreen]

I think you beat me on the Stupid Food Retail front, but here's my offering

Some years ago a supermarket chain was selling boiled eggs. Eggs + heat, thassall. To make them a bit more appealing to those who don't know the miracles four minutes of hot water can perform, the shells were dyed pretty colours to bring the illusion of new horizons achieved in boiled avian foetusness.

A quick note to salesdrone Katy Patino - go and do something useful.

[Anonymous Coward]

What credit crunch

Only 75p? If they made this £1.50 people would still buy it.

People who buy their lunch every day are simply lazy. Yes you are, come on flame me.

People who buy from the likes of M+S are both lazy and stupid.

It is amazing to watch the hordes flock out to the visiting M+S sandwich van every day.

I recently pondered if the big M+S lettering on the sides of the van stood for 'Money & Sense' and if these people went and queued in the cold because they thought they might acquire some.

/end rant

[AndyC]

Ugh...

Butter on a jam sandwhich?! Bloomin disgusting...

[Martin Milan]

Lazy Lunch...

@debaser

You're quite right... I've spent the past six years having lunch in a greasy spoon behind my old office - now that I've changed employers I've decided to make an effort and actually make sandwiches myself each day...

Precisely how long this might last remains to be seen - given that we have both a KFC and a decent chippy within 100 yards of the office door...

Martin

Paris, coz she's quite parital to ramming something down her gullet in the early afternoons (allegedly!)

[Slartybardfast]

@AndyC

Butter ... MMMmmmmmm

[Oddbodd]

What problem?

This is a good thing. I've whinged for years about sandwich shops never selling "proper" sarnies - i.e. Marmite, peanut butter, jam, et cetera. They're certainly a lot more appealing than the usual "healthy choice" rubbish that is stuffed full of rotting lettuce.

Bring it on.

[gaz]

erm

aint a decent loaf maybe £1, and jam £2?

so for £3 you could make 10 jam sandwiches at least. 10 at M&S would be £7.50.

you have £4.50 spare at the end of the week for crack, or whatever you kids do on a friday night nowadays

[Alan]

@debaser

I marvel at the number of OAPs in M&S food hall.

They complain about the tiny pension, then spend far more than they need to buying M&S pasties and cakes.

[Richard]

Strawberry?

Yuk!

Damson, cherry, marmalade, peanut butter perhaps?

Not all in the same sandwich of course, that'd be daft.

Oh, and white bread? No thanks, granary or wholemeal please Ms.Patino.

[Mike Crawshaw]

@ debaser (no flames....!)

I buy my lunch every day, because:

a: I'm lazy. Rather have an extra couple minutes in bed than make butties.

b: I'm lazy. If I brought lunch, I'd just eat it at my desk. Buying it forces me to take a break and go for a walk.

c: I'm investing. I buy the Boots Meal Deal (TM). Not because it tastes good (s'ok, I guess, but nothing wonderful...) and every 5 I buy, I get one free, so it works out to be £2.50 for a sandwich, can of red bull & bag of crisps, which ain't bad. Plus those card points, which means at the end of the year, I can buy the gf some nice perfume for Xmas, which gets me some brownie points, without actually spending any real money (which can then be spent on eau de Jack Daniels instead). Bargain.

Sometimes, being lazy & stupid makes perfect sense!

[Richard]

Not much has changed

Linda Smith used to do a joke about tuna flakes being for people incapable of using a fork. Same thing, innit.

[Joe K]

Thats fine

As long as they don't put peanut butter on there as well, like the American abomination of an excuse for a sandwich.

Oh, you'd like some fat and salt with your sugar butty? Hey, its your arteries.

[Wize]

@ debaser

"People who buy their lunch every day are simply lazy. Yes you are, come on flame me."

Not everyone has somewhere to keep their sarnie cool during the day. Chicken mayo isn't that great when its been sitting in a warm desk drawer all morning.

Many have a subsidised canteen. It may be cheaper than buying the 'raw materials'.

If you have honey roast ham in your lunch, do you start with the raw meat, or are you lazy and buy it cooked to fill the bread of your choice?

[UnklePhunky]

@Alan

>> I marvel at the number of OAPs in M&S food hall.

Yes! And in the M&S cafes as well. It's like an audience for Countdown in there, just a sea of white hair...

[Vlad The Impugner]

@ flame requester

Will nobody think of the children?

[Roger Jenkins]

Dripping sarnie

You forgot to add lashings of salt to your 8,000 calories.

Not particularly healthy, but made with lovely beef dripping from the Sunday roast.......yummmmm

[Steven Raith]

@Vlad The Impugner

"Will nobody think of the children?"

I have A Modest Proposal. Surely cheaper than jam?

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

Steven R

[for the devoid of clicking, A modest proposal was, in short, a satirical piece by Jonathan Swift, in short suggestion that the poor of ireland sell their children to us for food - "For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public"]

[Anonymous Coward]

These aren't just OAPs... these are M&S OAPs

@Alan: "I marvel at the number of OAPs in M&S food hall. They complain about the tiny pension, then spend far more than they need to buying M&S pasties and cakes."

I suspect that the self-selected (i.e. non-random) group of OAPs in M&S food hall are the ones that can afford M&S food, not the grumbling ones on a tiny pension. Surprising, huh?

@Mike Crawshaw; "Rather have an extra couple minutes in bed than make butties."

And then queue for a couple of minutes in the shop anyway?!

"... Meal Deal [is] £2.50 for a sandwich, can of red bull & bag of crisps"

Can't stand places that count a bag of crisps as part of a "meal". If someone offered me a meal, I wouldn't expect a ******* bag of crisps!

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

How much?!

75p for a flipping Jam sandwich! £1.50 for a loaf ( M&S bulk order, lets say 75p ), several tons of Jam at 30p a jar, sandwich costs 15p to make? The rest is obscene profit!

Now if they sold Marmite and Tomato soup-powder sandwiches ( seriously, you should try it, very tangy! ), different story I would pay silly money for those!

[hey_may]

How about this?

Purchase a couple of those air tight sandwich boxes and keep them in your fridge at work. Then go to ADSA or somewhere and buy a load of stuff for the week. Butter, tomatoes, sandwich filler, pickle, cheese, ham, whatever and keep them in your work fridge. You'll also need a loaf of bread handy but this can be kept in your desk if necessary. Then every lunch time simply make your sarnies or rolls. Same cost as "home made" without the bother of doing them at home and bringing them in which lets face it is a crap hobby. Total cost per week - about £6.

[Peyton]

@Thats fine

Peanut butter is good for you. A PB&J will only run you about 300 calories, and is very filling. But you're wrong to refer to it as a butty - we don't put butter on a PB&J.

I've never known anyone here put butter on a BLT either - mayo or "Miracle Whip" are the standard condiments of choice (I understand you all don't have Miracle Whip, but salad cream is similar?)

[Martin Lyne]

Banana

No mashed 'nana sammich?

[Dale]

Not too frugal

I think there is good sense in not being too frugal before you have to. As long as you can afford to, you should buy your lunch each day. Yes it adds up to a lot of money over the course of the year which you could save if you made your own sandwiches, but if you spend that money on lunch you won't be spending it on some other expense that becomes indispensable. Then in a few years when you find it increasingly difficult to pay the indispensable bills, you can switch to making your own sandwiches and save that money to help ease the pressure.

If you trim all the fat now before you need to, then if a day comes when you really need to trim fat, there may not be any left to trim. Saving more money than you need to now just allows you to get used to a lifestyle which is greater than your income can support, or will be able to support in the future.

(Clarification: When I say "saving" in the above, I mean in the shopkeeper's sense - spending less money on goods you buy. As opposed to saving in the future-planning sense - putting cash into an ISA.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Any chance of a decent PBJ?

You just can't get the real grape jelly on this side of the Atlantic, and the UK peanut butter isn't right either (okay it doesn't kill you either) to make the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

[Peter Hawkins]

@ AndyC

With you on that. Butter spoils it. Me ma made jam sandwiches for my school lunch in the 70's. By the time lunchtime came all the jam had soaked into the the bread. Nothing beats a couple of slices of rasberry flavoured pink bread !!

[Sarah Bee]

Swift

Hackney Freecycle newsletter today, apparently: 'We're expecting a baby in July, and need a microwave.'

[Gavin]

Someone had to say it

Lunch is for wimps

[Steve Foster]

Dripping Sarnie...

Proper thick white bread, generously slathered with decent beef dripping with "the gravy bits", and liberally dosed with salt.

<homer> Mmmmmmm... <drool> </homer>

A staple source of food when I was a child. Shame it's almost impossible to get decent dripping these days (especially "daan saarf"). That, and I have to watch my salt intake...

I may have to console myself with a vinegar sarnie instead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lunch is for wimps

it's forgetting this mantra that has put the economy in the shit

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that's dumb?

A recent TV ad campaign here in the states promoted the frozen peanut butter & jelly sandwich:

http://www.smuckers.com/products/category.aspx?groupId=3&categoryId=46

[TJ]

@Gavin

Thats what I'm thinking... WTF is lunch?!

[Scott Mckenzie]

Yes, yes..

....cos everyone has a fridge at work, therefore the great suggestion of buying the raw materials will work very well!

I recently started making my own sandwiches and it is cheaper and better... but it is more effort.

As for the suggestion of a cost of 15p to make the sandwich, yup that's great for the raw materials again, but unless they're going to make them on site and sell them fresh, i'm guessing there may be a bit of packaging, preparation, logistics etc involved.... i don't think it's expensive at all.... go to any sandwich shop who'd make it fresh for you and it'd be a quid.

[Colin Barfoot]

tasty alternative

For a delicious and nutritious alternative to dripping sandwiches you can't go wrong with a bit of home-made Soylent Green.

There are of course drawbacks. Firstly, like apples, appearance is no guide to taste. One tofu-fed super-model may look nice strutting on the cat-walk but that's just not good eating. Secondly, it's no mean feat to get fifty-odd kilos of butchered corpse into a domestic oven. It may pay to befriend your local crematorium but you'll have to use their oven during slack times - like in the summer (and don't forget to turn it down first). Some people prefer to season their corpse at this point but for me six months decomposition is more than enough.

With all that palaver it's about time a major retailer took advantage of this market. So come on M&S let's see a few jam-sandwich-stuffed humans on the shelves. Or why not introduce an "AA range": a tempting selection of snacks made with the finest servicemen, reared in yellow vans and fed an exclusive diet of bacon butties.

Soylent Green: it needn't cost YOU an arm and a leg.

[Anonymous Coward]

No crusts!

If people are really trying to save money, wouldn't they just make it themselves?

75p buys you bread almost, and another 75p the jam, so that is 2-3 days worth to buy enough for a week (for multiple people too).

Anyways, I do agree... I have recently started having jam sandwiches again and I don't see why I ever had anything else. I get a lot of stick for it, though that might be because I insist on cutting the crusts off!

[Anonymous Coward]

@Wize

I never had a cool place for the entire of my school life, or work life for that matter, never stopped me...

[tony trolle]

The joy of the US

Where I can get a Dollar double cheeseburger. mmmmmm

I like the Carls Jr chicken burger better.