An East London Bakery Tells Every Customer to Vote Labour Next Week

East London’s Pavilion Bakery (purveyor of one of London’s best buns) is showing its support for Labour in next week’s general election by stamping “every cup every bag” with ‘Vote Labour’ in the run-up to 12 December. The café-bakery business, which ruffled a few feathers in 2017 by going meat-free, has three London sites in two Labour constituencies — Broadway Market in Hackney South and Shoreditch and Columbia Road and Victoria Park in Bethnal Green and Bow.

Pavilion owner Rob Green, a Labour Party member and former social worker, had been selling official ‘I’m with Corbyn’ mugs at the Columbia Road shop. When stocks ran out — they shifted 400 — he started stamping paper bags and coffee cups. “I’ve always been a supporter of Corbyn,” says Green. “I want to use my platform to show what I believe in. I am in business to serve my customers a fantastic product but also play a role in the community, a community that gives opportunities to all and protects the most vulnerable in our society. The business is an extension of my beliefs and my personality. The customers understand my values and have always been supportive even if we disagree.”

For those who want their sourdough without slogans, their pain without politics, a note on the bakery’s Instagram profile reads “Bread photos will resume on the 13th dec xxx”.

Pavilion isn’t the only high-profile bakery to have come out in support of Labour in the run-up to the election. In York, Haxby Bakehouse has created a series of themed boules, and even dispatched a selection of them to Jeremy Corbyn himself.