This Is Not Just a Sandwich, This Is a Marks and Spencer LGBTQ+ Sandwich

Marks and Spencer creates ‘colourful’ sandwich for Pride

A lettuce, bacon, guacamole, and tomato sandwich with rainbow branding is turning heads in Ireland, with Marks and Spencer offering it up at €4.45 (£3.82.) The supermarket, which recently revived its famous “This is not just...” advertising campaign for new products like San Francisco-style sourdough and fish and chips with scraps, has confirmed that it is also putting (some) money where its mouth is, donating £10,000 to the Albert Kennedy Trust — a youth homelessness charity in the U.K. for the LGBTQ+ community — and €1000 to BeLong To Youth Services, which supports LGBTI+ youth community in Ireland. Donations aside, reaction to the sandwich remains mixed, with concerns over its place in the ever-expanding ‘gay-for-pay’ food and restaurant branding strategy, whereby restaurants donate scant margins, or even no money at all to LGBTQ+ causes, while using Pride month and its rainbow iconography as a marketing tool for technicolour bagels, cupcakes, or whatever Instagram-bait they may choose. [Twitter]

And in other news...

• Gourmet sausage sandwich restaurant X-Upper will close on Upper Street in Islington just two months after opening, citing a lack of new customers as the cause for investors backing out. [Instagram]

• A vegan pizza restaurant in Chelsea is going to be called Humble Pizza. [Hot Dinners]
• Pizza Express lost £55 million pre-tax last financial year, with concerns growing over the brand’s position in the widely-discussed casual dining crunch. [Big Hospitality]
• Fresh from its 100th birthday marmite marketing marvel, British Airways’ boss has said he is “not surprised” that customers weren’t exactly pleased to start paying for food on short-haul flights. [Independent]
• America’s bizarre stanning of Kerrygold butter shows no sign of waning — it’s now Ireland’s top food export. [The Takeout]
• Good tweet.