A founding principle for Social Pickle was the pay-what-you-can model. As we operated from a community foodhall, conversations around affordability and person centred pricing came up a lot.

These notes came from friend and collaborator Sean Roy Parker who at the time was heading up Brixton Pound Cafe - A radical food space just out of the centre of Brixton, making amazing grub in a curated environment for everyone!

Fermented foods have largely become the flavour of the time or money rich, when historically they would have been the preserve of the land-working class; storing gluts and increasing microbiome diversity in what would have been an otherwise simple diet. 

When it comes to market produce, we celebrate alternative economies such as systems of exchange as an opportunity to re-think unfair food systems and unconditionally high prices. We have to balance this with the need to pay our workshop facilitators and artists, and any other costs to put on activity and run events. We rely on ticket and product sales to be able to pay people fairly for the work that they do for us, to be able to keep what we do going sustainably, and to help fund future activity. 

It's becoming less and less a part of our culture to challenge prices and costs. Bartering has largely disappeared from central markets with the transfer to a digital currency, and human exchanges with shop keepers are also going the same way. The pay-what-you-can model encourages us to have those conversations and keep community alive!