İstanbul sets up mobile cheap bread buffets as queues get longer

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The İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) has introduced mobile bread buffets to meet the demand for cheaper bread in the city.

As photos of long bread queues from various parts of the country have been recently circulating on social media, Okan Gedik, the general director of İstanbul Halk Ekmek, a municipal company selling cheaper bread and bakery products, said they moved to meet the increasing demand for bread.

"Halk Ekmek was producing 800, 900 thousand pieces of bread a day. As the living conditions, which have become more difficult with the pandemic, increased the interest in our cheap and healthy bread, we have increased the production to 1.25 million pieces of bread a day," Gedik told reporters at an event for the introduction of the mobile buffets.

To ease the load on the Halk Ekmek points, 40 mobile buffets started service in 26 districts of İstanbul, he said.

Vans will be used as retail potins. (Photo: AA)

While Halk Ekmek sold 841,897 pieces of bread a day before the pandemic in November 2019, it sold 1,084,716 pieces of bread a day in November 2020, daily BirGün reported, citing the company figures.

The 20 percent increase in bread prices in October has led even more people to choose Halk Ekmek, Gedik said. While a 200-gram loaf of bread is sold at 1.25 lira (17 US cents) at bakeries, the municipal company currently sells a 250-gram loaf of bread for 1 lira (13 cents).

Gedik noted that the mobile buffets were introduced after the Municipal Council, where the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) - Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) bloc has the majority, prevented the opposition-led municipality to open 142 new regular buffets.

Turkey has been in economic difficulties for several years with increased foreign exchange rates, inflation and unemployment and the situation has gotten even worse with the pandemic although the value of the US dollar has slightly decreased since the resignation of the president's son-in-law as the finance minister in early November. (EMK/VK)