Nando’s has confirmed that the communion wafer served at its forty-seven in-store chapels has been reduced from 12g to 7.7g, a diminution of some thirty-six per cent, while the Sacrament Meal remains fixed at £2.50. A spokesperson, Tamsin Glebe, describes the change as ‘part of a wider review of portion architecture across the liturgical portfolio’, adding that ‘the wafer is not, and has never been, a meal in the conventional sense’. Your correspondent notes, in passing, that the peri-peri salt sachet has risen by fourpence, and that Nando’s, when approached on the matter of the salt, declined to comment, which is the one honest thing anybody has said all week.
The Bishop of Wandsworth says the wafer was always a gesture
The Rt Rev Dr Ozymandias Pike, Bishop of Wandsworth and Nando’s non-executive director for ecclesial affairs, tells the Bromley and Chislehurst Mercury that the 12g wafer was ‘a liturgical anomaly, a hangover from the boom years’, and that the 7.7g wafer ‘aligns us with the broader sector, where the median communion portion is now 6.9g’. One notes that the median communion portion is a phrase that did not exist in 2023 and will not exist in 2029, and that somewhere between those dates a man in a purple shirt sat in a meeting and said it aloud without weeping.
“The Last Supper was a Passover meal, and the portion sizes are not recorded,” said the Rt Rev Dr Ozymandias Pike, Bishop of Wandsworth and non-executive director for ecclesial affairs at Nando’s.
Pressed on whether the reduction constitutes a betrayal of the sacrament, the Bishop observes that the Church of England has been ‘doing more with less since the Reformation’, and that he has ‘every confidence in the wafer’s spiritual density’. One might reasonably ask what spiritual density is, and whether it is measured in grams, and whether the peri-peri salt sachet, which has risen by fourpence and concerning which Nando’s will say nothing, possesses any spiritual density at all, or merely the ordinary sort, the sort that sits in a small paper sleeve and makes a man thirsty for the rest of the afternoon. One might reasonably ask all of this. One is not, however, invited to.
Dennis Crouch has eaten the sacrament at Bromley 412 times and has receipts
Dennis Crouch, sixty-one, a retired tax inspector from Orpington, has attended the Nando’s chapel in Bromley on 412 occasions since the sacrament was introduced in 2024, keeping every receipt in a lever arch file labelled ‘Communion, 2024 to date’. He tells your correspondent that he first noticed the change on the fourteenth of September, when the wafer ‘failed to fill the same space in the hand’.
“A thirty-six per cent reduction at the same price is a straightforward misrepresentation,” said Dennis Crouch, retired tax inspector and private prosecutor.
He has launched a private prosecution under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, and is representing himself, which your correspondent, who has spent forty years watching barristers fail to explain things to magistrates, regards as either admirable or a symptom. He has also written to his MP, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Advertising Standards Authority, and has received one reply, from the ASA, informing him that the matter falls outside its remit but thanking him for his interest in advertising standards. There is a particular kind of letter that thanks a man for his interest while removing his legs, and the ASA has mastered it.
Nando’s offers him a loyalty card and a quarter chicken
On the twenty-second of September, Nando’s customer relations sent Mr Crouch a letter offering a free ‘Extra Hot’ loyalty card, a voucher for a quarter chicken with two regular sides, and a ‘gesture of goodwill’ in the form of a reusable cup. Mr Crouch returned the letter with the word ‘No’ written across it in red ink, and a note reading ‘I am not a customer. I am a communicant.’
“He has not eaten a quarter chicken since 2019, and the apron is in the garage, still in the packet,” said Angela Crouch, wife and household archivist.
Nando’s replied with a second letter, this time offering a ‘Peri-Perfect’ apron. Your correspondent has seen the apron. It is lemon yellow, and it says something on the front, and it is in the garage, still in the packet, where it will remain until the house is sold, at which point a stranger will put it in a bin bag and consider it for a moment before deciding against the charity shop.
The case is struck out because a symbol is not a product
At Bromley Magistrates’ Court on the thirtieth of September, District Judge Fenella Mowbray struck out the prosecution, ruling that the sacrament is not a ‘consumer product’ within the meaning of the regulations but ‘a symbol, an emblem, a thing held up rather than consumed’. She accepted Nando’s submission that the wafer is ‘liturgical furniture’, and that its weight is a matter for the relevant ecclesial authority and not for trading standards.
“Does the same logic apply to the chicken?” asked Dennis Crouch, retired tax inspector, in court.
It does not. Costs of £840 were awarded against him. Your correspondent, who had taken a small sherry to the public gallery in the belief that it would assist her understanding of the weights and measures jurisdiction, finished it in the corridor, where a court usher explained that the machine takes cards but not notes, and that the nearest cashpoint is by the Tesco, and that it has been out of order since August. Outside, Mr Crouch said he would appeal, and that he has, in his words, ‘a lever arch file on that too’.
From Advent, the wafer will be a prayer token weighing 0.4g
Nando’s has announced that from the first Sunday of Advent the communion wafer will be withdrawn entirely and replaced by a ‘prayer token’, a disc of pressed plant fibre weighing 0.4g, priced at £2.50, which the faithful are invited to hold in the hand and consider. Tamsin Glebe calls the token ‘a more sustainable, more inclusive expression of the sacrament’, and says it ‘removes the portion question altogether’. The Bishop of Wandsworth has no theological objection. The token, he says, tastes of nothing, which is arguably more honest.
And here your correspondent must make a confession, or at least a correction, which in her trade is much the same thing. She has been attending the Nando’s in Beckenham. She has eaten the sacrament at Beckenham, in the far booth by the window, every Thursday since March, and it is rather nice, actually, and the staff are kind to the elderly, and one of them, a young man called Kwame, once carried her sherry glass to the table because her hands were full. The Bromley chapel, which she has spent six paragraphs abusing, she has never entered. It is, she is told, much the same. She does not object to the prayer token. She objects to very little, it turns out, once the lights are on and the rain has started and the token, at 0.4g, sits in the palm like a decision one has decided not to make. Mr Crouch will be at Bromley on the first Sunday of Advent with his file. Your correspondent will be at Beckenham, with a small sherry, holding nothing at all, and considering it. The nights are drawing in. The token will not fill the hand. Nothing does, for long.
