Loaves and Fishes is a food store in Gilead where Handmaids, Marthas and Econowives buy daily supplies. Like all the other food stores available, its items are actually exchanged by tokens instead of money.
The store has a wooden sign of a smiling fish with eyelashes. It is named for Christ's miracle described in Matthew 14:17 of feeding a multitude with just five loaves of bread and two fishes.
In the novel, Offred mentions the store rarely opens now because the seas have become so polluted that few fish still live in them and it is mainly supplied by fish farms. Loaves and Fishes doesn't sell loaves despite its name: most households bake their own bread or get limited options at Daily Bread, the Gilead bakery chain.
Trivia[]
- In the TV series, the scenes in Loaves and Fishes were filmed at the former site of Deninger's Foods of the World in Burlington, Ontario. Deninger's has moved to a new location.