A perfect storm of food system challenges means the time is right for the state to step in and provide affordable, healthy meal options, says a charity. By Nick Hughes.
You’ve had a busy day at work. You’ve collected the kids from their after school clubs and are about to make for home when the eternal dilemma of what to eat tonight muscles its way into your head. You’ve neither the energy nor inspiration to cook a meal but you can’t justify ordering a takeaway on a weeknight. Fortunately, there’s a restaurant down the road offering nutritious hot food at affordable prices that you know is open from morning until night.
That, in a nutshell, is the solution offered by a public diner whose “time has come”, according to a food charity. In a recently published report, Nourish Scotland makes the case for UK governments to establish a network of affordable restaurants serving healthy, tasty meals to the general public. These are not a charity but form part of the public infrastructure like buses, libraries, parks and museums, and are “an investment in the wellbeing and prosperity of a society”, according to the report.
Public diners are distinct from privately owned restaurants in a number of ways. Financially, they are underwritten by state support which can range from capital and start-up grants, to regular subsidies, to support with amenities and supply chains. This in theory makes them economically viable, affordable and more resilient to economic pressures. They are also designed for everybody – not just those struggling to make ends meet – rather than targeted at a particular demographic of customer like many private restaurants. They are places where customers can influence the running of the restaurant too; “where people are not food consumers – they are food citizens,” according to the report, where menus can be more “climate friendly”, and where “the sourcing, at least in part, supports local and agroecological producers”.
When might you visit one? Whenever you like. Nourish Scotland describes them as everyday eating places, while also offering a few specific examples of its own: “Public diners are a place to grab a meal after a 10-hour shift. A place to eat when you’ve run out of ideas for what to cook tonight. A place to go for a meal between classes.”
They are not however a new idea. During the Second World War, the UK Government established a subsidised chain of British Restaurants serving price-capped, nutritious meals to almost every demographic across the country. Although established as a wartime effort to increase the collective strength of the population, some remained as civic restaurants into the 1970s “because they made neighbourhoods stronger on all fronts”, according to the report.
So why are they ripe for a comeback? Because, says Nourish Scotland, there is widespread recognition that our food system needs to change to address three core issues: “Poor diets lead to and exacerbate bad health outcomes, levels of food insecurity issues persist, and our food choices contribute to climate crisis.” Although the charity suggests a lot of attention has been given to agricultural transition, new state infrastructure at the other end of the supply chain could support citizens to eat well. Public diners also offer “a perfect training environment for the future generation of cooks and chefs”.
But how might out of home businesses feel about this? That’s a fair question. Restaurants and caterers are facing huge pressures of their own, ranging from the high cost of ingredients and energy to difficulties recruiting and retaining chefs and waiting staff (not to mention reducing GHG emissions, managing green claims and ensuring fair pay). They might reasonably wonder whether competition from a state-subsidised establishment is another kick in the teeth. Yet Nourish Scotland is keen to stress that public diners are “not somewhere you’d visit as a treat” and so in this way they could prove a complementary addition to the eating out of home landscape (and perhaps take market share from grocery retailers?).
What’s clear is that community eating is having a moment. The Long Table restaurant in Stroud, Gloucestershire is a not-for-profit that operates a “pay as you can” model, including no charge at all, and has generated enough demand from paying customers to employ 22 members of staff on at least the real living wage. Another example is the CanTeam initiative, pioneered by Future Foundations, which is transforming school canteens into community hubs by providing free, nutritious after-school food for young people and their families. Its target is to establish more CanTeams than there are branches of McDonald’s (currently numbering more than 1,400) across the UK by 2030.
If that sounds fanciful consider that in 1943, there were over 2,000 of those British Restaurants mentioned above serving around 600,000 meals per day. (Community) food for thought indeed.
