Set to launch next summer, the not-for-profit restaurants will be part of a £1.5m initiative delivered by Nourish Scotland in partnership with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.
The Government says the aim of the restaurants is to ‘provide universal access to nutritious and sustainably produced foods in social settings, and to particularly meet the needs of deprived households with children’.
According to The Telegraph, meals will cost as little as £3.
The plans follow the publication of a report last September by Nourish Scotland that called for the introduction of a ‘national restaurant service’ similar to British Restaurants, the communal kitchens set up by Winston Churchill in 1940 to support households during wartime, to help tackle food inequality.
British Restaurants offered nutritious price-capped meals and were set up by the Ministry of Food and run by local government or voluntary agencies on a non-profit basis.
At its peak there were more than 2,000 British Restaurants across the country with the last ones not closing until the early 1970s.
“The first year of the project will be focused on co-development of the test sites,” says Anna Chworow, the deputy director of Nourish Scotland, discussing the new state-subsidised eateries.
“We will work with people in each city to understand their needs and preferences, from locations and menus, to opening hours.
“We will also be speaking to representatives from community organisations, public health teams, the council and national bodies to ensure the research responds to their questions and draws on their extensive expertise.”
Subsidies will be used to cover staffing and overheads to ensure prices remain accessible.
A tender process to appoint a caterer will begin later this year.
The public restaurants are one of six initiatives funded through the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s £8.5m healthy food access programme.
Others include a mobile greengrocer trial in Liverpool, community food market pilots in Glasgow, and new efforts to boost the nutritional quality and uptake of free school meals.
“These projects will draw on the power of research to actively explore the best ways to get healthy food into the mouths of those who need it, potentially having a transformational effect on people’s lives,” says Peter Kyle, the Government’s Science and Technology Secretary.