What are Public Diners?

State-supported restaurants serving high-quality meals at low prices for everyone

Find out more

Kitchen worker prepping plates to go out to customers

State supported
1

Public diners operate with public funding or other forms of public support (for example, rent controls, tax breaks). This differentiates them from private restaurants and from charitable food provision.
Democratic
2

Public diners are democratic institutions. They have formal mechanisms for public scrutiny and participation.
Universal
3

Public diners are open to everyone. They are not targeted at, or exclusive to, any particular group. Public diners are there for everyone.
Affordable
4

Public diners serve meals at low prices. They also have formal concessionary schemes to ensure everyone can eat there.
Real good food
5

Public diners serve meals that taste good, celebrate local flavours, care for the planet and can be enjoyed by everyone.
Appealing
6

Public diners are regular restaurants. They are places that are convenient and appealing for everyone to eat at.
Long-term
7

Public diners are fixed parts of neighbourhoods. They are also fixed parts of the social safety net.

A farmer boxing up freshly harvested cabbages

Climate

Public diners can help lead the way for a more environmentally sustainable food system.

They will do this by enabling more climate friendly practices at every stage – offering new routes to market for local, agroecological produce, designing menus with “less and better” meat and controlling food waste.

Two people work together with post-it notes on a wall, thinking about Public Diners

Democracy

Public diners enable more public participation in the food environment.

They are infrastructure through which a robust public voice can enter and shape the food environment. In public diners we are citizens with control of our fundamental right to food, not consumers eating the consequences of our wallet size.

Two young female workers at work preparing food

Employment

Public diners offer the opportunity to create more local jobs and inject more value into the food sector.

They model good working conditions for chefs, front of house, producers, suppliers and everyone in between. They also offer a perfect training environment for the future generation of cooks and chefs.

A woman relaxes at a public diner while reading the paper

Gender equality

Public diners will also help progress toward more gender equality in our neighbourhoods.

Today, women are frequently still more likely to work the double shift of full-time employment and handle dinner after work and school. By alleviating hours of kitchen labour that is disproportionately put on women, public diners offer an effective way to help and redistribute labour.

Hand-written post-it note saying "When I haven't eaten any veg for a while and I want something nutritious and delicious but can't be bothered to cook!!

Public health

Public diners are a bold, upstream approach to public health.

They will deliver what the market currently struggles to: healthy meals at affordable prices in a convenient way. Public diners bring down the current barriers to eating well – cost, time, energy, facilities – and enable population level dietary improvements.

Shop with shelves stocked with canned food

Right to food

We have the right to education, we have the right to healthcare – we also have the right to food.

That means the state has to step up to support a food environment where citizens can choose, afford and enjoy the food that will keep them well. Public diners offer the State a mechanism through which they can deliver their duty to protect the right to food.

Town regeneration

Public diners help connect and revitalise neighbourhoods.

Placed near schools, offices, shops and bus stops, they normalise being able to eat out and be out in neighbourhoods across the country.

They increase footfall on high streets, create more economic opportunities for local producers and free up more disposable income to be circulated in local economies. They also create the space for stronger social fabrics to develop.

Food system transformation has been identified as one of the six levers for achieving Sustainable Development Goals.

If we get a piece of public infrastructure that helps us to eat better – we stand to gain many benefits.

Frequently asked questions

At Nourish Scotland, we’ve spent the past decade working with over 100 community food initiatives through our Dignity Peer Network. They do fantastic work bringing people together to enjoy food in good company – and offer support and advice in friendly settings.

Many of them readily acknowledge: they are not public diners. They run once or twice a week, rely on volunteers and surplus food. They don’t have the longevity that public infrastructure can provide.

Public diners are a competition to supermarket ready meals and big fast-food chains. They are not places you go out for a treat or to celebrate – they’re somewhere to grab dinner after a long shift or when you have no desire to cook.

In places where they are well established, such as Poland and Turkey, they happily co-exist with commercial operators. In the UK, it’s similar to how council leisure centres operate alongside commercial gyms.

Public diners are paying propositions. Customers pay for the meal, the government subsidises the running costs.

In most cases central government sets out the level of subsidy and how it will operate. It’s also possible for local authority / municipality to decide to finance them from their own budgets.

We wouldn’t – just as we don’t prevent car owners from using public transport. In fact, the more popular they become, the more economically self-supporting they become. And, importantly, their benefits can be experienced by more people. It’s a virtuous circle.

Telling people to cook from scratch or eat healthier has been the go-to message for decades — but it doesn’t work. That’s because the real barriers to eating well are structural: long working hours, tight budgets, and a food environment where the cheapest, easiest options are often the least healthy.

We’ve spent years focusing on personal responsibility, but food — like education or healthcare — shouldn’t be a private struggle. It’s a basic human right.

Quite the opposite. Public diners are not “one-size-fits-all,” and they’re not dropped in from the outside.

They’re places that are designed by the public for the public. This means each diner would be locally delivered, based on demand and designed to reflect the people and place it serves. Menus could include healthy-enough” stews and salads to chips and desserts!

Right now, income and time often dictate how well we eat. Public diners would rebalance that — giving people more control over their food environment, not less.