How do we eat out, post-Covid-19? "Community restaurants" could combine nutritious food with local food supplies

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

We found this interesting proposal for “community restaurants” in the pages of Le Monde Diplomatique - but we’d like to challenge its assumption that the state is the only guarantor for their viability. An except below:

So what kinds of policies could be implemented in the UK to begin to overcome the unsustainability of the current food system — poverty wages in production, mass malnutrition and under-nutrition, social inequalities of class and gender, and the disappearance of many of our treasured eateries?

There is a simple answer that addresses all of these maladies: community restaurants sourcing local produce, serving healthy plant-based dishes and providing combination of free and cheap meals.

Such restaurants would represent a partial decommodification of food — by making access to it a human right, rather than a consequence of purchasing power. How could such a system work?

Its political legitimacy could flow from article 25 of the UN declaration of human rights’ proclamation that everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of themselves and their families, including food.

Local councils could be funded by central government to buy up closed restaurants, pubs, and other vacant retail properties for conversion into community restaurants.*

Now that the UK is leaving the EU’s common agricultural policy, farms could receive replacement subsidies to produce specific crops — seasonal food crops under open skies and counter-seasonal and non-native crops in greenhouses. 

A new subsidy regime that prioritises human food over animal feed crops would push up the price of meat while pushing down the price of plant-based food.

State funds could enable large-scale production units of alternatives-to-meat to supply community restaurants with cheap high quality ingredients**. The government should legislate that wages in agriculture should be living wages.

Such measures complement ideas about a Green New Deal — where the state plays the leading role in transforming the economy into a zero carbon, socially equitable system. They would also empower local communities, ensuring that such transformations sink deep roots across society.

Community restaurants could start by providing a set number of free meals (to be increased over time), utilizing electronic coupons, to every local family on a use-it-or-lose-it basis.

Diners could pre-order electronically to facilitate preparation, and once established, demand could be predicted in order to prepare sufficient food and minimise waste.

Subsidies would ensure that, in addition to free meals, such restaurants would be cheaper than local junk food outlets, contributing further to a healthy dietary shift.

Like other state provisions, there would be no obligation to dine at these restaurants. People who want to eat at fast-food chains could do so. What would change would be that the economic pressure to eat at outlets selling cheap health-damaging food would be significantly lessened.***

Community restaurants could be locally run, with neighbourhood-wide elected management teams coordinating supply with regional farms and alternatives-to-meat producers.

Staff would be employed by local councils. Such restaurants could represent regenerative hubs for communities battered by austerity, poverty and rampant individualism.

More here. Our comments on this extract below - from asterisks in the text above:

* Would local councils have to wait for central government funding for these buildings to be procured? Our recent post on community trusts - accented on development, food, housing etc - references a long history of asset transfer (buildings and services) from local government, to a sharing, stewarded or commons ownership, rooted in communities. The networks to begin this process already exist in many areas.

** Again, is it realistic, under current political conditions, to expect that government would be the key lever in providing these ingredients? Or are there already potential local understandings between food producers and food users that could identify a proportion of produce for these community restaurants? Look at our recent blog on the Park Slope Food Coop - maybe an eccentric extreme, but an example of just how grassroots the connection between local food and everyday customer can be.

***Once again, it doesn’t seem required that such “community restaurants” be seen as part of state provision. Subsidy would be undoubtedly welcomed, but it could be seen as subtly sustaining the health of a food human-ecosystem, raising the floor for a new range of initiatives and enterprises to become viable. John Thackera has an amazing talent for outlining how food networks can sustainably cohere, out of the most basic conditions - see this blog.