London suffers some of the UK’s worst obesity issues and the situation is worsening: our initiative aims to get young people to think about how the food they eat is made, where it comes from and what effect it will have on their health.

Based in an outlet in Tottenham and serving healthy and affordable food, our project will connect us with local young people and will produce a new network of local people, which schools and community organisations from across the borough can call upon, to help teach kids about healthier but tasty food options and explore fun and new ways of eating right.

Fundraising on Spacehive is specifically for the capital design elements of restaurant set-up.

What we'll deliver:

• Produce an outlet in the centre of Tottenham where young people can eat and learn about healthier food options
• Provide training, job opportunities and mentoring from leading London restaurants with routes into employment
• Tackle Tottenham’s most pervasive issues: childhood obesity and a lack of training and employment opportunities

Why it's a great idea:

We believe that the key to helping young people to eat better is by providing a compelling alternative. There are currently around 8,273 fast food outlets in London, and the British Medical Journal, the NHS and GLA’s Public Health team, support our belief that to change people’s attitudes to fast food we have to transform its appeal.

This project will take place in an area of intense change, which currently has high levels of youth obesity and a proliferation of fast food outlets. Learning about food and trying new things is the first step in changing people’s habits for the long-term: this project will be a key initiative within Haringey to help foster positive and lasting change. This project focuses on empowering young people to take control of what they eat and to have a positive and better relationship with great food.

Steps to get it done:

• Business planning, marketing and governance support will come from the London Borough of Haringey
• Design a great looking outlet, which is welcoming to young people and the whole community
• Project management and further fundraising to enhance the project from Create London
• Training, mentoring and vocational skills provision from our existing Create Jobs programme
• Develop relationships with local shops, community organisations and local people to create a network of food advocates
• Work closely with Public Health teams in Haringey to design a great, healthy menu

In 2013 we worked with partners We Are What We Do to set up a Box Chicken food trailer in Forest Gate in Newham. We sold 1,362 meals in a month, each with 90% less saturated fat, 80% less salt and half the calories of a standard chicken take-away, with the support of Public Health England, local health teams and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

The Box Chicken pilot generated significant positive press coverage, in The Observer, The Evening Standard and The One Show, amongst others.

This ongoing pilot has demonstrated our ability to engage with young people in disadvantaged boroughs and start a discussion about what they eat. Mobile food trucks serving healthier food are currently providing for secondary schoolchildren in four London boroughs. The data and learning from this project gives us the opportunity to deliver something of real scale and longevity in Tottenham that builds on and expands this work.