The fourth and final STOP industry-led pilot project has now been funded. Shift Design was awarded €150,000 to develop innovations that have the potential to make critical improvements in the food environments faced by children and their families in London. The project was selected from an open call aimed at start-ups and SMEs.
Shift is an award-winning innovation charity that develops new products and services to help tackle entrenched social issues that disproportionately impact low-income families. Youth obesity and the negative impact that the built and consumer environment plays in propagating unhealthy food choices in deprived urban areas is one of their top priority action areas.
After working on delivering hot takeaway meals, Shift Design is building a cold-delivered meal solution priced and designed for low to no-income families aged between 20 and 39 with at least one child between 4 and 16 years in the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. Their previous ethnographic research, funded by Guys and St Thomas’ Charity, showed families often struggle to prepare healthy home cooked meals on a regular basis because their kitchens are not suitable, they don’t have the time and they struggle to organise given the multitude of struggles that result from being in poverty. Their low-cost model aims to enable low-income families to have access to appropriate, sustainable, and healthy meal options. The development of this product alongside Shift’s ongoing healthier hot-delivered takeaways, allows sustained traction, and maximises penetration, and therefore substitution of these meals in place of less nutritious options. The group has started the development of their cold-delivered product has begun through provision of 1,100 meals to various ‘Holiday Hunger’ schemes in Lambeth and Southwark.
Please look here for more information on Shift’s work.
