Nag’s Head Town Centre is a hub for fresh food and small businesses creating employment opportunities and bringing people together through food. During the engagement, the community asked for events and spaces that celebrate local culture, improve wellbeing and connect local people.

The Test Kitchen would create a community training kitchen by unlocking a vacant commercial kitchen in spaces like Nag’s Head Covered Market, The Upper Place or The Junction. This proposal could include an outreach programme with local schools, low-cost cooking classes for the community and a training programme for young people focusing on sustainable and healthy cooking that reduces food waste by using surplus food from local businesses. The cooking classes and training programme for young people would strengthen local skillsets and help create employment opportunities. This proposal would also help improve the wellbeing of local people by building confidence and encouraging social interaction and healthy eating.

To help fund the outreach programme, the Test Kitchen could also be rented out for food pop-ups, supper clubs, food content creation and other events. The profits from renting out the space would feed back into the outreach programme to strengthen the support of the community.

As a long-term goal, this proposal would include a local surplus food network to make sure that businesses reduce their food waste and create a more sustainable Nag’s Head Town Centre.