The Canongate Research Project identified the difficulty of buying good quality, healthy, inexpensive food as one of the main problems faced by local residents. The traditional food shops – butcher, baker, fishmonger, greengrocer – have now all closed down, often replaced by souvenir shops aiming at the tourist market, and people must now either rely on convenience stores (with limited ranges and high prices) or leave the Old Town and make the journey to supermarkets and other food outlets elsewhere in the city. But buses are expensive and difficult to negotiate with shopping, especially for elderly people and those with young children, and only a minority of Old Town residents own cars.

The Trust’s Food Projects tackle these problems in a variety of ways: 

• The Working With Traders project will work with existing food suppliers, encouraging and helping them to expand what they offer.
• The Food Co-op project will establish a food co-op within the Old Town.
• The Food Vans project will bring food vans into the Old Town.
• The Grow Our Own project will explore some of the ways that we can produce our own food. 
• The Markets project will establish a food market in the Old Town.