Glasgow's Best Kept Secret : How family restaurant “The Unit” is keeping communities well-fed

Glasgow restaurant The Unit has been operating as a community space, a food-based charity and a family restaurant since September 2020. The Unit aims to raise funds to tackle food insecurity by supplying free meals to Glaswegian families suffering through poverty.

The Unit’s indoor dining area, draped in vintage Americana

The Unit’s Hawaiian-style “shake shack” dessert bar

The Unit is run by Well-Fed, a non-profit organisation established in 2017 which was previously based in the Whiteinch Centre as a small café, prior to last year’s move to its current location on South Street, Whiteinch. The Well-Fed team, who work at The Unit, dedicate time and effort to assemble lunch bags for Glasgow’s deprived.

Anne Marie, who has worked with Well-Fed and The Unit for the past year, said:

“We make around 600 sandwiches a day and put them into lunch bags which are sent off to the Well-Fed vans, which deliver to the homeless who have been staying in hotels around Glasgow during the lockdown.”

Well-Fed’s volunteers and workers hard at work packing lunch bags

In charge of The Unit and Well-Fed are founding directors Chrisopher Gray and Claire Lilly, qualified social workers who are now interested in community development in Glasgow’s more deprived areas.

“Well-Fed is a social enterprise. It’s set up to help build stronger communities and tackle issues like food insecurity and social mobility. We raise funds for Well-Fed through The Unit’s restaurant and through catering services.” says Chris.

“Food insecurity is the primary issue that we’re working to tackle. To date, we’ve provided almost 1.5 million free meals across Glasgow.” he continues.

As for the future of The Unit, Chris said:

“We have two different strands of The Unit. The commercial aspect, which helps generate our funding, and our new services we’re looking into starting like event catering and mobile services. We want The Unit to be an anchor location in the city for the community to make use of.”

The Unit’s outdoor seating area, large enough to cater for events, dining and exercise classes

You can book a table via their phone number or email, which you can find here.