Interactive map of affordable meals: Prague helps the hospitality industry and parents

The closing of school canteens creates inconveniences for working parents, but might be an opportunity for a struggling sector

On Thursday 5 November Prague announced the launch of a new tool aimed to help parents easily discover affordable lunch offers close to their homes. An interactive map will be showing the available restaurants where parents can order reasonably priced lunch, in the context of uncertainty at school canteens.

The tool is part of a project meant to help working parents, but also support the struggling hospitality sector, which is basically limited to takeaway.

Affordable lunch in a time of uncertainty

For many parents in Prague, whose obligations do not allow them to work from home and prepare meals, school canteens were a great relief. Now, with school staff going into quarantine or closing long term, it is becoming complicated for families to provide lunch. For them, the Czech capital announced the affordable lunch project.

The first part of the project consists of an agreement between the catering industry and the city authorities for setting up a reasonable lunch price, which does not greatly exceed the one normally paid in school canteens. After wide consultations with the industry, a uniform price of 60 Czech korunas (2,25 euros) for children’s portion and 90 Czech korunas (3,4 euros) for senior’s portion was agreed upon.

The second part is making information about these establishments easily accessible to parents. For this reason, the capital city will be launching an interactive map, showing the participating restaurants in the close vicinity of one’s home.

With this project, the city wants to help families with children, but also save jobs in the catering and hospitality industry: "We see this as an opportunity for restaurants that have dramatically lost customers and are limited to takeaway windows, to bridge the period of coronavirus restrictions and gain a new group of customers in this period," explains Deputy Mayor Petr Hlubuček, quoted on the website of Prague.

Restaurants will be able to register for the project from noon on Friday through the registration form on obedyprodeti.praha.eu. After that, parents and restaurant holders will find all the necessary information in the same place.