Once a great city of the Eastern Roman Empire, Thessaloniki is now a gateway to mainland Greece, the country’s second-largest city and a culinary capital.
Thessaloniki has been a signatory of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) since 2015 and has been awarded the title of UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy. It launched the Thessaloniki2030 Strategy for local resilience, which sets out the need to work with diverse stakeholders, organisations, and municipal teams. The city participated in other EU-funded projects, such as Social Plate, which aimed to distribute unsold healthy fruit and vegetables or left over from markets to vulnerable populations.
Within Food Trails Thessaloniki expanded its “local food” focus beyond gastronomy to include economic, social, and environmental policies. It pursued two paths: boosting knowledge of sustainable food practices and urban agriculture while developing urban spaces for food production. Additionally, it created an integrated urban food policy to ensure stakeholder engagement and support lasting systemic change.
Pilot 1 – Food Council. Establishing an urban council at the municipality level
To ensure responsive, inclusive and participatory decision-making, the city developed a Food Council with the objective of influencing politicians to act on the food system by ensuring the involvement of
stakeholders in the co-design of a comprehensive city food policy centred on four pillars. The food Council was launched on October 15, 2022. One key strength lies in the inclusion of vulnerable groups in policy work. The policy was adopted in 2023 (signed by the City Council and the Mayor in 2024) and focused on 4 priorities: Food Production and Distribution, Food Education, Food Waste and Gastronomy.
Pilot 2 – Food Surplus Redistribution. Ensuring comparable measurements and scalability of actions already in place
Focusing on Doxa Park’s urban vineyard, vegetable garden, and orchard, the city provided infrastructure, hosted events, and welcomed international students. In 2023, Thessaloniki became a board member of the Urban Vineyards Association. The municipality also established 4 new vegetable gardens (3 in schools and 1 in a community structure) and promoted cultivation and composting through green roof updates on public buildings.
Living Lab Numbers
700m2
urban vineyard
500
people involved in urban agriculture activities and green roof
1,975
Children and students participated in workshops during the annual Recycling Festival of Thessaloniki
40
Stakeholders involved in food policy council
4
Participatory workshops involving the Food Council
30
Field visits and informative tours in the urban vineyard
Thessaloniki Food Policy is available in the report Official Municipal Acts for Urban Food Policy Approval.
The description of the city’s living labs is available in all the project languages in the Food Trails Final Publication. Go to the resource!
