HEALTHY food fans can look forward to welcoming Swindon’s first raw food restaurant, after juice bar The Core successfully crowdfunded the cash to pay for it.

Last month Kris Talikowski, who owns the niche food outlet in Devizes Road, appealed to the public to help him raise £10,000 to grow his healthy eating empire by extending the bar and building a theatre kitchen in the Old Town premises in order to be able to prepare and serve raw food, which uses uncooked ingredients for dishes and aims to preserve the organic vitamins and minerals.

Dozens of people made pledges through Kickstarter, an online global crowdfunding platform which helps creative projects bring their ideas to life with the financial backing of the public, but unlike making a donation, The Core needed to reach its target in an allotted time frame before any money was withdrawn from pledgers’ accounts.

With just 24 hours to go The Core had successfully gathered £10,090 in pledges from the community, and now Kris plans to open the new restaurant in three or four weeks’ time.

The 31-year-old said: “The Core team and I are obviously over the moon that we have hit our target and that we can now go about bringing amazing healthy food to Swindon.

“It does seem like it’s a niche market but there is clearly demand for it in Swindon.

“We will open the restaurant just three nights a week on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays to start with to test the demand and we’ll also be introducing a bar menu of super healthy salads and sandwiches.

“We found a bread which is 60 per cent seeds which we will use in our sandwiches and we’ll have some super-sumptuous, all-vegetarian fillings too.

“It’s all part of my hope to really teach Swindon about healthy eating and nutrition, and just how easy it is to be healthy.”

Since The Core opened in March 2013, Kris has converted hundreds to the juicing cult and developed a dedicated customer base of fans, which he wanted to involve in the expansion of the business.

Kris said: “It’s been a busy few weeks for us.

“We are just about to open up in Cheltenham and we’ve also been asked to open in the Outlet Centre as well.

“I think that using Kickstarter was the best way to do it because we wanted to say we’d raised the money in an ethical way and we have developed such a strong community it gives an opportunity for them to get involved and be a part of it.”