JUICE bar owner Kris Talikowski is hoping to expand his healthy eating empire by opening a restaurant, if he can secure financial backing from the community.

The 31-year-old, who moved to the town 10 years ago, opened The Core in Old Town’s Devizes Road in March 2013, and since then he has developed a dedicated customer base of juice fans.

Now, Kris wants to expand the business to offer a raw food restaurant to complement the juice bar, but needs £10,000 to expand the bar and build a theatre kitchen.

He said: “I just want to get Swindon healthy, and I think it’s a good place to do it especially with it being the most obese town in the country.

“I first started juicing when I got glandular fever and when I started having juices I just felt better.

“Since then there hasn’t been a day in the past 12 years I haven’t had a juice.”

The Core has had a particularly successful summer, testing the demand for a specialised restaurant by hosting a number of sell-out evenings of raw food, which uses uncooked ingredients for dishes, and aims to preserve the vitamins and minerals.

Kris said: “We had seven raw food pop-up events and now we want to expand into a restaurant where for three nights a week people can come and enjoy really nutritious healthy vegetarian, vegan, raw and live food.

“It won’t all be raw because with winter coming you’ll want warm dishes but it will all be really healthy.

“We’ve nearly finished the menu and I’m hoping we can have it all in place by the end of October after a two-day refurbishment.”

Kris is now appealing to the public to help raise the money through Kickstarter, and online global crowdfunding platform which helps businesses and creative projects bring their ideas to life with the financial backing and support from the public.

The Core has so far raised more than £250 in just two days of the account being live.

Kris said: “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.

“I’m pretty confident we’ll have managed to raise all the money in the next month.”

Making a pledge through Kickstarter is not the same as making a donation, and no money will be withdrawn from your account unless The Core reaches its £10,000 target.

Only when The Core reaches £10,000 worth of pledges will any money be taken as a donation.

To pledge your support, and find out about what The Core could give you in return, visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/862910096/the-core-kitchen-bringing-healthy-food-to-swindon