Around 14% of daily calories are now consumed out of the home, from places like coffee shops, pubs, bakeries, restaurants and takeaways, and the sector looks set to grow further.

The government recently announced a new healthy food standard: mandatory reporting and health targets for all large food businesses to improve the healthiness of the food we consume.

In this report, we set out our exploration of how health targets could be applied to the out-of-home sector.

• Our findings suggest that health targets present a feasible, commercially viable, impactful regulatory option for large out-of-home food businesses.
• Health targets for large out-of-home food businesses could help to reduce obesity by around 2.5% over three years. This could generate around £1.5 billion in annual cost savings to society.
• We outline the different target health metrics and target types which could work for large out-of-home food businesses. However, there remain key policy development questions for the OOH sector which must be answered to design and implement effective targets for large OOH businesses. Answering these first requires good data from large food businesses on the health of the foods they sell.

• The government should expedite mandatory data reporting for large out-of-home food businesses, to enable necessary policy development and enable target setting as a second stage.
• The impact of targets for supermarkets on public health is likely to be significantly greater than those for out-of-home businesses, because that's where the majority (over 80%) of our calories come from. The sector is also much less diverse, meaning setting a target is more straightforward
• If the government wishes to maximise health impact, it should sequence the implementation of health targets across the two different sectors. It should start with retailers, while mandating data collection from out-of-home businesses, and then progress to effective target setting for out-of-home businesses as a second stage.