WHEN I was young and still living at home in Lochaber, my sister and I relished our shopping trips to Glasgow.

We would spend months saving up wage packets from Saturday jobs for a splurge in Chelsea Girl and What Every Woman Wants.

After more than 20 years living in the city, I still appreciate the stores on my doorstep and enjoy a wander through Buchanan Galleries on my lunch break.

However, I can count the number of times I've eaten a meal in a mall on one hand.

The dietary choices of food courts are criminal. Burger and chips is the standard offering or a baked potato with beans if you are lucky.

Families taking fractious children shopping on a Saturday are hardly to be blamed for choosing what is nearest and most convenient but I leave when my tummy rumbles.

Buchanan Galleries, then, is to be commended for its attempts to re-invent the traditional idea of shopping centre cuisine.

It is to become the first centre in Scotland to give independent and local traders a platform to sell food and drink to hungry shoppers.

StreetDots was launched in 2013 in London to offer small businesses a step up to "high quality" trading spaces and is currently operating out of London's Broadgate centre.

Its creator Atholl Milton was frustrated by the outmoded process for traders trying to find a pitch and the firm hopes to have fifty locations across the UK by the end of the year.

Businesses can search a map of 'streetdots' to find their nearest trading hub.

Kathy Murdoch, centre manager, said she was confident that the new venture, dubbed Taste Buchanan will appeal to shoppers. I hope she is right.

While they haven't quite phased out all the junk food - the newly revamped Burger King will remain - it's a bold step.

Some critics have argued that the Galleries, with its big name brands and security guards is not the best fit for independent traders, however I disagree.

With an annual footfall of 91 million, it will give those small businesses the kind of reach they can only dream of.

Streetdots also handles rent, marketing and sales tracking on behalf of the vendors and 60 independent firms have been showcased in London so far.

With most of us trying to do a bit more to support small businesses, it will lesson the guilt of splashing out on the big brands.

And while the first offerings will be luxury ice-cream, pizzas and designer cakes, the centre has pledged to introduce new traders every two to three months to hopefully balance out the calories.