Conscious Kitchen addresses food equity, education, and access by shifting the paradigm around school food service, while cultivating a local, ecological food system, and building nutrition literacy into meals.
CK created the first organic school district in the country shortly after launching in 2013, which thrives to this day — and is now meeting rising student and community need during Covid-19 by sourcing, packing and distributing over 3.5 million pounds of organic food for 9.3 million meals for children, directly investing over $5 million into local economies and organic food businesses, while developing a viable organic supply chain for institutional purchasing (statistics to date between November 2020 and March 2021). This built upon an initial pandemic response of cooking and delivering over 65,000 hot, nutritious, chef-prepared, scratch-cooked meals and fresh, organic produce to vulnerable populations with a sustained commitment to the health and wellbeing of people and planet.
Through a collaborative, replicable approach, CK partners with schools and communities to break the cycle of conventional, packaged, overly processed food, transitioning to meals based on five foundational attributes: fresh, local, organic, seasonal and nutritious. CK activates school kitchens as hubs for community resilience, while nourishing the minds and bodies of the next generation.
A Glimpse Inside Conscious Kitchen
Feeding children well creates healthier people. Fresh, local, organic food benefits land, economies and farmers. Transforming meals transforms community for the better. Conscious Kitchens work. We’re excited to share our Conscious Kitchen journey over the past 8 years and values-based, climate-friendly proof of concept with this new study in collaboration with Friends of the Earth.
