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. The program has met rising student and community need amid the pandemic in partnership with the West Contra Costa Unified School District by sourcing, packing and distributing over 10.7 million pounds of organic food for 18.7 million meals for children, directly investing over $17 million into local economies and organic food businesses. This built upon an initial pandemic response of cooking and delivering tens of thousands of hot, nutritious, chef-prepared, scratch-cooked organic meals and fresh, organic produce boxes to vulnerable populations in Marin City, the Canal, and other Bay Area communities with a sustained commitment to the health and wellbeing of people and planet. CK is now developing and successfully implementing a viable organic supply chain for institutional purchasing and strengthening organic procurement systems for school districts to benefit students, farmers and soils.
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.
