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 the pandemic in partnership with the West Contra Costa Unified School District by sourcing, packing and distributing over 6.4 million pounds of organic food for 14.1 million meals for children, directly investing over $8.7 million into local economies and organic food businesses. Through this work, Conscious Kitchen is developing a viable organic supply chain for institutional purchasing by school districts. (statistics to date between November 2020 and May 2021). 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 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.
