Mission
Conscious Kitchen partners with school districts across California to make fresh, local, organic meals a practical reality, replacing ultra-processed, prepackaged food with scratch-cooked meals built around five foundational food attributes: fresh, local, organic, seasonal, and nutritious. Through a collaborative, replicable approach, Conscious Kitchen builds the infrastructure, relationships, and supply chains that allow schools to make this transition within existing budgets.
The result is school kitchens that serve as lasting hubs for student health, community resilience, and a stronger regional food system. Once in place, schools own and operate their programs independently, ensuring the change is not just meaningful but permanent.
Values
Conscious Kitchen believes access to healthy food is a right, not a privilege. By bringing fresh, organic meals to students across California, Conscious Kitchen is demonstrating that every child, in every community, can be nourished by food that is good for their bodies and good for the planet.
By sourcing from local organic farms, the work strengthens regional agriculture, supports farming communities, and deepens the connection between schools, students, and the people who grow their food. The goal is a replicable model that can transform school food systems not just in California, but nationwide.
Impact
Since our founding Conscious Kitchen has reached more than 1.8+ million students across 112+ California school districts, partnering with 59+ organic farms and working alongside school food leaders to make organic, scratch-cooked meals a daily reality.
The impact extends well beyond the cafeteria. By building procurement pathways, training farmers to sell into institutional markets, and aggregating demand across districts, Conscious Kitchen is creating stable, reliable markets for local organic farms while strengthening the regional supply chains that make this work sustainable at scale.
In 2025 alone, Conscious Kitchen directed more than $8 million in procurement to organic farms and unlocked 36 organic produce offerings through federal purchasing channels, benefiting hundreds of school districts across California.
Our Story
In the fall of 2013, Sausalito-based non-profit, Turning Green launched Conscious Kitchen as a pilot project at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr Academy, the sole K-8 public school in the Sausalito Marin City School District. In partnership with Executive Chef Justin Everett of Cavallo Point Lodge and the school district, we set out to reimagine school food and break the cycle of unhealthy, pre-packaged, processed, heat-and-serve meals. It was just the beginning.