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. Through a collaborative, replicable approach, Conscious Kitchen 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, nutritious.
Conscious Kitchen activates school kitchens as hubs for community resilience, while nourishing the minds and bodies of the next generation. With a belief in school-supported agriculture as a powerful tool to address climate change and model climate action that promotes human and environmental health, Conscious Kitchen designs and builds local, resilient food systems that connect organic farmers, providers and schools to benefit our children, planet and future.
Conscious Kitchen created the first organic school district in the country shortly after launching in 2013, which thrives to this day across the Sausalito Marin City School District. The program met rising student and community need during pandemic school closures 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. shifting proteins, grains, dairy, produce and other ingredients for up to 644,000 meals per week. This built upon an initial pandemic response of cooking and delivering tens of thousands of hot, nutritious, 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.
Conscious Kitchen is now developing and successfully implementing viable organic supply chains for institutional purchasing and strengthening organic procurement for school districts to benefit students, farmers and soils — with a focus on breakfast and lunch.