Already a member? Based in Sausalito, California, the organization<\/a> now touts over 50 farms in its network and says it has worked with more than 100 school districts statewide as its partners. Its guiding conviction: With the right infrastructure and relationships, organic food can become a much larger part of the school-food supply chain.<\/p>\n And Conscious Kitchen is just getting started. This spring, the nonprofit won a nomination for this year\u2019s Food Planet Prize<\/a>, which recognizes an organization\u2019s potential to create positive environmental change through food. Conscious Kitchen was one of four finalists out of more than 1,000 applicants worldwide.<\/p>\n Although Conscious Kitchen wasn\u2019t the ultimate winner of the coveted environmental prize\u2014the top award<\/a> went to a region-wide agroecology movement in South India\u2014the nomination earned it a significant award of $150,000 and served as validation of Conscious Kitchen\u2019s potential to reduce the environmental impact of the way we eat.<\/p>\n Conscious Kitchen\u2019s new goal: to feed 6 million schoolchildren across California with organic local food and potentially serve as a model for school districts in other parts of the country.<\/p>\n To do this, it is chipping away at every facet of a deeply entrenched school food distribution system that has traditionally favored long supply chains over local relationships, bulk ordering over seasonal produce, and readymade simplicity over the flexibility and diversity of scratch cooking.<\/p>\n In addition to linking small and mid-size organic farms with local school districts, Conscious Kitchen has worked with manufacturers of organic pantry foods like cereals<\/a> and bulk foods like milk<\/a> to design organic products that meet schools\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n It has helped organize districts to leverage their buying power through cooperative purchasing, while making organic products more economically viable. And it has encouraged major distributors to include organic produce in the catalogs they offer to school districts.<\/p>\n Conscious Kitchen is not alone in its quest to make school meals healthier and upend the food distribution system, though it is uniquely diverse in its approach.<\/p>\n About three-fourths of districts surveyed by the School Nutrition Association last year reported trying to integrate local food<\/a> into their menus, though food service leaders overwhelmingly cited cost and funding as top concerns. Conscious Kitchen is attempting to solve these hurdles with its all-hands-on-deck approach.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very interesting, intricate, nuanced, incredible puzzle, and I think we\u2019re getting to the other end, which is so fun,\u201d said Judi Shils, founder and executive director of Conscious Kitchen. \u201cJust knowing what levers we can pull to help everybody realize what they can do together and then doing it\u2014not waiting, not thinking about it, but just diving in.\u201d<\/p>\n Conscious Kitchen chefs teach students at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Sausalito, California, about organic produce. (Photo courtesy of Conscious Kitchen)<\/p>\n Shils and her team are convinced that seasonal, organic purchasing can be as simple and straightforward as the current conventional-food pathway.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ambition and coherence of Conscious Kitchen\u2019s systems-level approach stood out from the start,\u201d Lina Engler, the general manager of the Food Planet Prize, wrote Civil Eats in an email. \u201cRather than solving one piece of the puzzle, CK works across the entire chain that spans farm to school.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to providing a financial boost, the Food Planet Prize nomination serves as key proof of the nonprofit\u2019s concept and a foothold for its expansion mission. Despite a constantly shifting political landscape and a host of other obstacles, Conscious Kitchen believes its model is both durable and replicable, with the potential to work anywhere.<\/p>\n The Seeds of a System Change<\/p>\n In 2013, Shils and her team founded<\/a> Conscious Kitchen at Bayside Elementary in Marin City, California, an underserved community where 95 percent of students qualified for free and reduced meals. Their goal was to help the school shift from ultraprocessed, prepackaged meals to local, organically grown food.<\/p>\n The organization\u2019s work took off<\/a> during the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted deeply ingrained supply chains and offered an opportunity for change. School districts were granted a temporary reprieve from the tight shackles<\/a> of the government-funded and controlled food procurement system, and ensured government reimbursement even if they didn\u2019t adhere to previous standards. <\/a><\/p>\n Conscious Kitchen had made an initial foray into a much larger school district\u2014West Contra Costa Unified, in San Francisco\u2019s East Bay. When the pandemic hit, the district\u2019s food service director, Barbara Jellison, quickly tapped the group to locate organic produce for each of 23,000 student meal boxes.<\/p>\n \u201cI called her and said, \u2018Is this real?\u2019\u201d Shils recalled. \u201cShe goes, \u2018Yeah, it\u2019s real. If you build the supply chain, I\u2019ll buy it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Over the next nine months, Conscious Kitchen helped funnel 10.7 million pounds of organic food grown by local farmers into 18.7 million boxed to-go meals for West Contra Costa students, totaling $17 million in purchases. What started with produce quickly expanded to a full box of organic dairy, protein, cereals, and grains.<\/p>\n As the pandemic revealed the fragility of long supply chains, Conscious Kitchen demonstrated the value of a direct link between farmers and the schools that use their food. Rather than let its pandemic momentum fade, the nonprofit used it as a launching pad.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew that I couldn\u2019t not keep blowing this up,\u201d Shils explained.<\/p>\n Creating a Solution for Every Problem<\/p>\n The group\u2019s primary challenge is just getting a foot in the door with school district food-service leaders and small- to mid-size organic farmers to ask for help in rebuilding the supply chain. The farmers don\u2019t lack the will to change, Shils said, but often have no idea where to start.<\/p>\n In 2025, Conscious Kitchen hosted 13 farm-to-school workshops<\/a> where farmers and school district officials could not only learn about its model, but also meet one another and establish direct relationships. It has continued the dialogue in 2026, with the most recent<\/a> workshop held in April.<\/p>\n For farmers, opening up a new, large customer base like schools can be invaluable. Small farms are struggling nationwide, with about 15,000 closing or consolidating in the last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture <\/a>(USDA).<\/p>\n Conscious Kitchen\u2019s liaison with schools has been a boon to family growers like Full Belly Farm<\/a>, a venerated multigenerational organic farm in the Capay Valley. California schools are the largest client Full Belly has had in 50 years of farming, Shils said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a farmer to say that about school-supported agriculture is unheard of,\u201d Shils said.<\/p>\n For school district leaders, there are several major concerns about buying organic foods: the cost, the complexity of ordering food and planning meals in volume, kitchen configuration and capacity (most are only set up for heating food, not cooking it, which also requires more space), and staff training to cook meals from scratch in vast quantities. Also, schools must rise to these challenges while abiding by strict government regulations.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of strategy involved in all of this,\u201d explained Kristin Hilleman, director of food and nutrition services at the Capistrano Unified School District outside Los Angeles, which produces about 25,000 meals a day.<\/p>\n Conscious Kitchen student ambassadors help serve a 100 percent organic, scratch-cooked meal at Michelle Obama School in Richmond, California, in January. (Photo courtesy of Conscious Kitchen)<\/p>\n To help with staff training, Conscious Kitchen offers sessions on scratch cooking, and the nonprofit is launching a database in August that will allow districts to share recipes. But its most powerful levers for change are its innovations in food purchasing, product development, and distribution.<\/p>\n The Conscious Kitchen Purchasing Cooperative<\/p>\n One key way in which Conscious Kitchen helps schools tackle food costs is through its new purchasing cooperatives, bringing together multiple school districts to issue joint RFPs (requests for proposals) on which organic producers can bid. Higher volume purchasing can increase the schools\u2019 leverage and unlock lower organic food prices. It \u00a0can also make organic and sustainable purchasing simpler.<\/p>\n The Mt. Diablo Unified School District, just east of San Francisco, is the lead district of 16 in a pilot purchasing cooperative spearheaded by Conscious Kitchen. The district serves about 29,000 students and purchases from 30 vendors ranging from major distributors like Sysco to Mimi\u2019s Organic Farm in Salinas, roughly 100 miles away.<\/p>\n A cooperative that manages multiple contracts on behalf of many districts has the power to be \u201cpretty transformational,\u201d said Alex Emmott, the district\u2019s director of food and nutrition services. \u201cIt just makes it easier, more accessible, and then hopefully helps to drive down costs for items.\u201d<\/p>\n The co-op \u201chits the supply and demand, operational side of things\u201d for the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District, said Kat Soltanmorad, its director of food and nutrition services.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I\u2019m looking for organic string cheese, and now there\u2019s 20-plus school districts ordering the same thing, I\u2019m going to get a much better bid price compared to maybe even the conventional,\u201d Soltanmorad said.<\/p>\n Working With Vendors<\/p>\n Conscious Kitchen wants to make organic purchasing work not only for buyers, but also for sellers. It can encourage food vendors to repackage their products in bulk\u2014a 1-pound package of dry goods doesn\u2019t go very far in a school kitchen\u2014or reformulate them to meet federal nutritional standards.<\/p>\n Conscious Kitchen worked with Nature\u2019s Path in 2024 to reformulate its organic cereal<\/a> to ensure the first two ingredients were whole grains, thus meeting the standards.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of the ability to leverage purchasing is to figure out what the needs are, and then make the products with companies that are already really outstanding in those areas,\u201d Shils explained.<\/p>\n
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