Our mission is:  to provide people in Maine with creative local and organic food and holistic learning through cooking food for our community.

Local Sprouts is a new culinary and cultural organization that focuses on connecting people through sharing cooked food, mutual support, knowledge and developing local self-reliance. We have three main branches: Community Supported Kitchen, Cooperative Catering and Community Learning and Food

Our mission is to provide creative local and organic food to people and non-profit organizations in Maine and to grow opportunities for youth, elders and immigrants to learn holistically through cooking food for our community. 
 
Local Sprouts Cooperative started in June of 2007, although our roots and origins extend back to the start of the People's Free Space in Portland in 2002.  Over the past five years, People's Free Space organizers have cooked food, secured food donations, and helped to feed people at events in Maine.  Last summer, organizers with the People’s Free Space started Local Sprouts to build a sustainable local food cooperative.  

Since August 2007, Local Sprouts Cooperative Catering has provided food to a variety of community members, organizations and businesses.  We have catered trainings, annual dinners, harvest dinners, fundraising events, luncheons, private parties and art openings.  In the past year and a half, we have picked up extra food from farmers and distributed hundreds of pounds of vegetables to local food pantries and community events.  

We started the East Coast's first Community Supported Kitchen in the summer of 2008 and send out a weekly menu of local, seasonal, organic food to our members. We are building connections and community around the kitchen, getting to know our members, and building relationships with local farms. 

We are advocating for a strong local foods system and providing delicious cooked food to organizations and people through out Maine.  We are also one of Portland’s first worker-owned cooperatives- as workers we own the business together and make decisions democratically that benefit our workers and our community.  

Local Sprouts in the Media

In Maine Switch http://themaineswitch.com/story/view/1966/

In the Press Herald http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=240599&ac=PHbiz&pg=1

In the Portland Daily Sun http://www.theportlanddailysun.com/cgi/story.pl?storyid=20090422033481000371