The Seasoned Spoon Café

The Seasoned Spoon is a vegetarian cooperative café at Trent University that sells prepared food to the Trent community and a variety of services to students, staff and community members. Among these services are their nearly 20 workshops and events offered each academic year. The project was a four-month community-based research project to evaluate the workshops and events that the Seasoned Spoon offered for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Locally sourced food is a more sustainable, more ecologically friendly alternative to mainstream methods such as buying through a large scale food distribution wholesaler. Accessing local producers affords the buyer a greater degree of power over how their produce is grown, harvested, stored and transported and so on. When interacting with a producer, buyers have options; they may purchase food once its harvested, at a farmers market, roadside stand or at a retailer.