Celeste started The Conscious Kitchen at the age of 22. She began cooking regularly from recipe books at the age of ten, and hasn’t stopped since. While attending a social-justice focused high school, and later graduating with an Environmental & Agriculture-based geography degree from the University of Guelph, she became vegan and started diving into the world of locally and ecologically grown food. While in school, she spent her summers working on organic vegetable farms, learning about market gardening and no-till methods.

Over the past few years of running The Conscious Kitchen she’s gained experience and knowledge in everything from sales to marketing, to financial forecasting and efficient budgeting. And while she didn’t gain her skills from a fancy business school, she thinks the best education is through trial and error. Her favourite thing to help other small businesses is figuring out how to get the customers they want – and how to keep them coming back. Her goal is to see more small businesses develop deep connections with customers through direct-to-consumer sales.

Being a young, mixed-race and queer entrepreneur she found many programs and consultants she worked with didn’t understand the unique challenges that come with having a diverse identity. More diversity and representation in small business owners and the services that support them is what Celeste wants to start changing.

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