Buying with Purpose: Seattle’s Food Purchasing Initiative

Buying with Purpose is a City of Seattle initiative that helps food programs and local institutions make food purchasing decisions that reflect Seattle’s shared values. The initiative connects City departments, community partners, and food suppliers to strengthen how public dollars support a more healthy, equitable local food system.

New resource:  Buying With Purpose: Seattle’s Guide to Food Purchasing 

“Buying with purpose” means purchasing food that aligns with six Core Values identified through community and stakeholder engagement as part of updating Seattle’s Food Action Plan:

Why It Matters

Buying food that aligns with these values is a powerful way to invest in building more sustainable, equitable, and resilient food systems—while advancing multiple actions in the City of Seattle's Food Action Plan.

City Support

“Buying With Purpose: Seattle’s Guide to Food Purchasing” offers guidance to help City food programs and collaborators expand food purchases that align with Seattle’s Core Values. 

City of Seattle is also providing coordination, additional resources, and technical assistance to food access programs, community partners, and Seattle-area institutions to help them buy with purpose.

Coming soon: A Seattle Food Purchasing Toolkit, developed with the Center for Good Food Purchasing, will be released in fall 2025. The toolkit will include templates and tools based on the Core Values and strategies outlined in the Buying with Purpose report

To receive a link when it’s available, contact chris.iberle@seattle.gov.

Other Initiative Activities:

The City of Seattle is strengthening coordination between City-supported food programs and partners to increase sourcing from values-aligned food producers, suppliers, and farms. This work includes: 

• Convening a Values-Based Food Purchasing Work Group, facilitated by the Office of Sustainability & Environment, with staff from eight City food access programs. 
• Providing technical assistance and workshops for food program partners, institutional food service, and community organizations. 

City staff and community partners will continue to expand activities that help build Seattle’s values-aligned food supply chain.