Is 14 too young to get into coffee? It wasn’t for Randall Echevarria. He grew up in Crescent City on the California/Oregon border, and the small town’s first coffee shop gave him his very first job. He started as a barista and moved up in the ranks over four years, his favorite part being the beverage development. Turns out, this high school gig was just warm-up.

The Sacramento region prides itself as the Farm-to-Fork capital, and the UC Davis World Food Center is looking to bolster that reputation by developing a thriving economic hub for innovation in food and agricultural technology.

The Center for Land-Based Learning launched the Urban Farm Program in 2014 on a city-owned lot and with seed funding from two local banks. Fiery Ginger uses land owned by the Washington Unified School District. Other farmers use private property, for four sites total, representing six separate farm businesses — with two more to be added by 2017

ExtraPlate puts homecooked meals on the map as an on-demand food marketplace that works like Uber or Lyft for hungry consumers.

Oblivion Comics & Coffee was selected from five finalists to win a grand prize package of business services valued at roughly $110,000. As the winners, Estaris and Benson will be given $10,000 in matching start-up capital to help open the doors of Oblivion.

You may not know them by name, but their successes have defined Sacramento’s culinary scene: Thanks to brothers and native Sacramentans Mason, Alan and Curtis Wong, the energy on a two-block spread of L Street comes to a rapid boil on game nights, weekends and holidays — that is to say, most nights of the year.

Oak Park’s Broadway throbs as bass bumps from one car and another’s engine belches. Someone honks their horn. Other cars buzz by well above the speed limit. This is urban living. But it doesn’t have to be. Thanks to Oak Park Sol, a newly-formed nonprofit serving as an urban land trust, this neighborhood is bringing nature back to its city-dwelling folks.

Within the past year alone, dozens of foodborne disease outbreaks have impacted the U.S. food supply, implicating all sorts of ingredients. Contaminated cucumbers have been blamed, along with tomatoes, cilantro, pork, turkey, tuna and raw milk. Cases have also occurred at the food-service level, often because employees failed to wash their hands.

Many wish their favorite places in California were deeply-held secrets. But there’s the hope that, given a little perspective, our current secrets can develop in a way that maintains the original character we fell in love with, without succumbing to the broad appeal forced by faceless investment. Right now, in Amador County, the Shenandoah Valley is at that postcard moment.

In Sacramento, school cafeterias don’t have the equipment or capacity to store and prepare fresh, local food. They’re designed mainly to warm frozen, processed food, some of which is full of additives and preservatives.