Chef, author, and content creator Brad Leone is shining a spotlight on food system heroes through his YouTube series Local Legends. The show educates audiences about sustainable food and community-driven resilience.
In Local Legends, Leone travels across the United States and beyond to highlight individuals championing ethical sourcing, regenerative agriculture, and community-driven solutions. “Local Legends is a travel kind of food adventuring show,” Leone tells Food Tank. “We do more than just food, but it always ends up coming full circle back to… the importance of agriculture and food systems.”
Leone’s growing focus on agriculture is rooted in a belief that soil health lies at the heart of sustainability. “No matter what rabbit hole you go down, it always comes back to soil health and the industrialization of the food system.” Leone explains.
In each episode, Leone highlights a community hero or “local legend,” showcasing how they champion sustainability, community resilience, and local economies.
In a recent video, Leone visited Tablas Creek Vineyard in California to feature vineyard manager and “Local Legend” Neil Collins. The winery is the first in the world to receive Regenerative Organic Alliance Certification, emphasizing closed-loop systems that minimize external inputs and recycle waste into soil-boosting materials like compost and biochar.
“That was me showing up for two days and capturing, to the best of my ability, you know, 60 years of hard work and learning,” Leone reflects.
“When I go to these places, I’m learning, and I hope the viewers go on a ride with me to learn too,” Leone explains. “Hopefully, they’ll be visually stimulated, maybe even chuckle a few times or get inspired. But most importantly, they’ll learn.”
Previous episodes of Local Legends include collaborations with food heroes like Dan Giusti, the former Michelin-starred chef of NOMA in Copenhagen, who now leads Brigaid—an organization working with public schools to serve nutritious and delicious meals to students. Other episodes have followed kelp farmers, sheep herders, cranberry producers, coffee growers, and fishermen, people dedicated to creating exceptional food through sustainable methods.
Leone initially gained popularity with It’s Alive, a fermentation cooking series produced under his former employer, Bon Appétit. Since parting ways with the company, Leone has launched his own YouTube channel, producing content such as the cooking-focused Making It, the outdoors-centered Ramble On, and the people-driven Local Legends.
Leone says the new series is focused on “sharing different people’s experiences and seeing and learning the generational knowledge and the passion that people have put into growing turnips or cranberries or coffee and kind of demystifying [their work] and being able to shine light onto people.”
By centering episodes of Local Legends on people who produce food through organic, regenerative, traditional, and family-run methods, Leone hopes to “inspire people to get involved in whatever way they can, in their community, in life, to just care about where food comes from.” He encourages his audience to care about the ingredients they use while understanding the broader importance of how food is grown, raised, and harvested.
“It’s become so much more than just going to the farmers market or grocery store,” Leone explains. “It’s about really getting involved and being a part of it, to the best of your ability—being able to grow food or harvest food and meat, and being able to really dive deep into the experience and the education of the processing…it’s a love and almost poetic respect for ingredients.”
A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health reveals that social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram influence consumers toward more sustainable consumption habits. Another study by Kulandaivelu and co-authors underscores the role of social media in shaping food choices and nutrition among adolescents.
Leone encourages viewers to get involved in food systems “in any positive way possible–whether you cook more food for your family, or start a little garden, or just care about where your things come from.”
And Leone adds, “if things don’t change—especially in farming, harvesting, and agriculture—then we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot here,” he warns.
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Photo courtesy of Local Legends
