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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Modern Farmer

Gotham Greens Expands Its High-Tech Greenhouse Network to Baltimore

Indoor farming company Gotham Greens today announced the official opening of a new hydroponic greenhouse, this one outside Baltimore, Maryland. The 100,000-square-foot facility is the company’s seventh greenhouse in the U.S., and its first one to grow year-round produce, according to a press release from Gotham Greens. 

The launch of the Baltimore facility arrives on the heels of Gotham Greens’ first New England facility, which opened in Providence, Rhode Island at the very end of 2019. The company also operates locations in Brooklyn, Chicago, and Denver.

All of Gotham’s greenhouses use hydroponics, a method of growing plants without soil. Crops grow in trays (as opposed to the tower-like structure found in other hydroponic farms) and receive a constant stream of water enriched with nutrients that is soaked up by the plant roots. Proprietary software lets farms automate much of the plant monitoring and management, so that they can find the best “recipe” of temperature, humidity, and light levels needed for each crop.

Gotham Greens said in the press release that the new farm in Baltimore will grow “more than six million heads of lettuce annually,” which is roughly the same amount grown by other large-scale indoor farming operations, Kalera and Plenty among them. 

Millions of heads of greens grown throughout the year means a greater number of consumers around the country can access fresher produce harvested much more recently and closer to the store. But these warehouse-sized indoor farms are no longer the only indoor agtech operations supplying the consumer demand for local food. Companies like Freight Farms and Square Roots operate smaller farms housed inside shipping containers, some of which are located next door to major food distribution centers. Others, like InFarm, are going even more local by putting the farm in the grocery store.

There are also a number of efforts being made to bring indoor farming concepts right into the consumer home, though it’ll be a while before farms become standard kitchen appliances. Even when they do, it’s unlikely a consumer-focused farm from someone like LG would even compete directly with Gotham Greens, which serves businesses rather than consumers and grows produce in vastly larger quantities.

The new Gotham Greens farm in Baltimore will provide greens to restaurant and foodservice customers across 10 states in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern U.S.

Coop Denmark and InFarm Partner to Bring Vertical Farming to Supermarkets

Supermarket chain Coop Denmark announced plans this week to bring vertical farming its Irma stores via a partnership with Germany’s InFarm. The retailer says it plans to introduce InFarm’s technology to 35 stores over the next few months, following a successful pilot in 2019. 

Berlin-based InFarm is one of the many agtech startups out there now using vertical farms to shorten the supply chain between farmer and consumer. The company’s high-tech vertical farming pods can be installed inside locations like grocery stores or restaurants, and use a combination of hydroponics and software to in part automate the process of monitoring and managing crop growth. Like most hydroponic farms right now, InFarm currently grows leafy greens and herbs inside its pods. 

Placing vertical farms in stores also means customers get access to fresher greens, since they are harvested on site. In a press release, Søren Steffensen, Irma’s director, called vertical farming the “way of the future to grow vegetables. With this collaboration, we unite Irma’s goal of promoting the most sustainable forms of production and the best possible quality of taste.”

This isn’t the first time in the supermarket for InFarm. The company brought its high-tech pods to Marks & Spencer food stores in the UK last year, as well as to some Kroger outlets in the U.S. And InFarm isn’t the only company trying to grow leafy greens and herbs closer to where consumers shop for and eat their food. Square Roots has partnered with Gordon Food Service, one of the largest distributors in North America, to build its containerized vertical farms near Gordon distribution centers. And earlier this month, Freight Farms announced a partnership with Sodexo to bring vertical farming to U.S. schools and colleges. 

We’re likely a long ways off from the having vertical farms a regular part of every supermarket chain’s layout. But as we noted in our 2020 predictions at the beginning of the year, “putting the farm is right next to your table, or at least at your local grocery retailer, is becoming a popular strategy for providing healthier, more traceable greens to consumers,” and one we’ll see more of in the coming months.

Freight Farms Raises a $15M Series B Round for Its Vertical Farming Platform

Freight Farms announced today it has raised a $15 million series B round led by Ospraie Ag Science, according to a press release emailed to The Spoon. The round also saw participation from existing investor Spark Capital and brings Boston-based Freight Farms’ total funding thus far to $28 million.

When we checked in with Freight Farms last year, cofounder Brad McNamara said the company was “rearchitecting the whole concept of vertical farming.” Freight Farms was at the time making its farms, which are housed in shipping containers, more modular to accommodate a variety of crops as well as more efficient when it came to how much energy the LEDs on the farm use. Freight Farms launched its 320-sq-foot Greenery farm in 2019 that included these improvements as well as farmhand, the company’s IoT platform built in-house and used to monitor and manage the lifecycle of crops.

Since then, Freight Farms has expanded its reach to 44 U.S. states and 25 countries, and now serves a range of businesses and institutions, from small-business farmers to grocery retailers like Meijer and QSRs like Wendy’s.

Earlier this year, the company announced a partnership with foodservice and facilities management company Sodexo to bring vertical farms to K-12 schools and college campuses around the U.S. 

Freight Farms will use the new funds to further develop and advance the technology behind its farms. As mentioned above, this technology is built in-house and meant to be interoperable, which is a departure from a lot of other vertical farms, which often gather off-the-shelf components from various third-party manufacturers and string them together to create a system. While that method works, McNamara told me last year that it also comes with the risk of interoperability issues (the various pieces can’t “talk” to one another as easily) and can sometimes cost more to run. He also noted it’s easier to automate the entire farm when all tech is in house.

And since vertical farming as a whole has yet to prove itself as economically scalable on a large scale, we’re going to hear a lot more about automation in the coming months as Freight Farms and others develop new tools to try and bring the cost of farming down.    


Freight Farms and Sodexo Are Bringing Vertical Farming to U.S. Schools

Freight Farms, a major player in the world of containerized vertical farms, announced today a partnership with foodservice and facilities management company Sodexo. Together, the two aim to bring Freight Farms’ hydroponic vertical farms into school campuses across the U.S., according to a press release sent by Freight Farms.

In North America alone, Sodexo serves over 13,000 client sites, many of them school cafeterias and university dining halls. The new partnership means Boston-based Freight Farms will be able to implement its Greenery container farms in more locations. At the moment, the company has 35 of these farms set up at educational and corporate campuses. The Sodexo partnership will expand that number “rapidly,” according to the press release, as the two companies implement more farms at both K-12 schools and university campuses that are Sodexo customers. 

The 320-sq-foot Greenery farm uses hydroponics to grow leafy greens and herbs inside climate-controlled shipping containers. Users control watering and nutrient schedules and access data on their plants via the company’s proprietary Farmhand software, which can be accessed via the user’s smartphone. The idea is to equip growers with a turnkey offering they can flip on from anywhere in the world and use to grow food with relatively little hassle.

For schools in particular, that means outfitting students and teachers with not just freshly harvested food for the cafeteria but also potential new curriculum around technology, agriculture, and business, if students are allowed to work directly with the farms. Co-founder and CEO of Freight Farms Brad McNamara told me last year that the Greenery “allows us the opportunity to not only feed a demographic and teach them how to farm.”

Still, vertical farming has yet to prove itself in terms of scale and economics. Part of determining the success of the Freight Farms-Sodexo partnership will lie in getting more data on how well the vertical farms function in an institutional environment. Many vertical farms geared towards institutional levels of food production promise simple “plug in and grow” solutions. Not all of them deliver as promised.

And beyond basic functionality of the farms, we also need more information about whether or not its truly cost-effective to bring these farms into schools and cafeterias in place of greens transported across the country. Will the reduction in water usage and food waste translate into money saved for these institutions? Freight Farms noted in the press release that in some parts of the country, those using the Greenery can actually make their operations water positive. We don’t, however, have any numbers on how beneficial being water positive is to these organizations’ overall margins, and if it offsets, say, the electricity required to run the farms.  

This isn’t the first food-tech-focused initiative Sodexo has embarked on in the recent past. In 2019, the company partnered with Starship to bring wheeled food delivery robots to college campuses in the U.S. The company also launched an Impossible Burger menu at 1,500 of its U.S. locations.

Sodexo’s sheer reach (it’s a multi-national corporation with services all over the world) gives it a certain amount of influence over the educational sector’s meals many others wouldn’t have. If the partnership with Freight Farms can showcase both the health and economical benefits from hyper-local, hyper-traceable, longer-lasting greens onsite, it could open the door to more schools and institutions considering some form of indoor farming onsite.


Rise Gardens Is on a Mission to Make the Smart Farm Part of the Everyman’s Kitchen

One question we’ve asked for a while here at The Spoon is whether vertical farms will eventually make their way into the average consumer’s home. Versions of these farms self-contained, temperature controlled smart gardens have existed for years now, but they’ve historically gotten the most adoption among startups and independent food producers selling to local retailers.

Of late, however, a number of companies have come to market with indoor-farming devices built not for industrial-grade production but for the average person’s home or apartment. Among them is Rise Gardens, a Chicago-based startup that makes an indoor farming system that looks like a piece of furniture, takes minutes to set up, and can be controlled remotely with a smartphone app.

Rise’s product, among others, is a far cry from some of the at-home farming concepts appliance-makers like GE and LG showed off at CES this year as they unveiled fridge-sized products meant to be built right into the kitchen cabinetry. But it does the same job, and, arguably, in a cheaper, more user-friendly way.

The Chicago-based Rise has been hard at work for the last couple of years making prototypes of its indoor farming device, a standalone console that can grow greens year-round and is small enough to function as another piece of furniture inside someone’s house. The company started selling its product to the U.S. and Canada markets in August of 2019.

Like other consumer-grade hydroponic farms, Rise Gardens’ device is a self-contained system that grows leafy greens in a temperature-controlled environment, with much of the work automated by technology. “If you just use our device without the app, it might still be four or five hours [of work] per week. That’s why we created the app,” says Blondet. “What the app is doing is automating things on the back end that a farmer would do.”

That includes calculating temperature, nutrition and pH levels, as well as determining when and how much to water the plants. Were a user to do this manually, Blondet says, they would need to perform some relatively complicated mathematics to get this kind of information. Rise Gardens’ app works with a sensor (“kind of like a Fitbit but for plants”) to automate such calculations, so that a user simply gets notified when it’s time to re-up the water or nutrient supply, or harvest the plants.

Rise Gardens’ farms are also modular in that they can be added to over time if a user wants more space to grow greens. The console itself, where the farm lives, resembles a standalone cabinet and is assembled by the user. A single-level farm (see below) is roughly the size of an entry-way table and comes with 12 plant pods. Users who want to grow more plants over time can add second and third levels, so that the largest system resembles a bookshelf.


Blondet notes that one of Rise Gardens’ goals in coming up with the product design was to have it fit inside a consumer’s home as easily as most other appliances. In other words, it’s just another piece of furniture, albeit a highly functional one. “We didn’t want to disrupt the home, we want to fit in it,” he says. He adds that an earlier version of the Rise Gardens farm more resembled a refrigerator. As LG showed us at CES this month, fridge-like designs are coming. But not yet. “Right now, no one is going to remodel their kitchen to fit this,” Blondet says of the fridge-style size and design. Rise chose its current design in part to appeal to consumers who would like to keep their greens hyper-local but can’t or won’t remodel a home just to do so.

Rise is one of many companies taking this approach, which seems to be fast becoming a good middle ground between a built-in appliance and a bag of lettuce from the grocery store. Aspara, n.thing’s Planty Cube, Seedo, Verdeat . . . the list goes on, and it’s getting lengthier each month. Another appliance-maker, Miele, is also getting involved in the space, having acquired German startup Agrilution and its wine-fridge-sized Plantcube product in 2019.

As more consumers get familiar with the concept, Blondet suggests a future in which these kinds of systems are ubiquitous, where seed packs can be bought at a grocery retailer like Whole Foods (right now they have to be special ordered), and every kitchen will be designed to accommodate some type of indoor farm. 

By way of example, he mentions the dishwasher. “Forty years ago, no one had a dishwasher. And then slowly but surely the dishwasher made its way into people’s lives,” he says. “I think [indoor farming] is the type of thing that will slowly but surely make its way into the design of the kitchen.”

Rockstart Closes €3M in Fresh Funding for Its First Agtech Cohort

Copenhagen, Denmark-based startup accelerator Rockstart announced this week it has closed a €3 million (~ $3,332,000 USD) funding round to support Rockstart AgriFood, its first-ever agtech-focused program. The round follows a €15 million raise from September 2019 that was led by the Danish state fund Vaekstfonden, Dutch investment firm De Hoge Dennen, and “unnamed high net worth individuals,” according to an article on AgFunder news. This latest round of investment comes from undisclosed investors from Europe. 

Nine-year-old Rockstart, who also operates programs for the energy and health sector, kicked off the first-ever cohort for its agtech (also called “agrifood”) program last September. Ten startups were chose to participate, including ChefMe, a platform for hiring private chefs, precision-farming company Vultus, and Beyond Leather Materials, which repurposes unused foods to make leather alternatives.

For all its programs, including AgriFood, Rockstart looks for growth-stage startups and focuses on getting them access to markets and capital. AgriFood, in particular, looks for startups innovating in the following areas: optimizing processes and practices, reducing and/or stopping food waste, and improving traceability.  

Chosen companies receive an initial €100,000 (€35,000 in cash and €65,000 in program costs in exchange for 6 percent equity via a convertible loan). Startups are also eligible for potential follow-on investments from Rockstart up to their Series B stage. The program provides all participants with networking and mentorship opportunities as well as access to the wider Rockstart community. 

The first cohort’s Demo Day, where companies showcase and pitch their products and services will take place on January 30 in Copenhagen. According to the Rockstart website, applications for the next cohort open in April 2020. 

LettUs Grow Raises $3.1M for Its Indoor Aeroponic Farming System

Bristol, UK-based agtech company LettUs Grow announced today it has raised £2.35 million (~$3.1 million USD) for its indoor aeroponic farming system, according to a press release. The round was led by Longwall Venture Partners LLP and brings LettUs Grow’s total funding to roughly $4.1 million.

The company, which was founded in 2015, has a patent-pending indoor farming system that relies on aeroponics and software to grow plants. Many vertical farms currently grow crops using hydroponic farming, where plants are rooted in a soilless medium and fed nutrient-enriched water. Aeroponics more or less lets the plant roots hang in the air, where they are periodically doused with a nutrient-enhanced mist.  

LettUs Grow’s system also has a software component, which automates the bulk of the farming work. Called Ostara, the software controls the entire farm, automating temperature and light control as well as when nutrients are delivered to plants. The system also collects data on crops from seed stage to harvest, which growers can analyze and use to improve their farm operations. The entire Ostara system can be controlled remotely.

Like a number of other indoor agtech systems coming to market, LettUs Grow’s farms are modular, which means businesses can add to them over time. Sizes start at 24 square meters (about 258 square feet). While they wouldn’t fit inside an apartment, they’re ideal candidates for unused indoor space at schools, hospitals, universities, and other institutions that would benefit from having an onsite farm.

A number of other indoor farming companies now use aeroponics to grow leafy greens, strawberries, and other crops. AeroFarms, based in New Jersey, is one of the most well-known entities out there. French startup Agricool and Denver, CO-based Altius Farms are a couple more among a growing number of examples.  

LettUs Grow has one growing facility running, which the company built in 2019. With the new funds, it will build out a second location, scale their existing technology, and develop new product lines to bring to market.

CES 2020: The Planty Cube Aims to Make Vertical Farming More Modular and Automated

While many questions remain around exactly what role vertical farming will play in the future of agriculture, there are a few things we can count on with certainty. These indoor farms will become more and more automated over time, as well as modular. They will also be more user-friendly to the average consumer or small business, something evident by the number of indoor farming offerings at CES 2020 this week. 

Among those offerings is the Planty Cube, a smart hydroponic indoor farm made by a Seoul, South Korea-based IoT company called n.thing. The grow system is modular enough to work in a number of different settings, from an apartment to a cafeteria, and automated enough that pretty much anyone can operate it.

Like other vertical farms out there, the Planty Cube environment contains rows and shelves of planters stacked inside a shipping container. Plants rely not on soil and human hands cultivating them, but instead on a computerized system that delivers the right “recipe” of nutrients, water, and light from LEDs to help photosynthesis. Humans have little involvement with the actual plants during the grow process. Most of the work on the farm, such as adjusting the LEDs, controlling temperature and humidity, and monitoring plant health, is done by the Planty Cube system, which uses sensors to collect data on the plants and can be controlled remotely by a smartphone.

Leo Kim, n.thing’s CEO, came up with the idea for the farm after creating an IoT-enabled smart pot called “Planty.” From there, the company developed the Planty Square, a modular system made up of multiple capsules called Pickcells, each roughly two inches in width, length, and depth, that contain the seeds of each plant. Users can connect multiple Squares (“like a Lego block,” says Kim) to grow larger crops, and enough of these put together make up the Planty Cube farm.

The Planty Cube system relies heavily on data from farming logs, which are fed back into a database known as the CUBE Cloud and analyzed with AI to help farmers determine optimal growing conditions for each crop. As the user adds more Squares to the farm with new and different crops, this real time, cloud-based system makes it easier for the user to manage the overall farm, even remotely.

While a number of companies now operate automated vertical farms that grow leafy greens, most of these (Kalera, Plenty, Intelligent Growth Systems) are better suited to large warehouse settings that produce millions of heads of lettuce. Planty Cube’s modular and user-friendly nature make it a more apt candidate for places like schools, hospital cafeterias, and university dining halls — all locations that would benefit from having freshly harvested greens onsite.

Planty Cube nabbed a Best of Innovation award for CES this year. If you’re currently milling about the show floor in Vegas, drop by n.thing’s booth to see the Planty Cube in action.

LG Will Unveil an Indoor Farm for the Consumer Kitchen at CES 2020

With CES right around the corner, the announcements are pouring in for new gadgets and products to be on display at the Las Vegas show, including those that will change the way we cook, eat, and think about our food. 

Appliance-maker LG is the latest. The company announced this week it will unveil a smart gardening appliance for the consumer kitchen at CES 2020, one that uses advanced lighting, temperature, and water control to let consumers grow greens year-round inside their kitchens.

The as-yet unnamed appliance takes many of the functions found in commercial-scale indoor farming and applies them to a device specifically made for the average consumer. Software, controlled via the user’s smartphone determines the precise “recipe” of LED lights, air, and water the plants need and when that recipe should change based on the time of day. The goal is to replicate “optimal outdoor conditions by precisely matching the temperature inside the insulated cabinet with the time of day,” according to the announcement from LG.

This kind of control means users can grow herbs and leafy greens year-round if they choose, and with considerably more ease than they would have with an outdoor garden. Not only does a controlled indoor cabinet mean no pests (or pesticides for that matter), the companion app basically offers a step-by-step guide each day for growing, monitoring, and harvesting plants. It’s not unlike the many guided cooking apps out there offering granular advice every step of the way so that experts and less experienced users alike can use the tool successfully. 

LG’s new appliance marks the company’s first foray into the indoor gardening space — and possibly a new trend for the future of the home kitchen. Up to now, smart indoor farms for consumers have been mostly standalone devices that don’t necessarily have any connection with the home’s main kitchen. From the pictures, LG’s appliance can be built right into the cabinetry and modular enough to fit many different kitchen formats. 

LG isn’t the only company exploring how to do this. At the beginning of December, appliance-maker Miele acquired the assets of Agrilution, whose Plantcube indoor vertical farm can be directly built into home kitchens.

It will likely be a long time before we see such devices become standard parts of all kitchens. That idea of building indoor farming into the design of the kitchen was a concept explored in depth at SKS 2019 this past October. It looks expensive, time consuming, and complex right now, but more major appliance-makers entering the space means we’re slowly but surely inching towards the day when the cost of such systems can come down and the average consumer might someday see at-home smart farming become a reality. 

Sitting Down to Dinner? Make Room for Satellite Statisticians

If you live in the US, it’s likely you’ll eat a meal that includes food that was inspected by the USDA when you sit down to dinner tonight. Some of the food on your plate may be certified organic. Some may have had its genome sequenced and been tracked from field to market. The involvement of these entities alone makes for a crowded table, but you’ll need to make room for quite a few more.

Those responsible for NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments aboard the Aqua and Terra satellites will need a place. The statisticians at the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Spatial Analysis Research Section who use the MODIS data from those instruments will also join you. And don’t forget the scientists at NOAA and the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) who work with data generated by the Aqua and Terra satellites. You’ll need a few seats for them, too.

Over the past decades, technology has reached aspects of our lives ranging from communication to medicine, entertainment to manufacturing. It’s of little surprise that tech has reached the food on your table in a big way during this past decade. In addition to the use of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) by the FDA to nip foodborne illness outbreaks in the bud, the FDA and NASA are adding another layer of oversight. Through NASS, they are combining satellite surveillance with statistical analysis to increase crop yields and better serve the interests of agriculture – and by extension, you as the consumer at the dinner table. The information available to farmers and those overseeing food-related government programs is used to increase crop yields and inform crop rotation schedules. It also makes it more likely that you will have a steady source of food for your plate.

Satellite Imagery to the Food on Your Plate

One way that farmers can improve their fortunes is by knowing how much competition they face before they plant a specific crop like potatoes. The USDA makes it possible for farmers and other stakeholders in agriculture, to see what is being grown across the country and in their region. The CropScape – Cropland Data Layer (CDL) data is available at no charge through the use of the CropScape NASS data portal. Those visiting the site can focus on regions and areas of greatest interest to them. Companies that market their products to farmers can also access this data through the portal, providing them with information about what types of products will be in demand during the growing season. Any of these parties can view layers on the map that show the different types of crops.

In addition to the images from MODIS, the information for the layers in the CropScape system comes from agricultural advisors, inspectors, and farmers who upload their data to the system. Because they have worked to identify the crops grown in each field and coders have worked to link the data from those reports to the pixel level on the map, an accurate and timely view of crops across the country is available. Historical data is also available to provide insight into which crops have done well in which regions in prior years.

By using algorithms designed to interpret the red, near-infrared and shortwave infrared of satellites capturing images from the land, the CropScape map can not only differentiate by crop, but also by the stage of crop development. The ability to use this technology to see what is growing successfully and what is not, on a national level, provides farmers with the information they require when deciding what to plant. The bottom line for consumers is a steady supply of produce, either in the form of what was expected in the market, like carrots, or an alternative crop.

For the farmer, this LandSat (Earth-observing) technology, also impacts routine decisions related to harvesting their crops. From the images, it is possible to view a specific area, such as a cranberry bog, to see something as small but significant as the peak harvest time for the cranberries in that bog. The use of this free source translates into valuable, actionable knowledge about when to gather that portion of his crop. It saves guesswork and time, allowing them to plan for the best use of resources related to bringing the crop to market.

Recognizing Drought Before it’s Too Late

Some weather events, like torrential rains or hurricanes, are obviously damaging to crop yields. When one of these hits an area, the effect on crops is immediate. With flooding, seedlings don’t root and more mature crops suffer greatly. The weather and winds from hurricanes do significant damage to crops, silos, and equipment. Accurate forecasts can help farmers delay planting if severe weather is on the way, but once the crops are in and growing, preventive measures can only do so much. 

Severe drought is equally damaging. In severe conditions, crops suffer and yields decline, causing shortages at the market along with higher prices. Unlike rainfall or the atmospheric weather conditions that cause hurricanes, droughts are the result of several factors on the ground in addition to the lack of precipitation. There is another type of drought that is every bit as damaging to crop yields. These “Flash Droughts” can damage crops in a matter of weeks.

Farmers needed a method for detecting flash drought conditions before it was too late to save the crop. NOAA took the lead in the development of the Evaporative Stress Index (ESI). This index gives farmers access to data, at no cost, about the state of moisture in their area. Farmers and other stakeholders can not only view drought information on a national map, but they can also input coordinates and see what the estimates are for conditions in their specific area. The index assesses conditions without precipitation, providing a look at how crops are doing with the irrigation provided by the farmer. For farmers, this information can be used to ensure they have a successful season. For you, it’s a matter of ensuring that the agricultural sector is able to meet consumer needs.

The next time you sit down to dinner, the meal you eat will have been brought to you through the efforts of NASA, NASS, the USDA, NOAA, and the FDA, along with teams of farmers, scientists, analysts, and engineers.

Seeing Stress from Space

What is the Landsat satellite program and why is it important?

National Drought Mitigation Center

USDA Estimation of Crop Production

USDA Ag Data Commons

When Drought Threatens Crops

Newsletter: What Comes Next for Ghost Kitchens? Plus, Third-party Delivery and At-home Agtech

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I’m not gonna lie: putting together our market map on ghost kitchens was hard. The concept as we know it is relatively new, and the lines between the different categories of ghost kitchen might be easy enough to draw in a graphic but are never as solid in real life. For example, CloudKitchens provides kitchen space but it’s also a network of virtual restaurants. Starbucks runs its own kitchens but relies on Alibaba’s Heme supermarkets to provide the space. Grubhub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash deliver food but also operate in other areas of the stack.

That overlap, though, is a big part of what makes this area of the restaurant industry such an interesting one to watch. Not only is the 2019 ghost kitchen redefining the restaurant experience as we know it, it’s also redefining the way restaurants operate, the technology they use to do that, and even what their menus offer in any given area. Fat Brands, for example, uses Fatburger locations on the West Coast to also fulfill delivery-only orders for sister brands that would normally only be available to customers in the East. 

As we head into the next year, we can expect the overlap of companies and categories to increase as more multi-unit chains try their hand at ghost kitchens, more kitchen infrastructure providers try out their own virtual restaurants, and literal mobility (kitchens on wheels) becomes more commonplace. 

Head over to The Spoon for more predictions on what comes next for ghost kitchens (RIP POS?) and to download the map. And since this is such a nascent market that changes weekly, expect more iterations of this map to hit your inbox in the future.

Third-party delivery is staying put. Sort of.
It’s no secret that consumer appetite for delivery is driving the growth of off-premises orders. And while they may be controversial, third-party services like DoorDash and Postmates are a big part of this growth.

The biggest part, by some accounts. This week, CBRE Group noted in a new report that 70 percent of delivery orders will come from third parties by 2022. That’s a no-brainer. These services provide the tech infrastructure, logistics, and actual drivers that are often too expensive for restaurants to operate on their own. Third-party delivery may be expensive for restaurants and paddling through a sea of bad press lately, but it is in many ways necessary for businesses who want (need, actually) to offer off-premises ordering for customers. 

Like ghost kitchens, this is a messy, fast-changing market whose model will continue to evolve as restaurants adopt hybrid strategies and new laws are passed regulating how these companies do business.  

At-home vertical farms: Big convenience or big expense?
If you still prefer the old-fashioned method of actually cooking food for yourself, Miele’s latest news will be of some interest. As my colleague Chris Albrecht reported this week, the German appliance-maker known for everything from washing machines to coffee systems has acquired Agrilution, a Munich, Germany-based agtech startup known for its Plantcube indoor vertical farm. 

As Chris notes, the Plantcube looks like one of those at-home wine fridges, and like any vertical farm uses software to regulate temperature, climate, water levels, and nutrient delivery to crops. The system grows a variety of leafy greens and fits right inside your existing kitchen infrastructure. 

Question is, Do people want vertical farms built into their kitchens?

Potentially.

No, setting up a grow system in your home is not as convenient as buying a bag of kale from the store. For those so inclined, though, an at-home vertical farm like Agrilution’s means being able to pick fresh, better tasting ones right out of their own cabinetry. Those living in dense urban areas, where the fire escape is the closest thing to outdoor space, could have an actual at-home garden.

First, though, we have to get over the cost hurdle. Right now, price points of various at-home vertical farming systems go for anywhere between roughly $500 (Ponix Systems) and $3,000-plus (Miele). What we don’t have is abundant data on how much these farms cost consumers in terms of electricity, water, or repairs if the system breaks down. There is also the issue of space. Agrilution’s Plantcube may fit nicely into the under-counter space of a single-family home in Nashville. Your average New York apartment, on the other hand, would be hard-pressed to accommodate one.

Still, it’s a great sign that a major appliance-maker like Miele is showing interest in getting cabinet-to-table greens to more homes in the future.

Until next time,

Jenn

Miele Acquires Consumer Indoor Vertical Farm Company Agrilution

Miele announced today that it has acquired the assets of the German company, Agrilution, makers of the Plantcube indoor vertical farm. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Agrilution’s Plantcubes look like wine fridges that are meant to be built directly into home kitchens. The automated systems regulate the lighting, climate, and water levels plants receive, all key parts of delivering the right “recipe” of nutrients to crops grown in vertical farms. Plantcubes cost €2,979 (~$3,300 USD) and are capable of growing a number of different greens including kale, leaf lettuce, basil and more.

According to the press announcement, Miele came on board after Agrilution failed to raise more financing and filed for insolvency on Dec. 1. Agrilution will become a subsidiary of Miele, and almost all of Agrilution’s employees will be transferred over to Miele.

Having an in-kitchen grow system makes a lot of sense for people wanting to reduce their carbon footprint as well as have more transparency into and control over the food that they eat. These small farms could be especially appealing to those that don’t have the space, inclination or talent to grow their greens outside. In fact, building hydroponic grow systems directly into cabinets was a trend predicted during a panel on the future of the kitchen at our recent Smart Kitchen Summit.

The acquisition of Agrilution also seems like a smart play for Miele. Since Agrilution was in insolvency, the assets for the company probably weren’t that expensive. Miele has also shown that it isn’t afraid to shake up the traditional kitchen with new appliances like its solid state RF oven, its own meal delivery service, and investments in digital recipe startups like Plant Jammer and KptnCook.

A big player like Miele could also help push indoor farming systems more into the mainstream. Miele has the market muscle other in-home farming startups like Seedo, SproutsIO, or Ponix just can’t match. The only question remains is whether in a world of on-demand food delivery, people will have the patience to grow their own greens.