• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Custom Events
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • Send us a Tip
  • Advertise
  • Consulting
  • About
The Spoon
  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Advertise
  • About

Kroger Partners with Infarm to Grow Greens in Grocery Stores

by Chris Albrecht
November 19, 2019November 19, 2019Filed under:
  • Business of Food
  • Delivery & Commerce
  • Future of Grocery
  • Grocery
  • Modern Farmer
  • Smart Garden
  • Vertical Farming
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Kroger announced today that it has partnered with Berlin-based Infarm to install modular, indoor vertical farms in some of its grocery stores.

According to the press release, the deal will place Infarm units at 15 of Kroger’s QFC stores, starting with two locations this month in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington.

Infarm creates high-tech pods that can be installed in locations like grocery stores or restaurants. These pods use a combination of hydroponics and cloud-connected software to monitor growing elements like light, air, nutrients, etc. Right now, Infarm units can grow leafy greens like lettuce and a variety of herbs.

The promise of indoor vertical farms like Infarm’s is reducing the environmental footprint of produce by eliminating the need for transportation. This proximity also translates to fresher food for the consumer as it’s picked on-site.

That all sounds great, but as my colleague Jenn Marston wrote recently, the promise of vertical farming has yet to pay off:

As an industry, vertical farming has yet to prove itself as an environmentally and economically efficient piece of the agriculture system, and along with the hype are more and more stories about complications or outright closures of vertical farms. Already, a company called FarmedHere shut down in 2017, Plantagon went bankrupt in March of 2019, and just recently, MIT halted work on its controversial Open Agriculture Initiative project after reportedly exaggerating results of its vertical farming experiments.

Those disappointments, however, were around larger scale vertical farms. Perhaps Infarm, with its smaller, in-store approach can succeed where others have failed.

Infarm continues to, well plow ahead. The company raised a $100 million Series B round earlier this year, and announced a partnership to bring its vertical farm pods to Marks and Spencer stores in the U.K.

Bellevue and Kirkland aren’t that far from The Spoon HQ, so you can expect one of us to make the trip and pick some in-store produce soon.


Related

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
Tagged:
  • grocery
  • Infarm
  • Kroger
  • vertical farm

Post navigation

Previous Post SKS 2019: Disrupting Large Food Corporations from the Outside In
Next Post Pizza Party! Picnic Raises $5M for its Food Robotics Platform

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

The Spoon Podcast Network!

Feed your mind! Subscribe to one of our podcasts!

How ReShape is Using AI to Accelerate Biotech Research
How Eva Goulbourne Turned Her ‘Party Trick’ Into a Career Building Sustainable Food Systems
Combustion Acquires Recipe App Crouton
Next-Gen Fridge Startup Tomorrow Shuts Down
From Starday to Shiru to Givaudan, AI Is Now Tablestakes Across the Food Value Chain

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2025 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.