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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Gotham Greens

Gotham Greens Opens First California Greenhouse & Becomes B-Corp Certified

Gotham Greens operates greenhouses in New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, Illinois, and Colorado — a wide geographical range for a U.S. indoor farming company. Back in March, The Spoon reported on Gotham’s plans to open up growing operations in a new region: the West Coast.

Last week, Gotham officially opened the first phase of its new Davis, Calif. greenhouse. With the new facility, the company has cemented its title as the only nationwide controlled environment agriculture brand. Gotham also announced that it has become a Certified B Corporation™, reflecting the company’s emphasis on accountability and transparency.

Gotham Greens uses a climate-controlled, hydroponic system to grow salad greens and herbs. The company reports that its tech uses 95% less water and 97% less land to produce the same results as conventional farming.

Gotham Greens CEO Viraj Puri



The new California location will help Gotham to further expand its commercial footprint, reaching more retailers (including Whole Foods, Raley’s, and Sprouts Farmers Market) out west. “California is currently responsible for growing one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits, but has faced critical issues in the past years surrounding drought, food safety and worker welfare,” CEO and co-founder Viraj Puri told The Spoon via email. “Our approach is designed to cut down on food miles and bring our farms closer to you. Building greenhouses next to large urban populations and distributing our produce regionally allows us to reduce transportation time, fuel consumption and associated carbon emissions.”

Generally speaking, Gotham seeks out greenhouse locations that offer short delivery routes to retail locations. Aside from slashing emissions, the company’s regional hub model helps to cut transportation costs (one of the reasons why Gotham’s produce has achieved price parity with equivalent products).

“We’re also committed to adaptive reuse projects –– helping revitalize urban communities by transforming otherwise underutilized real estate into productive agriculture,” Puri said. The company built its Baltimore, Md. greenhouse on the site of a defunct steel mill; its Providence, R.I. greenhouse site was once home to a General Electric lighting factory.

Gotham purchased the land for its newest greenhouse from the University of California Davis. Puri said that the facility will help the company to step up its partnership with the university system. Gotham is a member of the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources’ new controlled environment agriculture consortium, which is exploring crop optimization for indoor farming, automation and artificial intelligence in growing systems, and other topics.

In achieving Certified B Corporation™ status, Gotham has also committed itself to standards of social and environmental performance. The company already relies primarily on sunlight and renewables to power its greenhouses, and has plans to both cut its electricity use and reduce its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emission intensity by 5% by the end of 2024. According to Puri, the company’s investments in automation technology and LEDs will be key to achieving that goal.

In the next few years, Puri said, Gotham will also focus on expanding to more U.S. states and increasing operational capacity at existing greenhouses. The company will also seek out new partnerships with retailers to create salad dressings, dips, cooking sauces, and other products with Gotham Greens. (The company recently introduced a pesto sauce in Purple Carrot meal kits.)

So we’re sure to see Gotham expand and evolve in several different ways in the coming year. It’ll be particularly interesting to see what innovations the company’s partnership with the University of California might unlock, both in terms of building better indoor farming tech and advancing the agricultural workforce of the future.

Gotham Greens Heads West, Partners With University of California-Davis to Grow Better Greens

NYC-based Gotham Greens today announced its plans to expand its controlled ag operations to the West Coast with a 10-acre greenhouse in Solano County, California. The forthcoming facility will be located near the University of California-Davis, with whom Gotham will collaborate on future greenhouse research and innovation. 

Gotham, which currently operates greenhouses in New York, Illinois, Colorado, Rhode Island, and Maryland, raised $87 million at the end of 2020, part of which the company said would go towards expansion.

The California greenhouse is expected to open in 2021 and, like other Gotham facilities, will grow leafy greens that will then be sold to retailers and foodservice businesses. Having a facility on the West Coast will increase the number of potential customer for Gotham, which supplies its greens to local markets rather than shipping them across the country. Not including the California facility, Gotham’s farms serve about 40 states. Within those, the company has partnerships with Albertsons, Whole Foods, Target, and other major grocery retailers, as well as e-commerce deals with AmazonFresh, FreshDirect, and Peapod.

Gotham also uses a good deal of tech to control the various growing environments of its greenhouses (light, temperature, humidity), and to automate certain repetitive tasks. The partnership with UC Davis is partially meant to advance research and development in this area. “The new greenhouse facility enables opportunities for Gotham Greens and the University of California system to collaborate on research and innovation focused on advancing the science, workforce, technology and profitability of indoor agriculture globally,” Gotham said in a statement.

The company’s expansion comes at a time when tech-powered greenhouses are increasing in both size and numbers. Earlier this year, AppHarvest went public and Little Leaf Farms raised $90 million to expand its number of greenhouse. Revol Greens did the same in September of 2020 with a $68 million fundraise. Not all of these greenhouse operations share territory yet, but at the rate of these expansions, they may well do so in the near future.

Gotham Greens has raised a total of $130 million to date. 

Gotham Greens Raises $87M for Its High-Tech Greenhouse Network

Indoor agriculture company Gotham Greens has raised $87 million in new equity and debt capital, according to a press release from the company. The fundraise includes Gotham Greens’ recent Series D round, which was led by Manna Tree with participation from The Silverman Group and existing investors, and brings the company’s total funding to $130 million.

Gotham Greens operates a network of high-tech greenhouses across the U.S. These controlled-environment farms use hydroponics as well as a good deal of automation software to grow leafy greens and herbs.

In today’s press release, Gotham Greens said it planned to use the new funds to expand to increase the operational capacity of its farms, develop new products, and expand to more locations around the U.S. The company currently operates its high-tech greenhouses in Brooklyn, Queens, and other areas of the country. Those locations collectively serve over 40 states, according to Gotham Greens. 

The newest additions to those farming locations include facilities in Providence, Rhode Island, as well as Chicago, Denver, and Baltimore, all of which Gotham Greens opened this year. The company said that through these new locations it has doubled its capacity. 

This latest fundraise comes at a time when controlled-environment ag companies are seeing more investment dollars flow their way than ever before, particularly when it comes to large-scale commercial farms like those of Gotham Greens. In August, AppHarvest raised $28 million for its own high-tech greenhouse network, news that was quickly followed by Plenty’s $140 million fundraise and BrightFarms’ $100 million Series E round. 

These investment dollars aren’t too surprising when you consider the many flaws in the food supply chain highlighted by the pandemic-induced disruptions earlier this year. Demand for more locally grown food is up, and it is expected to last long after COVID-19 is under control. 

At the same time, traditional agriculture’s environmental impact contributes to both climate change and global food security, according to the United Nations. Controlled-environment farms such as those of Gotham Greens, Plenty, and others are one solution to helping stave off some of the more catastrophic consequences of climate change by altering the way we produce and get our food.

Iron Ox Raises $20M Series B for More Robotic Greenhouses

Ag tech company Iron Ox, best known for its greenhouses powered by robotics and AI, announced this week it has raised a $20 million Series B round. The round was led by Pathbreak Ventures with participation from Amplify Partners, At One Ventures, Crosslink Capital, , ENIAC Ventures, R7 Partners, and Tuesday Ventures. Iron Ox’s total funding to-date including this round is $45 million.   

In addition to the funding news, Iron Ox also announced a new farming facility in California, this one in Gilroy. Like the company’s first greenhouse, which is located in San Carlos and opened in 2018, the Gilroy facility will use a hydroponic grow system manned not by humans but by a large mobile machine equipped with robotic grippers. The machine plants, harvests, and moves the heavy grow trays around as needed, while machine learning and computer vision systems monitor plant growth. Humans aren’t completely out of the equation, though: the system still needs them to prune and inspect plants. 

Unlike many other indoor farming operations, Iron Ox does not use LED lights, but instead relies on good ol’ fashioned sunlight for plant growth. For now, the farms grow the standard mixture of leafy greens and herbs. The new Gilroy farm will sell these greens to Whole Foods and Bianchinis markets in California. 

Some of the benefits high-tech greenhouses like those of Iron Ox bring include more efficient use of space and the ability to serve customers (the ones that can afford Whole Foods, at least) locally. Iron Ox also says it uses less water than traditional farming as well as less energy. 

The company joins AppHarvest, Lufa Farms, and Gotham Greens in making recent headlines around new developments and investments in large-scale, high-tech greenhouse farming.

Lufa Farms Unveils the ‘World’s Largest Rooftop Greenhouse’

Lufa Farms hit a noteworthy milestone recently. The Montreal, Quebec-based agtech company opened its fourth and largest indoor farm, and is “the world’s largest rooftop farm” (h/t Modern Farmer).

For this new farm, which is located in the Saint-Laurent borough of Montreal, Lufa Farms says it has has doubled its production capacity for fresh vegetables, adding 163,800 square feet for a total of 300,000 square feet of growing space. 

The new facility started full production early in August of this year and, according to the official press release that came out at the end of last week, now yields 25,000 pounds of produce each week. The greenhouse grows 10 varieties of tomato and 3 varieties of eggplant.

Since its inception in 2009, Lufa has been fine-tuning its process around farming on commercial rooftops. That means it doesn’t use new any new farmland in order to grow crops, which is an important point in any discussion about sustainable farming. The greenhouses use an irrigation system that recirculates water and what it calls “the passive energy savings of simply being on an urban rooftop.” 

That urban setting also means produce is closer to the consumers buying it. To that end, Lufa has a subscription service that provides customers with a weekly basket of produce in addition to an online farmer’s market where the company sells its crops as well as food items from partner food producers. Users can either have their goods delivered to their own doorstep for a $5 fee or designate one of Lufa’s pickup points nearby. 

More and more urban greenhouses are cropping up as the food industry looks to supplement — though not necessarily replace — more traditional forms of agriculture. Gotham Greens is another notable player in this space, having recently opened its latest high-tech greenhouse, a 100,000 square-foot space in Baltimore earlier this year. Element farms uses the greenhouse format to grow spinach, and in Morehead, KY, AppHarvest is building out a massive facility that will provide produce and employment to the surrounding Appalachia area.

For its part, Lufa said it’s seen a surge in popularity for its own greens thanks to the pandemic. In response, Lufa launched a seven-day service, tripled its home delivery capacity, and added new local markets as well as team members. No one is sure what direction the pandemic will next turn in, though given its recent developments, Lufa seems well-poised to weather the uncertainty.

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.

Gotham Greens Makes Moves Into New England With Another High-tech Vertical Farm

Brooklyn, NY-based agtech company Gotham Greens marked its first move into the New England region today with the grand opening and first harvest of a new high-tech farming facility in Providence, R.I.

The company said in a press release that its new 100,000 sq. ft. facility, formerly a General Electric lighting factory, will grow 6 million heads of lettuce annually. Gotham will supply those greens and herbs to retailers like Whole Foods, Star Market, and other regional grocery stores. 

Gotham, which was founded in 2009 and has raised $30.1 million to date, operates a network of greenhouses across the U.S. The company uses the hydroponic technique, which means crops grow in trays without soil and soak up nutrient-enriched water through their roots. Like a growing number of indoor farming operations, Gotham’s system is fairly automated, with software controlling the amount of light and nutrients crops receive as well as the temperature of the greenhouses. 

The Providence greenhouse had its ribbon-cutting ceremony today. The farm is Gotham’s first location in the New England area.

Gotham is just one of many companies who’ve lately announced large-scale indoor farming facilities that rely on high-tech systems to grow and harvest heads of lettuce. Though Plenty shelved its plans to build out a farm in the Seattle area, it did recently announce its intention for one in the middle of Los Angeles. Kalera broke ground on a massive facility outside Orlando, FL that will grow 5 million heads of lettuce annually. And this year, Square Roots partnered with Gordon Food Service to build vertical farms onsite at many of the latter’s North American distribution centers.

Gotham’s new facility joins its existing roster of farms, which includes three in the NYC area, two in the Midwest, and one in the Denver.