S3E28: Robert Laing - Farms of the Future

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that's spelled C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-D.com,

or click the link in the show notes. Design is often about

defining the problem that you want to solve rather than

rushing ahead and doing like the perfect sketch or something. Discovering

like, what are we really trying to do here? And really trying to think through

in a thoughtful way is something that designers do really well.

And I really enjoy that part of the practice.

Welcome to the Vertical Farming Podcast, weekly conversations

with fascinating CEOs, founders, and agtech

visionaries. Join us every week as we dive deep into the

world of vertical farming with your host, Harry Duran.

Vertical Farming Podcast, Season 3. Welcome back. If this is your first time listening,

I'm sure you're in the right place. This is the show where we interview fascinating

CEOs and founders of the leading vertical farming companies from around the

world. I'm your host, Harry Duran. In case you missed last week's

episode, we kicked it off with Alison Cough, founder of Artemis. A

highly engaging conversation, and I couldn't think of a better

way to kick off the season. Love Allison's energy. This week,

again, we continue with Robert Lang, founder and CEO at Farm.One.

Farm.One is an organization that has reinvented specialty farming and now supplies

some of the best chefs in New York. In this episode, we

discuss Rob's background in design and how Rob's entrepreneurial drive led him to launch

Farm.One. He shares the strategic decision to pursue higher-end restaurants as

customers and talks about how the pandemic impacted his business and how he

was able to pivot to different business models to combat those challenges. Rob

shares the work he and his organization are doing to help underrepresented groups, as well

as the work they're doing with Google to address sustainability and the

topic of plastic waste, which is near and dear to my heart. This episode is

also brought to you by the Vertical Farming Weekly newsletter. Each week, our team

member Daniel Dre scours the ends of the earth to bring you the latest and

greatest news in the world of vertical farming. Sign up today at

verticalfarmingweekly.com. Remember, if you enjoyed this episode

or past episodes, I'd love it if you leave a rating and a review at

ratethispodcast.com/vfp. I'd love to read

yours out next. Something we're testing out is a new social

chat tool called Bunches. We've created a page specifically

for the vertical farming community at bunches.chat/verticalfarming.

It's something brand new, still experimental, but I'm looking to see if there's

a way to engage with you As loyal listeners of the show. We'll

have a link in the show notes as well. Okay, let's get into this conversation

with Rob.

So Rob Lang, CEO and founder of Form 1, thank you for joining me

on the Vertical Farming Podcast. Thanks. Great to be here. Good to chat with you.

So, we're timestamping this February 2021. Where's home for you

right now? I'm in New York City. I've been here for the past,

well, 5 years now, actually. Yeah. So, I'm in the

financial district, which is, let's say, 15 blocks

from the farm. So, I can walk there every day. And where did you

come from before that? Well, my road is a little bit of a long,

complicated one. I was born in Australia. My parents are

British. We moved back to the UK and then we moved back to Australia.

Australia, and then back to the UK when I was 10. And that was

one of the worst sort of moments of my life, going from living

near the beach in Australia to moving to the UK, I

think in October when it started to get dark about— it

felt like it got dark about 3:00 PM at that point. So

yeah, and then moved on a few years later to Belgium for high school

and then back to UK for college. I lived in Japan for 8

years between, so I'm a bit of all over the place, but I moved here

in early 2016 and have been here since. And New

York is sort of home, but I don't know, I don't really have a home,

but hey, I'm here. How did that color your ability to connect

with and make or sustain friendships? Oh

man, I mean, you could have a whole therapy session about that, I suppose. But

I think that I have been lucky enough to sort of live

in and experience a lot of different cultures. And so for me,

having friends who are from, I don't know, Germany or

Japan or the US or whatever is quite a normal thing. And so I think

it does sort of allow me to connect with people a little bit quicker maybe

in that respect. But on the other hand, you know, I have friends who are

sort of long-term friends living in the UK who I sort of get to see

once every 2 years or something sometimes. And so, you know,

it's frustrating and I do sort of look longingly at

people who have grown up in a small town and stayed with their friends

forever and only need to pop around the corner to see people. So

there's mixed blessings, but I survive. Do you have

an appreciation for the variety of the different cultures that

you can find in a city like New York, having experienced them all firsthand?

Oh, yeah, it's great. It would be hard to imagine

living somewhere that didn't have that kind of variation and lots

of different people. I think New York is one of those global cities where

You've got people who've, you know, come to live here. You've got people

who've moved from the US. You know, my fiancée Gabby, she's from

Arkansas via Virginia. You know, she's been here for 10

years, but everybody, you know, different voices on the street and stuff. So,

so I love that. And I think that it also reflects itself in the

cuisine, right? You have, you know, many dozens and dozens of different cuisines

represented in New York City. And it's the kind of place where if you

live here or if you're a tourist, you kind of expect to be able to

get whatever you want whenever you want it. If you want a burrito

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00 AM on a Thursday or you want

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sushi in the morning on a Tuesday, you can get

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it. And that sort of impacts, of course,

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food systems and how we get all this food to New York. There's lots of

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implications, but it's one of these sort of global cities. Yeah, I

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really enjoy that. How important is food and

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eating out to you? Well, food in general is really

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important. I don't know what it's been like for you, but

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growing up in my family, just over the past— I

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mean, I'm 41, so over the past 41 years,

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if you look at what we were eating as a family when I was growing

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up in the '80s, it wasn't a bad diet in any

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way. I don't think it was unhealthy, but it was somewhat limited. If you look

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at the ingredients and the cuisines, And I remember like we would

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eat Chinese food sometimes, but Chinese was just

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Chinese, you know, it wasn't like Sichuan or something else,

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you know. And then we would eat Indian food occasionally, but

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that might be it. And it was really, it took until I was

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probably about 15, 16 before I had Thai food,

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you know. And if you contrast that to now, like fast

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forward another 20 years or so. My family will eat all kinds of

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things and what we cook as a family is very varied.

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And also, the sort of proportions of different things. We're very

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vegetable-forward as a family and I'm fully plant-based and stuff.

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So just that sort of diversity of ingredients has changed massively.

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And food has also sort of been an important

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catalyst for change in my life in a way. When I was living

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in Japan before, I was running a completely

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different company. I was running a translation technology company. And I was

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like many startup founders, I was working too

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much and eating junk food to kind of fuel that work.

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And there was a time when I was— this sounds so insane— I was drinking

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like 3 cans of Coke a day to kind of stay awake.

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And I was eating like whatever, you know, people think that

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Japanese food is always healthy. It's not. There's plenty of junk food in Japan.

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And so I was kind eating junk food. And I just got to this stage

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where I was a little bit overweight and I was getting a little bit

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sick and I was traveling a lot for business and I was getting sick often

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as I traveled. And one day I sort of decided like, oh, I've kind of

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had enough. And I came

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onto various different books, but a couple of books that just really

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changed the way I thought about food. And I adopted a really,

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really predominantly whole plant food diet. And I lost

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a lot of weight. I lost like 40 pounds in about 3 months or so,

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which is pretty— is a lot, you know. And that sort of made me

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realize how powerful food is, you know. And it was one of those sort of

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learning moments when you're like in your early 30s. A lot of people go

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through this thing where they discover like, oh, I can't just eat whatever I want.

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Drive-throughs and fast food. Yeah, yeah. Or even,

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I don't know, just heavy food. And And so I changed that

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completely. And then a couple of years later, when I left Japan, I sort of

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had a, you know, a pretty tough time because I sort of left

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my company, I left a long-term relationship, and I didn't know what to do. But

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I knew I wanted to do something in food. And so I took culinary classes,

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plant-based culinary classes. One of them was in Thailand, one was in LA,

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and they were like month-long courses. And that's where I really

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learned how to think a bit— I'm not a chef, but how to think more

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like a chef and how to, you know, think about ingredients and,

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and going to farmers markets. And going to farmers markets in Thailand is amazing,

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right? The range of ingredients and just the way things are presented even

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is amazing. And so, so yeah, I knew at that point like, oh,

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this is really interesting and I want to do more in this. And that's

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sort of one of the things that led to, you know, starting Farm.One. But,

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and so food Yeah, like a long story short, food is a

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huge thing in my life. And, you know, obviously over the

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past year, eating out has not been such a big thing, but I think

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that it certainly will be again. And I think I'm not the only

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one who's, you know, really excited about the prospect of being able to go

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back to a great restaurant and having a great experience.

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And I miss that a lot, you know. So yeah, food is— in a way,

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food is everything. Yeah. What's a restaurant

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meal from in New York City that you miss? Oh, I mean,

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it obviously ranges from the not very fancy. There's a plant-based pizza

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restaurant that we really like called Double Zero, which is on the Lower East Side.

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It's, they happen to just do really good pizza and also very

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inventive toppings. And, and so, yeah, going there, I

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mean, it used to be like you go there even on a Tuesday night and

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it's ram-packed full of people, like you're elbow to elbow. And I, they've

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arranged the seating to eke out like the last

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square inch of profit out of that place. As they do in New York City,

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yeah. Yeah, so, you know, like, yeah, you're too close to people,

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but you can hear other people's conversations, you know, and also I

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know, or I did, I don't know who might be there now, but like I

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knew the servers pretty well, so they bring out extra things for us, and that

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was a really, really cool experience. And then obviously at the, like

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at the high end, You know, there's some amazing experiences in New York

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City, like Atera, which is the restaurant that Farm.One is

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underneath, but also Eleven Madison Park, I've been lucky

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enough to go to. And that, you know, both of those restaurants are sort of

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this thing where it's almost like, it's like opera rather than,

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you know, a meal in that you're there to be entertained.

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And it's almost like if you don't want to be entertained, you're going to have

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a bad time. You got to really open yourself up to that. You almost have

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to put yourself in the hands of the chef. Exactly,

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exactly. You have to allow this thing to happen. Yeah,

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I grew up in Yonkers, just outside the city, and I've lived in the East

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Village, I've lived in Brooklyn and Lower East Side. So

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home is currently Minneapolis, but I consider myself a New Yorker

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at heart. I left in 2014 and then went to the other

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coast, LA, for 4 years. So, okay, yeah, the 2

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coastal cities, big cities, and now I'm experiencing the Midwest.

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So we'll see how long that lasts. Yeah. Well, I was just listening

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actually about the skyways in Minneapolis and

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St. Paul and the convenience versus

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the political problems with them. I thought that was super interesting.

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It's funny because I've yet to experience them, but for the listener,

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it's a series of skyways that connect a lot of buildings downtown. So

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you could ostensibly cover blocks and blocks of downtown

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Minneapolis without Being outside in the cold, which just comes

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in handy when it drops to -19 Fahrenheit here.

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Yeah, that's not for me. That's not for me. It's bad enough in New York

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City when it's snowing and walking the dog. Anyway, this is not a

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podcast about walking dogs, but I think I do

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see why that stuff exists. And yeah, I think those amazing

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experiences in New York City are going to come back. And I think that,

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you know, there's so much creativity around food in New York City. And

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at the moment, it's a little like, sure, people are being creative about doing

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takeout and delivery and cocktails and stuff, but there's this experience

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element which is just missing. I'm so excited for that to come back

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later this year, I hope. Yeah. So speaking of creative,

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you studied design in university, and can

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you tell me, or do you recall, when that was something

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that was a spark in your brain or in your

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heart when you were a kid? Is it something that you were always passionate about?

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Yeah. I mean, yes. I was always someone who

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dressed up and I was always someone who drew things. And

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there was this funny moment. I was talking about moving back to the UK from

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Australia and going into a British school

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versus an Australian school. At the Australian school, everyone was encouraged to be

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themselves and be an individual, and the teachers were very welcoming and

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open. And then I got to the British school and

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it was very, almost felt like military.

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And I remember going to one of the first art classes

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and I thought the teacher had assigned homework. Well, he had assigned

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homework and I thought the assignment was to draw a

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butterfly. Yeah. And so in my mind, I was like, okay,

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I'm going to create this beautiful creature. And I just imagined a

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butterfly and I always had rainbow wings and all this kind of stuff. And

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when I got in, the next day to deliver this thing, I

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look around and I realize that everyone else has just copied a butterfly out of

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the book. You were supposed to make a copy. And

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so here am I with this sort of unicorn butterfly thing.

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And luckily the teacher was actually pretty nice about it. And he was like, well,

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look, this is a great effort. But it was a moment for me which sort

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of made me feel like, okay, I don't really fit in here.

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And this might not go well for me. But

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yeah, since then I studied design and I studied graphic

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design in the UK. So I went to art school, which I think is like,

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it really feels like a very different college experience to studying any other subject.

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And then, you know, when I left, I started a career as like a web

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designer, but I was always sort of interested in the tech side of things, like

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the programming side of things, as well as the design. And I guess

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through my career, I've tried to sort of have a little bit of a foot

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in both camps, you know, so engineering and just understanding how things work

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is a really, really important thing to me. And so, you know,

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throughout my career, starting companies, working with people who are kind of

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on top of technology, discovering new things, that's always been really important.

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But also, yeah, how things look. And I think the biggest

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thing about design that maybe people might not

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appreciate if they haven't had a design education is that design is

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often about defining the problem that you want to

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solve. Rather than rushing ahead and doing like the perfect sketch

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or something. Discovering like, what are we really trying to do here? And really

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trying to think through in a thoughtful way is something that

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designers do really well. And I really enjoy that part of the practice, like being

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okay with thinking through something a little bit longer, a little bit more

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thoughtfully. That's what design is about. And I hope I bring

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that to what I do every day. That's certainly an aspiration.

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Was there always an entrepreneurial streak running through your projects?

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Yeah. So in college, I did the typical thing of the first year in college,

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I did nothing really. Watched a lot of daytime TV, none of which

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I can recommend to anyone. But in the second year, I

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started to specialize in film and actually got together with a group of other

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students. We created this film festival, which at the time, I mean,

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this is like 2001 or something. So we were getting

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VHS tapes, MiniDV tapes, if anyone even

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remembers those, and getting all these things in and reviewing all these submissions. And

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we put up this film festival in cinemas in London, and then we went to

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Berlin. We did one in Budapest. And we didn't really make a lot

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of money, but it was this thing where we got a lot of people actually

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pretty excited. And from then, graduated college, and

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one of my best friends actually started a startup,

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which at the time I thought, oh my God, why is he doing this? I'm

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making whatever, 10 times as much money as a freelancer.

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He's grinding away, not in a basement, but sort of in an

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apartment that might as well have been in a basement with 7 other folks. And

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for a couple of years, they didn't achieve anything. And

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then it sort of turned after the 3rd year. It was

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like, oh, wait a minute. Okay. And that company was Last.fm, which was

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sort of a precursor to Spotify. Yeah. Big success.

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And so I sort of had these entrepreneurial experiences of my own and

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also watched a bit from the sidelines. And then, yeah, moving to

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Japan, I sort of started a small web agency, and then that

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turned into starting an online translation service where we were using

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crowdsourcing and that kind of thing. And that was my first sort of proper

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startup, I guess. And yeah, and since then, of course,

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starting Farm.One, of course. And I think I sort of joke to people that I'm

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kind of unemployable. And so I kind of have to start

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jobs that employ me, otherwise no one else is going to do it. So

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let's fast forward now to the origin story for Farm.One. And you

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touched on it briefly when you were exploring the

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culinary arts world. So talk a little bit about that and how that

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became what would become Farm.One. Yeah. So

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I had just ended these culinary classes. I was sort of trying

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to decide where to live, to be honest. And I was really drawn to New

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York City. I had never actually lived in the US, and so I was

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sort of coming off the back of living in Japan for 8 years. There's

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really inspiring things about Japan, like the attention to detail, and the

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food is amazing, and the service aspect. And I think I learned a

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lot from that, but I wasn't ready to another startup

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in a country where I wasn't a native speaker. If there's

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anyone listening who's thinking of doing it, don't do it. It's just not worth it.

at 1 00:20:16

So yeah, thinking about New York City and then excitement about ingredients, and I was

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sort of excited about that Japanese attention to detail and the idea of

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ingredients. And I remember really randomly, like I saw,

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I mean, this sounds so lame, but I saw someone on TV in Japan growing

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in a vertical farm. Mm-hmm. In one of the sort of earliest, you know, like

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I think they actually converted quite a few sort of semiconductor facilities into like

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prototype vertical farms. And so I saw someone doing that. And I

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remember literally asking my friend Yoshi, like, oh, hey, have you

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seen those people growing lettuce like under LED lights? And he was like,

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yeah, I think I've seen that. And like, and so just randomly.

at 1 00:20:54

And so, But I was intrigued by this idea also that

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I had heard about Google and Microsoft and Facebook building server

at 1 00:21:02

farms in shipping containers and kind of dropping these

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things wherever they wanted them. And this idea of like a

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contained object that was a machine was interesting. And

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I thought, hey, wouldn't it be cool to kind of do that for chefs?

at 1 00:21:17

And I started to look into the tech. And this is like, luckily I

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had a bit of time. I had left my previous company and I had some

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time and space. And I was sort of at my parents' place in

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Melbourne talking about this general idea with my dad. And my dad's

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like a really smart guy, but also sort of an engineer tinkerer kind of person.

at 1 00:21:35

And we were kind of talking it through. And the more that I

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kind of looked at this idea and the more we sort of looked at the

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numbers, started to work on a spreadsheet, I was like, hmm,

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okay, it's really hard to make money on this kind of

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business. The moment you look at it, it's like, all right, the equipment costs a

at 1 00:21:52

lot of money. Running the lights costs money. Labor costs money. And

at 1 00:21:56

I couldn't really see how you make this business work if you're just growing

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leafy greens and selling them in the supermarket. And I

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still kind of have that worry. Still working on that one.

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Yeah. But what I did think was, okay, well,

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what if there's another sort of angle on this? What if we go higher price

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point, more specialty, higher margin? Is there something

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there? And the more I started to look at that, it was also starting to

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align more with my own interests. I was interested in these exotic

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ingredients. I was interested in chefs and restaurants and stuff.

at 1 00:22:29

And so the idea for Farm.One really came about by combining that sort of financial

at 1 00:22:33

analysis with also going like, okay, what am I really interested in doing? And

at 1 00:22:37

what do chefs maybe want? And looking at the culinary scene in New York,

at 1 00:22:41

it was pretty obvious that people were shipping in product from a long way away

at 1 00:22:45

and that chefs, the most discerning chefs, actually have

at 1 00:22:49

a tough time getting really high-quality product. Maybe there was an opening

at 1 00:22:53

there for Farm.One. To be honest, I was sort of also personally

at 1 00:22:56

kind of reacting a little bit to my previous experience at my previous

at 1 00:23:00

company, which was called Gengo, where everything was about trying to

at 1 00:23:04

be as big as possible. We raised VC money, we were trying to grow quickly.

at 1 00:23:08

And that's fine, nothing wrong with it in a way, but I

at 1 00:23:12

sort of was reacting against that. And I was kind of like, okay, what if

at 1 00:23:15

I do something really small? Is there a way to do something interesting that's small

at 1 00:23:19

and then grow that in a more organic— sorry, the

at 1 00:23:23

pun— but organic way, right? And so that's how it kind of started.

at 1 00:23:27

And really, I knew that, again, looking at the numbers more and more, I

at 1 00:23:30

was trying to just figure out what's the minimum viable farm.

at 1 00:23:35

And for context, I had looked at container farms. I didn't

at 1 00:23:39

find the economics of buying a container farm very attractive because

at 1 00:23:42

I felt like I was paying retail for something that I could put together wholesale.

at 1 00:23:47

And then looking at where it might be, all that kind of stuff, and I

at 1 00:23:51

wanted to sort of have this kind of cool aspect where chefs could kind of

at 1 00:23:54

come and visit and kind of treat it a little bit like their own

at 1 00:23:58

kitchen garden. That was the idea. If everybody could be lucky

at 1 00:24:02

like the French Laundry or other places which actually have

at 1 00:24:06

a farm right next door, if everyone in New York could have that privilege,

at 1 00:24:10

wouldn't it be great? And so I was in Australia at

at 1 00:24:13

this time, and one of the folks I decided to talk to was Henry Gordon

at 1 00:24:17

Smith, who is sort of the— I don't know how to describe him. He's like

at 1 00:24:20

the grand connector of vertical farming, right? He is, yeah. Yeah, he was

at 1 00:24:24

on season 1 of the show. Yeah, I'm sure, right? You couldn't do a podcast

at 1 00:24:28

about vertical farming without having Henry, right? And so he and his

at 1 00:24:32

team actually helped me a little bit early on and sort of helped

at 1 00:24:35

me find a space. So we found this cool space at ICE, the

at 1 00:24:39

culinary school, which was a very small, like

at 1 00:24:42

300-square-foot room. He found me our first

at 1 00:24:45

grower, which was David Goldstein, and he joined the team very early. And that was

at 1 00:24:49

great because David actually knew how how to grow stuff. Like, isn't that

at 1 00:24:52

useful? You know? Probably important skill set. Probably important. Yeah.

at 1 00:24:56

And also he sort of, because I had sort of, it's such a crazy thing,

at 1 00:25:00

but, you know, on my own in Australia without access to a lot of

at 1 00:25:03

hydroponic equipment, I had sort of designed a system,

at 1 00:25:07

but I didn't know anything about it. Like, I didn't know if it was going

at 1 00:25:10

to work or anything. And so working with his team, we were able to sort

at 1 00:25:12

of refine that and turn it into something that works. And that's how we started

at 1 00:25:16

in 2016. Literally almost 5 years today. It was

at 1 00:25:20

like back in the beginning of February started. And, you know,

at 1 00:25:24

the idea was really to not— to just test things out like really

at 1 00:25:27

small. Like, can we grow stuff that tastes good? Can we

at 1 00:25:31

get people excited about that flavor? Can we

at 1 00:25:35

sell it for a price that might possibly mean we make money?

at 1 00:25:39

Can we deliver it? That sort of stuff. You know, that was the basic stuff

at 1 00:25:43

that we wanted to try. Did you make a conscious effort to go

at 1 00:25:46

after a higher-end market and build those relationships with the

at 1 00:25:50

higher-end restaurants because they, you know, for all

at 1 00:25:54

intents and purposes, have a more discerning palate and obviously

at 1 00:25:57

can command higher prices for their menu items. And so it's, they

at 1 00:26:01

can appreciate the variety that you're producing. Yeah,

at 1 00:26:04

absolutely. So, you know, we were lucky enough in the culinary

at 1 00:26:08

school to have chefs like coming in and I

at 1 00:26:12

sort of didn't, I mean, it was ridiculous because like, I think

at 1 00:26:15

within a month of starting, we, there was an event

at 1 00:26:19

at the school where Thomas Keller came. So French Laundry.

at 1 00:26:23

Daniel Boulud, you know, Daniel, 3 Michelin stars,

at 1 00:26:27

Sean Hergatt, Bryce Shuman, all these guys who had

at 1 00:26:31

stars or had worked, you know, and they all came through on like the same

at 1 00:26:33

day. And so, but it was one of those things where you

at 1 00:26:37

sort of, you don't even know how to react because you're like, oh, okay, cool.

at 1 00:26:41

This person who's, some people consider like the best chef in the world is

at 1 00:26:44

coming to visit my farm. Wow. And luckily enough, like the first thing

at 1 00:26:48

that Daniel Boulud said was like, oh, wow, this is amazing. Oh, I've never seen

at 1 00:26:52

this before. And he was talking about Nepenthes nepenthes, which is a little sort of

at 1 00:26:56

mint-like variety, which has these pink flowers. It's very

at 1 00:27:00

minty. And Daniel Boulud was like, oh, I want to have this.

at 1 00:27:03

This is great. And so, sort of like the easiest sales

at 1 00:27:07

job in the world. If you can get someone to be so delighted with your

at 1 00:27:10

product, like, how fantastic is that? But yeah, it was

at 1 00:27:14

absolutely a desire to get people at the high end to

at 1 00:27:18

appreciate our stuff, partly because Well,

at 1 00:27:22

it's, you know, all chefs have different tastes and all that kind of thing,

at 1 00:27:26

but the people who are operating with the highest standards

at 1 00:27:30

kind of are desperate for really good, reliable ingredients. They're really,

at 1 00:27:34

it's their holy grail, you know? Yeah. And one of the

at 1 00:27:38

things about New York agriculture in contrast with California, I

at 1 00:27:41

would say, is that New York has amazing local food. And if you go

at 1 00:27:45

to the farmer's market, and I'm sure you've been like at Union Square or

at 1 00:27:49

other places around New York City, you'll get amazing food. But

at 1 00:27:53

that food in August versus February is

at 1 00:27:56

completely different. And so for chefs looking for

at 1 00:28:00

microgreens or looking for flowers, rare herbs, that kind of thing,

at 1 00:28:04

they've got an abundance in the summertime, which is actually

at 1 00:28:08

the least busy time of the year for high-end restaurants in New York

at 1 00:28:11

City, right? So they've got in the summertime when there aren't any customers, they got

at 1 00:28:14

the best produce. And then the winter when everyone wants to go out and eat,

at 1 00:28:17

they've got nothing. You know, so, so I thought there was something interesting there, an

at 1 00:28:21

opportunity there. And yes, and we wanted to obviously get some of the first

at 1 00:28:25

customers to be some of the best restaurants in the city. We managed to do

at 1 00:28:28

it, you know, somehow. Can you talk

at 1 00:28:32

about those early years, the growth of it, how you thought about

at 1 00:28:36

building the team and, you know, who was the right fit? Because, you

at 1 00:28:40

know, throughout the conversations I've had with founders, you know, they think they need a

at 1 00:28:44

certain skill set and hire that and then come to realize later that maybe that

at 1 00:28:47

wasn't the right one. So maybe in hindsight, as you look at those early years,

at 1 00:28:51

what would you do differently about how you grew the company? Oh man. I mean,

at 1 00:28:55

it's hard to know, isn't it? Because Farm.One

at 1 00:28:59

has been through a few different iterations where we've

at 1 00:29:03

sort of discovered what it is that we do.

at 1 00:29:07

I think in the early, early, early days, it's really important just to

at 1 00:29:10

have some people who are super passionate about what you're doing. Because,

at 1 00:29:14

you know, in the first few months, like, no one's making any money. And,

at 1 00:29:18

you know, literally with the farm, everyone's like hands on deck. Like, I was

at 1 00:29:22

harvesting, I was purging plants, I was like cleaning

at 1 00:29:25

stuff. I've certainly been through all of that. And we had a

at 1 00:29:29

couple of folks like David and some other folks who really just wanted to pitch

at 1 00:29:33

in. And I think that we're just so excited about this

at 1 00:29:37

tech, you know, as opposed to I think

at 1 00:29:41

it would've been a real mistake at that time to hire someone who had loads

at 1 00:29:44

of experience of doing stuff on a big scale and wasn't really used

at 1 00:29:48

to getting their hands dirty. Yeah. I mean, and in terms of

at 1 00:29:51

management and people and whether we should do things

at 1 00:29:54

differently or something, I was coming off an experience where I had just come

at 1 00:29:58

from running a team of, I think, 50 to 60

at 1 00:30:02

people or something. That was my company before. And so I was kind of used

at 1 00:30:05

to I don't know, having other people to do stuff. And

at 1 00:30:09

so coming into the farm where it's just me and one other

at 1 00:30:13

person and there's a massive leak or something, I think it was actually a good

at 1 00:30:16

experience for me. I think it was the right thing to do. I think some

at 1 00:30:19

of the mistakes that we might have made early on,

at 1 00:30:23

I think we underestimated how long it takes to do certain things.

at 1 00:30:27

And that was partly my just exuberance as a founder

at 1 00:30:31

and expectations. But after we had been at ICE for

at 1 00:30:35

a few months, we were offered the space at Atera, which is

at 1 00:30:39

a restaurant in Tribeca. It's one of the best restaurants in the city. And they

at 1 00:30:43

had a space underneath where the chef was like, hey, you could use this

at 1 00:30:46

space for your farm. And I said, yeah, let's do it. And that was

at 1 00:30:50

given to us pretty much for free. I mean, it's not free-free, but we pay

at 1 00:30:54

utilities and other stuff, but it's a pretty good deal. Yeah, that's the most expensive

at 1 00:30:58

zip code, I think, in the country. Maybe so. Yeah, pretty good.

at 1 00:31:02

But we thought, hey, we could get this farm up and running in like, I

at 1 00:31:06

don't know, 6 weeks or something, and we could do that with not enough

at 1 00:31:10

labor. And I remember just having a budget for that farm that was just

at 1 00:31:13

completely unrealistic. And so, I think we had

at 1 00:31:17

pretty good folks from the beginning, but I think our

at 1 00:31:21

expectations about budget and how quickly we might be able

at 1 00:31:25

to acquire customers and all that kind of stuff was a little bit out. And

at 1 00:31:28

that's it's really my responsibility. So yeah, going

at 1 00:31:32

into that new farm and realizing we had to raise money. So we

at 1 00:31:36

tried to— we successfully did a crowdfunding campaign

at 1 00:31:39

basically to pay for that new farm in Tribeca. And that

at 1 00:31:43

sort of, again, it was a good amount of money. It probably wasn't

at 1 00:31:47

enough. So those are some things that we've kind of been through. But yeah,

at 1 00:31:51

I think it's been a huge learning experience

at 1 00:31:55

certainly to get to this point and lots of ups and downs. But I think

at 1 00:31:58

that Like, we did successfully avoid a couple of the things that I

at 1 00:32:02

wanted to avoid. Like, I had seen vertical farming startups, like,

at 1 00:32:06

maybe build an initial farm that was huge and then get into trouble,

at 1 00:32:10

or, you know, go after something that's inherently unprofitable,

at 1 00:32:14

things like that. And so, yeah, we were able to avoid those kind of things,

at 1 00:32:18

but of course had our own issues. We'll

at 1 00:32:21

get into a couple of those in a minute, but talk about the response from

at 1 00:32:25

the restaurants and the chefs? Yeah, I mean, that's from the beginning.

at 1 00:32:29

I think one of the things that we've always had is we've had a high-quality

at 1 00:32:32

product that people get really excited about. And you can sort of get

at 1 00:32:36

away with other mistakes, right? If you, as long as you

at 1 00:32:40

have that, but if you don't have that, like, forget it, like no one's interested.

at 1 00:32:43

So yeah, we had really from the start, we started to

at 1 00:32:47

deliver some things to Danielle. We started to deliver

at 1 00:32:50

to I mean, there's quite a few restaurants that I might refer to that don't

at 1 00:32:54

exist anymore, unfortunately, because of what happened last year. But

at 1 00:32:58

places like La Turtle, a lot of smaller independent

at 1 00:33:01

restaurants that had a really good reputation, basically. And

at 1 00:33:05

the chefs would start to be excited about the fact that

at 1 00:33:09

we were growing to order. So we kind of did a lot of

at 1 00:33:13

stuff that's like the least scalable thing you could do. Yeah.

at 1 00:33:16

So we would grow to order. We would grow specific leaf

at 1 00:33:20

sizes for folks. And so they were looking for mizuna, and it had to

at 1 00:33:24

be a 1.5-inch leaf. And we were like, yeah, okay, we'll do

at 1 00:33:27

it. And so that led to us

at 1 00:33:32

making lots and lots of different growing recipes and timing

at 1 00:33:35

these crops very, very carefully, and also just having a much

at 1 00:33:39

closer dialogue with the chefs than they were used to having with a normal

at 1 00:33:43

vendor. And so, chefs are all different, but

at 1 00:33:47

consistently, They want to be listened to. They want to feel like

at 1 00:33:51

someone's got their back. They want to meet the person who's growing the produce.

at 1 00:33:55

And most of the time, it's just impossible for them to do that. And so

at 1 00:33:58

we were able to be this place where they could come and visit, they could

at 1 00:34:01

come and bring their team, and they could— if you imagine chefs

at 1 00:34:05

in New York City, a lot of young cooks, they're 20 years old,

at 1 00:34:09

they've maybe, or they've just come out of college, culinary school or

at 1 00:34:13

something. A lot of them have never been to a farm. frankly, you know. Yeah.

at 1 00:34:17

So for a chef to be able to bring their team and say, hey, try

at 1 00:34:20

this, this is Mexican tarragon, try this, this is bronze fennel, and

at 1 00:34:24

get and use that as a way to engage their team, that was really attractive

at 1 00:34:27

as well. So we started to be this sort of place where people could,

at 1 00:34:31

you know, discover, they could come up with ideas, and we would normally

at 1 00:34:35

say yes to a lot of things. And then, you know, some of

at 1 00:34:39

those things would turn out, some of those things would not, but

at 1 00:34:42

that was the way it worked. And I think we got a great reputation with

at 1 00:34:45

chefs. And so, yeah, that reputation

at 1 00:34:49

worked really, really in our favor. And at the beginning, of course, we were

at 1 00:34:53

all outbound, like just literally knocking on doors and bringing

at 1 00:34:57

samples. That's the funny thing about working with restaurants is

at 1 00:35:02

I've been in other industries where you have to go to a conference and you

at 1 00:35:05

have to get someone's business card, and then you have to get an email from

at 1 00:35:08

them to refer you to someone else, to someone else to do a presentation. You

at 1 00:35:11

have to do 7 presentations. and then maybe you got a deal.

at 1 00:35:15

Whereas with chefs, you knock on the door, you bring them some samples, they taste

at 1 00:35:19

it, they say like, oh, this is really good. How much is it? And

at 1 00:35:23

you pretty much got a deal. Now, in contrast

at 1 00:35:26

though, if it's not good, like you're not getting that deal. They're never coming back.

at 1 00:35:29

Like, that's it, you know? So, but yeah, early on we were very

at 1 00:35:33

outbound. We were knocking on doors, but after a while we started to realize like,

at 1 00:35:36

oh, okay, when people are opening up restaurants, they are thinking of us.

at 1 00:35:39

They're trying to talk to us in advance. They're trying to

at 1 00:35:43

get in there and talk about menus as they're developing menus. So I

at 1 00:35:47

remember one of the cool sort of moments was

at 1 00:35:51

Mario Carbone, who his restaurant Carbone is sort of

at 1 00:35:54

one of the busiest and most respected Italian restaurants in New

at 1 00:35:58

York City. And he was doing recipe development

at 1 00:36:02

for The Grill, which is the restaurant that they opened up in the old Four

at 1 00:36:05

Seasons location. Mm-hmm. And big, very,

at 1 00:36:09

very opulent restaurant. And Mario Carbone was working on

at 1 00:36:13

this recipe development for, I mean, I think it was like 9 months

at 1 00:36:17

or a year before launch. And so we went to this little

at 1 00:36:21

like shuttered restaurant in SoHo that he was using as his like

at 1 00:36:24

testing kitchen kind of thing. And so you'd go inside and there's all these chefs

at 1 00:36:28

just bringing him like a little spoonful, teaspoon of

at 1 00:36:32

something to taste, like while he's talking to us, you know? Yeah. And that was

at 1 00:36:35

really cool because it just was like, okay, let's see what we can grow for

at 1 00:36:40

Like a live version of Chef's Table. Oh, 100%. Yeah.

at 1 00:36:44

And also there's this sort of regal atmosphere where he's sort of

at 1 00:36:47

sitting and then you've got all these chefs that are

at 1 00:36:52

coming up to him and looking for his approval and stuff. And

at 1 00:36:55

all of those chefs in the room are amazing chefs as well. So it's like

at 1 00:36:59

this sort of really amazing thing. And yeah,

at 1 00:37:03

so we had some experiences like that. And I think we got a good

at 1 00:37:06

reputation. I think there's still further to go. I think as we

at 1 00:37:10

progress longer as a company, I still want to keep that

at 1 00:37:13

relationship with chefs. But yeah, it was great. I think we got off on the

at 1 00:37:17

right foot. And I think we showed chefs that we're able to listen and

at 1 00:37:21

we're close to them and they can meet the farmer. And they can

at 1 00:37:24

also, it sounds obvious, right? But they can walk into the farm and they can

at 1 00:37:28

see like, oh, okay, this is a place I can do business with.

at 1 00:37:32

It's clean. The people working here are relatively happy.

at 1 00:37:36

It's a real place. There's real folks here. That kind of

at 1 00:37:40

stuff is important. And so I'm really proud of what we

at 1 00:37:43

were able to do there. One thing that I did hear on the podcast, you

at 1 00:37:47

mentioned some work you're doing with Google. What I found was interesting

at 1 00:37:51

is studying the impact of plastic. And I think one of the things that's

at 1 00:37:55

interesting about what you're doing at Form 1 in terms of how you deliver the

at 1 00:37:59

Greens is that you're using reusable plastic. So, can you talk about

at 1 00:38:02

that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. So, Google and— so, I do some

at 1 00:38:06

work with Google on a very pretty much sustainability-focused

at 1 00:38:10

angle, I guess. And what that led me to was to

at 1 00:38:14

learn more about plastics and plastics in the environment and plastics.

at 1 00:38:18

It's a really sort of complex problem, right? Because plastics are

at 1 00:38:21

this really useful material that we use every day

at 1 00:38:25

that has dramatically improved some areas

at 1 00:38:29

of life. So a cucumber that is wrapped in plastic will

at 1 00:38:33

last longer on the shelf than a cucumber that's not wrapped in plastic.

at 1 00:38:36

And transporting glass over

at 1 00:38:40

thousands of miles is much heavier than transporting plastic. So

at 1 00:38:44

a lot of these things are really beneficial. But one of the problems is, as

at 1 00:38:47

a society, we've essentially become addicted to plastic, and we've sort of

at 1 00:38:50

not really ever come to terms with the amount of

at 1 00:38:54

plastic that just ends up in the environment. And I think that a lot of

at 1 00:38:57

people still think that if something is recyclable,

at 1 00:39:01

it will be recycled. Whereas if you look at actually the recycling rates of

at 1 00:39:05

even recyclable items in a wealthy city

at 1 00:39:09

like New York, the actual recycle rate is really low. And

at 1 00:39:13

so throughout Form One's existence, we've kind of

at 1 00:39:16

been looking for better ways to package. And actually, Ronnie, the

at 1 00:39:20

chef at Atera, I remember just chatting with

at 1 00:39:24

him and he was mentioning how back in Denmark, when he was a

at 1 00:39:27

chef there, he was running a big enough restaurant that he was basically

at 1 00:39:31

able to dictate to his suppliers like, oh, you got to use

at 1 00:39:35

reusable packaging if you want to deliver to me.

at 1 00:39:39

And so they could do that. And so they would get the pallets and the

at 1 00:39:41

crates and stuff and send stuff back. And they had pretty low

at 1 00:39:45

packaging waste. So from that, I was kind of intrigued. And so it led

at 1 00:39:49

us to start reusable packaging with our chef customers.

at 1 00:39:53

And obviously doing it directly with chefs is somewhat easy because you know who that

at 1 00:39:57

customer is. You can kind of count the pans out, you can count them in.

at 1 00:40:00

But also we were able to package in hotel pans. And hotel pans, if

at 1 00:40:04

you've never worked in the industry, they're these sort of standard size containers

at 1 00:40:08

that all chefs use. And you'll have a standard size pan, which is

at 1 00:40:12

I don't know, about the size of a grow tray, weirdly enough, like a 10x20

at 1 00:40:16

tray. And then you have a half pan and a quarter and a third, and

at 1 00:40:19

it's sort of this, you know, one of these things where there's many, many different

at 1 00:40:23

sizes. But essentially, we were able to package in those containers, which meant that

at 1 00:40:26

chefs could literally take it from us and like slot it into their

at 1 00:40:30

mise en place. And also, they could wash them in their

at 1 00:40:34

dishwasher, or we could wash them in our dishwasher when they got back, and it

at 1 00:40:37

was pretty easy. So that felt great. And

at 1 00:40:40

also, it felt like something where we can

at 1 00:40:43

be a little bit different to who else is out there. And we can, like,

at 1 00:40:47

if you're buying produce from California, no matter how good it is, they're not going

at 1 00:40:51

to do reusable packaging. There's going to be plastic waste. And that stuff

at 1 00:40:55

really, really adds up. And so, from that time, we've been

at 1 00:40:59

really interested in reusable packaging. I think when COVID hit, probably

at 1 00:41:03

about 70% of our restaurant customers were using that.

at 1 00:41:06

And that was great. It's really, really good. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a beautiful segue

at 1 00:41:10

because I wanted to— I heard a little bit on the podcast and we'll talk

at 1 00:41:14

about that as well. But can you talk about how dramatically things

at 1 00:41:17

changed last year and how it affected what you were doing at the

at 1 00:41:21

company and the business model as well? Yeah. Well, you know, we were in

at 1 00:41:25

the worst possible position in March last year because about

at 1 00:41:28

50% of our revenue was from chef sales. About 50% was

at 1 00:41:32

from events, tours, and classes. So people coming to the farm. So, all of

at 1 00:41:36

that basically disappeared overnight. And of

at 1 00:41:40

course, we wanted to make sure everybody in the company was safe. We

at 1 00:41:43

didn't want to— I think, not to

at 1 00:41:47

call anyone out, but I think there were businesses in New York City that were

at 1 00:41:50

trying to figure out, can we sort of keep running? And

at 1 00:41:54

I think it was pretty clear to us that just wasn't an option.

at 1 00:41:58

So, at that point, we also saw that some of our restaurant

at 1 00:42:02

customers were trying to do takeout. They were trying to do delivery. But if you

at 1 00:42:06

looked at it, it was just completely a different scale.

at 1 00:42:10

We had people who would normally be spending like $350 a week with us,

at 1 00:42:14

and they would go down to like $25 a week. And so, it was

at 1 00:42:17

just like, okay, you can't run a business that way. So luckily,

at 1 00:42:22

at the beginning of the year, we had raised some money, and that money had

at 1 00:42:25

been initially intended for us to build a much bigger facility.

at 1 00:42:28

So going into February, March in 2020, we were on the verge

at 1 00:42:32

of signing a lease for a very expensive downtown space

at 1 00:42:36

that was going to be all events, and it was going to be events and

at 1 00:42:39

production. It would have been— Wow. Anyway, I'm really glad we didn't do

at 1 00:42:43

that. But yeah, it was a really tough time during March,

at 1 00:42:47

April, May, June because we were trying to then see,

at 1 00:42:50

okay, can we sell direct-to-consumer basically the same products that are already

at 1 00:42:54

growing on our farm? Because we had a farm full of produce. Can we sell

at 1 00:42:58

some of that same stuff to consumers? Can we sell edible

at 1 00:43:02

flowers? Can we sell these specialty microgreens? Can we get them to buy

at 1 00:43:06

ecommerce-wise? Can we acquire customers? You know,

at 1 00:43:10

and it was ultimately just a really frustrating experience because

at 1 00:43:14

we had people who would say, I love the product, it's amazing, I'm so

at 1 00:43:18

happy to get it. And they'll post on Instagram, they'll do a beautiful dish,

at 1 00:43:22

but they won't buy again for another like 2 months or something. Yeah. So

at 1 00:43:26

you've made like a $28 sale and then you might get another $28,

at 1 00:43:30

you know, in a few months' time. And if you're using

at 1 00:43:34

advertising on social media to get those customers, you might be paying like

at 1 00:43:37

$60 for that customer or something. So maybe they'll make you money over the

at 1 00:43:41

next 15 years, but it just wasn't— Not a viable business model.

at 1 00:43:45

Not a viable business. And also, it was just as labor-intensive as the

at 1 00:43:49

chef sales had been. It was like picking these individual flowers, like the

at 1 00:43:53

packaging and the delivery was all just so labor-intensive.

at 1 00:43:57

And so By August, it was like really starting to

at 1 00:44:01

be clear, like, okay, this is not going to work, you know? And so

at 1 00:44:05

we went through a really painful end of August and we

at 1 00:44:08

had to let people go, which is— I mean, I've had to do that a

at 1 00:44:12

couple of times in my career. It's, you know, it's no good. But also

at 1 00:44:16

in this economy, right? It's like you're letting people go and then it's pretty clear

at 1 00:44:20

they're not going to be able to find a job because there's kind of nothing

at 1 00:44:22

out there. Yeah. So we went through that. We had support from our

at 1 00:44:25

investors to kind of make sure we can keep a couple of folks on

at 1 00:44:29

who are maybe more vulnerable. And we decided

at 1 00:44:33

to just completely change the business. And we had sort

at 1 00:44:37

of been toying with the idea of like a CSA kind of thing.

at 1 00:44:41

And what we did was the sort of last piece of it was

at 1 00:44:45

like, okay, we know we can probably get people interested in like a

at 1 00:44:48

recurring delivery of greens, it probably has to be

at 1 00:44:52

more like baby greens and micros and not too heavy on like the

at 1 00:44:56

super rare ingredients because no one wants to eat purple oxalis like

at 1 00:44:59

every day, you know? So we knew that. And then there was this kind of

at 1 00:45:03

missing piece. And what it turned out was like, oh, okay, what if we could

at 1 00:45:06

do the reusable packaging as well? And so what we did

at 1 00:45:10

was we kind of applied that same thinking from chef sales, but saying, okay, if

at 1 00:45:13

we get these people on a recurring delivery, if they're local, like we only

at 1 00:45:17

deliver locally, we can deliver them packaging and we can pick it up again.

at 1 00:45:21

So no plastic waste. And so that really became this

at 1 00:45:25

now nice complete package. It was like, okay, you get your greens,

at 1 00:45:29

reusable packaging, weekly delivery. And that's what we started to

at 1 00:45:33

do in September. And really the goal in September was just to

at 1 00:45:36

see, like going back to square one, like, will people buy it? Is

at 1 00:45:40

it good? Can we deliver it? And after

at 1 00:45:44

I guess I think after, like, as a team, we didn't really want to

at 1 00:45:48

commit to something if it wasn't going to work. I mean, obviously, right? So we

at 1 00:45:52

wanted to test it out. But after a few weeks, it was like pretty obvious,

at 1 00:45:55

like, oh, this is really good. People really like this. We got a

at 1 00:45:58

lot of signups. It can make money. And

at 1 00:46:02

operationally, it's way easier for us to do. Like, because we had

at 1 00:46:06

basically 5 people running that farm in Tribeca.

at 1 00:46:10

Now, pretty much, I mean, there's some ins and outs, but like pretty much

at 1 00:46:14

we have one person running that farm, you know? And so

at 1 00:46:18

operationally way easier. And yeah, so our goal over

at 1 00:46:22

Q3, Q4 was get enough customers to fill up the farm,

at 1 00:46:26

which we did. And so now it's been like a waiting list

at 1 00:46:29

since, I mean, since end of November, really. And so

at 1 00:46:34

yeah, it was obvious, like, okay, we need to build a bigger facility. Which is

at 1 00:46:37

now what we're about to do. But also at the same time,

at 1 00:46:41

we started to add in little what we

at 1 00:46:45

call surprises into the bag. And the surprises are

at 1 00:46:49

things that it's always the local business, it's always something

at 1 00:46:52

plant-based. It wasn't initially, but now it's something that can come

at 1 00:46:56

in reusable packaging as well. So again, trying to eliminate plastic waste.

at 1 00:47:00

And also we try to support businesses of color. We try to

at 1 00:47:03

support underrepresented groups and we try to just support like good

at 1 00:47:07

social impact kind of stuff. And now that surprise that goes in your

at 1 00:47:10

bag, like it's almost as popular as the

at 1 00:47:14

greens, you know? Yeah. So yeah, that's going really

at 1 00:47:18

well. And we're also on the verge of launching some other

at 1 00:47:21

stuff in a few weeks' time, which is going to be other ways for people

at 1 00:47:25

to sort of buy into the same thing. And yeah, so it's going

at 1 00:47:29

great. And we love the response from the customers. We've

at 1 00:47:32

got a direct relationship with customers, some of whom started to know

at 1 00:47:36

us way back going to a tour or even during the

at 1 00:47:40

summer last year, they had bought some one-off bits and pieces. But

at 1 00:47:44

people, first of all, they're getting something

at 1 00:47:48

that was harvested same day. We harvest starting at

at 1 00:47:52

7:00. It's getting to them sometimes as early as 11:00 AM.

at 1 00:47:56

Right. So compared to the grocery store shelf, even the best

at 1 00:48:00

vertical farm in the city that's delivering to Whole Foods or something, that

at 1 00:48:03

product is not 4 hours old or whatever. It's, you know, it's

at 1 00:48:07

older. So they're getting something super, super fresh. Obviously, they're eliminating

at 1 00:48:10

plastic waste. It's delivered by bike. So like no emissions.

at 1 00:48:14

We're right here in the neighborhood. You know, a lot of our

at 1 00:48:18

signups are from Tribeca. And I mean, what else is there? I

at 1 00:48:22

don't know. It's pesticide-free. It's all the other stuff that everyone talks about with

at 1 00:48:25

vertical farming, less water, all that stuff. stuff. And they love it. And the

at 1 00:48:29

salad greens that they're getting, what we do is we'll do a baby

at 1 00:48:33

greens mix in one box, that's the red box, and then we'll do

at 1 00:48:36

microgreens in the yellow box, and then we'll do herbs and flowers in the blue

at 1 00:48:40

box. And herbs and flowers is what Farm.One is sort of most known

at 1 00:48:43

for really, where we'll throw in the Blue Spice basil or

at 1 00:48:47

the Bronze fennel or something. And then the microgreens, we'll do

at 1 00:48:51

maybe a couple of sort of regular micros like a mizuna and arugula,

at 1 00:48:55

but then we'll throw in what we call a sprinkle. So, it might be like

at 1 00:48:58

micro carrot or like micro cilantro or something.

at 1 00:49:02

Try not to do too much cilantro because it's a controversial

at 1 00:49:05

ingredient. And then, the baby greens will be the same thing. It'll be like some

at 1 00:49:09

regular stuff with like a sprinkle thrown in. And I think they're sort of salads

at 1 00:49:13

that are genuinely like inventive and tasty and different.

at 1 00:49:17

Yeah. And people love them, which is— Are you providing recipe suggestions as well?

at 1 00:49:21

Yeah. We do. At the moment, we do some basic ones that we

at 1 00:49:25

found on the internet. But what's really happening is like

at 1 00:49:29

content and communicating how to use these ingredients, like

at 1 00:49:32

where they come from, all this kind of stuff. It's just becoming a much bigger

at 1 00:49:35

part of what we do and we're about to do. So we're kind of investing

at 1 00:49:39

a lot in like working with folks on recipes, videos,

at 1 00:49:43

explanations, stuff like that. Because, you know, as you're implying, like

at 1 00:49:47

showing people what to do with this stuff is really, really useful. And I

at 1 00:49:50

think that long-term, it's going to be part of the value that we can give.

at 1 00:49:54

And so actually, we sort of do this, I don't think it's too sneaky, but

at 1 00:49:58

it's a slightly sneaky thing where we don't have any labeling

at 1 00:50:02

in the bag. So you get the bag and you don't know what it is.

at 1 00:50:06

I mean, you can sort of see, but we have a link in your

at 1 00:50:10

email that says, okay, your bag's been delivered, find out what's in it. And then

at 1 00:50:13

you click through and then you get the video and all that kind of stuff.

at 1 00:50:17

And so at that point, of course, we can sort of offer you other things

at 1 00:50:20

or et cetera. Sort of online experience is really

at 1 00:50:24

important. And the other thing about it, as we move into doing more and

at 1 00:50:27

more stuff that's in reusable packaging, traditionally, like

at 1 00:50:31

the label, the plastic label on a thing has been the only way for a

at 1 00:50:35

brand to communicate with the customer, right? Yeah. And so if you want to move

at 1 00:50:38

to an experience which is plastic waste free, you have to

at 1 00:50:41

start to do more things digitally. You have to start to say, okay,

at 1 00:50:45

instead of just looking at the box, like come look at the video, look at

at 1 00:50:49

the explanation. And it's an opportunity for us to sort of help do that

at 1 00:50:53

for other brands as well. So watch this space, really. We're sort of looking much

at 1 00:50:57

more into this kind of idea of beyond the label. Yeah,

at 1 00:51:01

I think it speaks to some of the earlier conversations I've had

at 1 00:51:05

where you're telling the story of the greens and you're telling the

at 1 00:51:09

story of how they got to your plate and letting people

at 1 00:51:13

be inventive and giving them creative ideas. Feels like that

at 1 00:51:16

creative side of you is probably kicking in as well as you think about all

at 1 00:51:19

these things, pulling in all that experience you've had in the past as well. Yeah,

at 1 00:51:23

I love that stuff. And I think that as a

at 1 00:51:26

consumer, I was reading some statistic the other day. It was

at 1 00:51:30

something like, anyway, a really good proportion of consumers

at 1 00:51:34

now consider ethical and sustainable factors in their purchases, right?

at 1 00:51:38

We do look at like, okay, where was this made? Is the person

at 1 00:51:41

growing this paid any money? Is it clean? And I

at 1 00:51:45

think part of the thing we can do is communicate that stuff. And also,

at 1 00:51:50

part of my real— the things I love about

at 1 00:51:53

Farm.One is that we're a real farm in the city.

at 1 00:51:58

Normally, you can come and visit and you can see and you can look

at 1 00:52:01

through the window and you can taste stuff and it's open. And I know

at 1 00:52:05

that a lot of other vertical farms just can't really do that, but we

at 1 00:52:09

can do that and we want to continue doing that because I think that

at 1 00:52:13

it's the thing people say a lot, but we are kind of a little bit

at 1 00:52:15

too separated from our food. As consumers, you know, we expect

at 1 00:52:19

to be able to get that burrito at 1 AM, but where did the rice

at 1 00:52:22

come from? Where did the beans come from? If you eat meat, where did that

at 1 00:52:26

pork come from? The conditions in that factory, I think, you know, John Oliver was

at 1 00:52:29

talking about this week and like conditions in meatpacking factories, all this

at 1 00:52:33

kind of stuff that's like behind closed doors. We have an opportunity at

at 1 00:52:37

Farm.One to open up those doors a little bit. And I think that more and

at 1 00:52:40

more consumers are going to be more interested in that. And we think that

at 1 00:52:44

partly the nice thing about us not having massive VC

at 1 00:52:48

investors and being a little bit more of a small business is we can be

at 1 00:52:51

a little bit more open. We can be like, hey, look at this. You can

at 1 00:52:54

see how we work. And I think that's pretty cool. And I'm looking forward to

at 1 00:52:58

when I do make a trip back to New York City to come pay a

at 1 00:53:00

visit for a tour. That would be awesome. Yeah. Yeah. You got to do it.

at 1 00:53:04

Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting. I talked about sustainable. I just saw Henry

at 1 00:53:08

post today on LinkedIn. He's got a newsletter and he talked about,

at 1 00:53:12

he says, if you're an investor, buyer, or employee of a company, using sustainably

at 1 00:53:16

grown for clicks and likes, then you're also responsible, or you have a

at 1 00:53:20

responsibility to make sure you're not greenwashing. So I think it's interesting

at 1 00:53:24

timing on that. Yeah, absolutely. I do think, you know, on that point with

at 1 00:53:28

vertical farming specifically, I do think the problem, or one

at 1 00:53:32

of the problems in the industry right now, is people sort of believe that vertical

at 1 00:53:35

farming is inherently sustainable when actually you just got to look at the

at 1 00:53:39

whole picture. And I think that consumers not quite caught on to that

at 1 00:53:42

yet, but they will catch on. And so it's kind of table stakes

at 1 00:53:46

now to be pesticide-free, to be saving water.

at 1 00:53:50

Yeah, like the question is like, what's next, you know? Yeah. And I love the

at 1 00:53:53

fact that, you know, that— I don't know if it's a dirty little secret or

at 1 00:53:56

just a known secret— is the fact that, you know, all these clamshell plastic

at 1 00:53:59

clamshells, you know, because all these companies, the bigger they are, the more

at 1 00:54:03

plastic they're actually generating, which, you know, a lot of people have been not

at 1 00:54:07

too crazy about talking about. So when I saw that you from the get-go were

at 1 00:54:10

interested in how to solve that problem so that you're not adding

at 1 00:54:14

more to the problem we already have. I think that's really admirable.

at 1 00:54:18

It's a crazy quantity of plastic out there. It's crazy. And I think that if

at 1 00:54:22

we can do things, you know, as businesses, if we can do things as consumers,

at 1 00:54:25

like we can actually make a difference. And one of the great things about being

at 1 00:54:29

hyperlocal is it's a lot easier to do it. And so that's another

at 1 00:54:33

reason why we do that. And then lastly, you started the podcast

at 1 00:54:36

in October. So, how's that been going for you and what started or sparked that

at 1 00:54:40

idea? It really started because we

at 1 00:54:43

wanted to take that kind of openness that we normally have

at 1 00:54:48

and then apply it to COVID world when we can't actually accept anyone in the

at 1 00:54:51

door. But what sort of happened really quickly is that we

at 1 00:54:55

realized like, okay, because we started doing some over

at 1 00:54:58

Zoom or something and that was okay. But we realized we've got this

at 1 00:55:02

great resource, we've got the farm, you know. And so really,

at 1 00:55:06

if we're starting to work with other local food folks who are giving us the

at 1 00:55:10

surprise or something like that, let's actually just get them into the farm. And so

at 1 00:55:13

it's been this very complicated process of figuring out how to do a

at 1 00:55:17

socially distanced interview, like on the farm, and like how

at 1 00:55:21

to get the equipment working. And we definitely haven't got everything

at 1 00:55:24

sorted out yet. But long term, I think it's going to

at 1 00:55:28

be more and more of this, bringing someone in, maybe having a

at 1 00:55:32

space on the farm for them to demo something in a kitchen, maybe

at 1 00:55:36

having them tour around with me eventually and talking and listening and

at 1 00:55:39

picking at things and trying to sort of tell these stories about

at 1 00:55:43

local food and local people that are able to be

at 1 00:55:47

in-depth in the way that a podcast is, but also with some of that visual

at 1 00:55:50

element of the farm as well. So actually sort of YouTube and

at 1 00:55:54

video and Instagram is probably long-term for us, like maybe

at 1 00:55:57

more important than the audio aspect because, because the farm is such

at 1 00:56:01

a visually compelling place. And what I'm so excited about

at 1 00:56:05

is us, we're building a new farm pretty soon. It will be quite a

at 1 00:56:09

bit bigger and we will be able to turn that visual experience into something

at 1 00:56:12

really, really special. So it's early days on that stuff, but it's

at 1 00:56:16

exciting and there's a lot of things to come. I think it's really fascinating.

at 1 00:56:20

And I don't know if it's to the point where you'll actually have a studio

at 1 00:56:23

space set up in the new one. That might be interesting. Yeah. But I think

at 1 00:56:27

in this new age of Clubhouse, And podcasts and more

at 1 00:56:31

immersive experiences. Even with just audio, you can still get the theater of the mind

at 1 00:56:35

if you hear a good enough show with some natural sound in the background, pots

at 1 00:56:39

clanging, stuff like that. People get this feeling that they're being immersed in the

at 1 00:56:42

environment, which I think is really, really fun. Yeah. I mean, we certainly— the

at 1 00:56:46

sound is tough though, because it's like you want to give people the atmosphere, but

at 1 00:56:49

then we have these like sump pumps that literally every 2

at 1 00:56:52

minutes go like, you know, so you

at 1 00:56:56

It's like, how much of this do you want? But we're sort of figuring it

at 1 00:56:59

out. And I think that it's a way for us to

at 1 00:57:02

stand out and be different and also just give our members, subscribers, like

at 1 00:57:06

some new stuff, you know, and that's pretty cool. Well, Rob, the hour flew by.

at 1 00:57:10

I really enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane for

at 1 00:57:14

you. So for people to get a context, because

at 1 00:57:18

I think when you just talk about what you're doing now,

at 1 00:57:22

without understanding where you came from and where all the inspiration

at 1 00:57:25

started for you. I think it really paints a bigger picture of how you ended

at 1 00:57:29

up here because I think you can probably speak to this a little bit better,

at 1 00:57:32

but all those things you did early on and all those things you tried and

at 1 00:57:36

failed and all those experiences you had and all the travels you had and the

at 1 00:57:38

people you met, I don't think you'd be where you are now if not for

at 1 00:57:41

those experiences. Oh, 100%. Yeah, that's what my

at 1 00:57:45

therapist says as well. So it's the same thing. It's the same thing. But yeah,

at 1 00:57:48

happy to be where I am now, but happy to look back on where I've

at 1 00:57:52

been as well. Well, thanks for sharing the Form 1 story. And it's really exciting

at 1 00:57:56

to see how you've been able to sustain it even through a challenging experience

at 1 00:58:00

like COVID and now pivoting and trying out new business models, new

at 1 00:58:04

multimedia experiences. And it sounds like you got a couple of things up your sleeve

at 1 00:58:07

that you haven't been able to talk about yet. So it's going to be exciting

at 1 00:58:09

to watch. So where's the best place for folks to continue to stay

at 1 00:58:13

engaged with Form 1 and yourself? Yeah, just check out Farm.One.

at 1 00:58:17

It's F-A-R-M dot O-N-E, and you can check us out on Instagram.

at 1 00:58:21

It's @Farm.One. I think that'll sum it up. If you can't make

at 1 00:58:25

that work, nothing's going to work. Thanks again for your time, Rob. I really

at 1 00:58:28

appreciate it. Thanks, Harry. Thanks again to Rob for coming on the show and sharing

at 1 00:58:32

his story. As always, full show notes are available at

at 1 00:58:35

verticalfarmingpodcast.com. We have key takeaways,

at 1 00:58:38

any links mentioned, and a couple of quotes from the episode for you to share

at 1 00:58:42

on social media. Special thanks to our season 3 title sponsor,

at 1 00:58:45

Cultivated. If you're looking into a vertical farm and don't know where to start or

at 1 00:58:48

which technology would suit your needs, reach out to them today. Best of all, their

at 1 00:58:52

service is free because they work on behalf of their partners. Learn more at

at 1 00:58:56

cultivated.com, and that's spelled C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-D.com.

at 1 00:59:02

Just leave out that last E. Podcast production marketing provided by Fullcast.

at 1 00:59:06

Sign up for a free podcast brainstorm at

at 1 00:59:09

fullcast.co/chat15.

at 1 00:59:13

Tune in next week for my conversation with Eric Levesque, co-founder of Cultivated.

at 1 00:59:17

And as a reminder, if you're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and

at 1 00:59:19

a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

at 1 00:59:24

We'll be sure to read those out on future episodes. Also remember bunches.chat/verticalfarming

at 1 00:59:30

to join our chat community. Until we meet again. Bye.

at 1 00:59:34

Here's to your health. Thanks for listening. To read the full show notes

at 1 00:59:38

for this episode, which includes any links mentioned in the episode, as

at 1 00:59:42

well as a full show transcription, visit

at 1 00:59:44

verticalfarmingpodcast.com. There you can sign

at 1 00:59:48

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