I'm Rob Laing, and I'm the CEO and founder of Farm.One.
Farm.One is a vertical farm in New York.
We use advanced hydroponics, the latest LED light technology, and proprietary software
and processes to grow over 500 different rare herbs, edible flowers and microgreens for
the best chefs in the city.
Hydroponics means growing plants in a water-based nutrient solution, without soil.
Vertical farming is an exciting, hyper-efficient technique of stacking multiple growing layers
indoors seeing high level of investment interest.
But Farm.One is the only vertical farming company focused on rare, flavorful speciality
produce.
In April 2016, I started Farm.One with our prototype farm at a prestigious culinary school
in downtown Manhattan.
As we started to grow rare herbs and flowers, we attracted highly-respected chefs as visitors.
Hello I'm Alex Atala from Brazil.
If you can believe, I'm here in downtown New York, inside this beautiful urban farm.
We quickly acquired Michelin-starred restaurants as clients, sold out within just a few months,
and started looking for space to expand.
One of our customers was Atera, a 2-michelin starred restaurant in Tribeca, an exclusive
Manhattan neighborhood.
Head Chef Ronny Emborg invited us to complete a second, much larger farm inside their huge
basement.
Within a short period of time, we were able to convert an historic landmark building into
a hyper-efficient urban farm."
So when you walk into Farm.One it's like happiness, you see all these green colors, yellows, all
the flowers, it can just be like happiness"
We finished construction on the farm in August 2017, and every week we're serving more customers
out of the space.
In just 18 months we’ve built a team with expertise in Horticulture, Operations, Engineering
and Sales.
And at our heart we’re a technology company, turning farming into science.
Before joining Farm.One, I had a number of years experience building and running hydroponic
systems.
But at Farm.One we’re taking everything to a whole new level.
We use our own data-tracking software to build knowledge on over 500 varieties of plants,
with an emphasis on improving overall quality, flavor and esthetics
The software that we've built at Farm.One is customized to our exact operational requirements.
At any given time we can be growing hundreds of varieties, and thousands of batches planted.
We put so much care and effort into each individual product that we grow, and I think that's because
our customers are chefs, and chefs by nature are extremely discerning and demanding.
And I don't think we'd have it any other way
So we're really really lucky to work with some of the best chefs not just in New York
city, but also the world.
Mission Chinese Food....
Pizza Loves Emily...
The pluto basil we put on 4 or 5 of our pizzas is probably the best basil I've ever tried.
We get beautiful consistent product, week in, week out, which is not something you get
from a lot of people
Daniel, Jungsik, Le Turtle
Victor Amarilla, Executive Chef, Le Turtle: "What you guys are doing is amazing.
Year round, having all these beautiful microgreens, with beautiful texture and beautiful flavors.
Never knew that a plant like that could taste so good and it takes you places
Uchu, Double Zero, Butter, Atera...
We use a lot of products from Farm.One.
Nasturtium, lemon balm, mustard greens, a special type of mint, bronze fennel, a big
piece of lemon verbena, small flowers nepitella blossom, we can really see when the guests
are eating this flower they're like oh wow, really amazing flavor!
What we love about the Farm.One team is that they are not trying to be the biggest vertical
farm out there, but they're trying to be the best.
These guys are serving 2 and 3-star Michelin-rated restaurants, and these chefs have the utmost
high standards for food production, and the guys at Farm.One are delivering.
I think Farm.One provides a really interesting blueprint for where agriculture, and certainly
urban agriculture, will be going in the future.
To produce on-demand products for chefs that are rare, unique and consistent year-round
really has a very interesting business case that helps it stand out from the rest of the
competition in vertical farming
It's no longer just a concept, but this is a viable business plan that's scalable to
around the world
Clap our hands to urban Farm.One
What we're now able to do is build these highly efficient urban farms anywhere around the
world.
Whether it be complex buildings or very tight spaces, we now have the knowledge and experience
to get it done.
We're now ready to expand.
We plan to open multiple farms across the US and the world over the next 3 years.
Join us on the journy, and own a piece of Farm.One