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When 53-year-old Donna Williams left corporate America for a life of sustainable agriculture five years ago, she brought with her the understanding that corporate office culture is linked to employee wellness.

Offices across the U.S. are implementing exercise programs, supporting smoking cessation and encouraging healthier diets for their employees. For Williams, founder of Field Goods, connecting professionals with local healthy resources was a no-brainer.

“We have nutrition study data which shows that when people subscribe to us they get healthier,” she says.

Field Goods is a subscription-based food distribution service that relies on local produce from 80 farms in the Hudson Valley area of New York and in Fairfield County, Conn. Since its inception, the company has grown from 60 customers to more than 500 deliveries per week to offices throughout the area.

“It doesn’t cost employers anything,” she says. “We had one employer, Fujifilm, [for whom] it radically changed their culture and had a huge impact on their employees’ behavior.”

But what’s the draw for growers?

The year-round program not only links office employees to produce grown traditionally across acres of small farms, it also utilizes controlled environment agriculture in the area.

“We love our greenhouse guys, they save our bacon every winter,” says Williams. “We have about four hydroponic/aquaponic growers, a pair of heated greenhouses growing in the ground and about half a dozen farmers that extend their crops’ [seasons] through high tunnels.”

Williams says the reason she founded Field Goods was to give small local farmers a “leg up” getting their produce to market and to try new products.

“We work with our growers to help their operations,” she says. “For instance, we have a hydroponic grower who was selling us live plants, but he was having growing inconsistencies in their heights, so we said to just give them to us as fresh salad mixes.”

Subscribers simply determine the size of bag they would like delivered to their office, a choice that can be modified based on need, or paused while on vacation.

“And we select what goes in the bag, which I think is why our service is particularly compelling from a wellness perspective, because it gets people to try things they would have never tried before,” says Williams.

Produce grown under cover comes into high demand for the company between December and May.

“We’re getting more leafy greens, like baby kale and even cucumbers,” she says. “We can never have enough greenhouse product.”

The consumer draw lies in the growing popularity of supporting local agriculture and in lessening environmental impact while adding convenience.

“By having us bring the bag from the farm directly to your office [we] save both parties a trip to the grocery store,” she says.

Local produce delivery programs are starting to pop up in larger markets across the nation like Field Goods in New York and FarmBox in San Francisco, Calif. Williams hopes the merger between corporate offices and small farm productions continues to grow and sees the market as a fresh opportunity for controlled environment agriculture.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for greenhouse growers out there,” says Williams. “I hope more people are game to get in the business and more farmers do more crop extension.”