Closing the loop

Editor’s note: Produce Grower will be following Brooklyn-based Edenworks for a year, tracking its growth, struggles and stories. Many of the stories will appear online at www.producegrower.com.
 

Growing fresh produce in the heart of New York City is almost oxymoronic. To grow anything at all, you have to go up, up, up.

So that’s exactly what Edenworks is doing.

The Brooklyn-based company is still in its hatchling stages. Founded by a trio of New Yorkers, the company wants to “close the food circle” and create a more locally focused produce scene. To do that, they’re designing aquaponic greenhouses for individual office buildings. The greenhouses are constructed atop the roof of the building and form a self-reliant system: The fish waste feeds the plants and the plant waste feeds the fish. The fruits and veggies the plants produce are then sold to the tenants of the building. It’s a unique setup that could take hold in several major metropolitan areas, and the founders have already talked about expanding beyond NYC.
 

In the beginning…

The earliest incarnation of Edenworks dates to March 2013 when co-founders Jason Green and Matt La Rosa met at the kickoff for an engineering and entrepreneurship competition at New York University, Inno/Vention. Green had just left his job at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and was taking classes in civil engineering to complement his background in bioengineering. La Rosa was studying construction management and had previously worked with his father growing orchids for competition.

When Green presented La Rosa with an idea for an urban greenhouse project, the two began hammering out the details of the project.

“Matt took my designs and made them into something physical,” Green says.

Six months after La Rosa and Green met, Ben Silverman, an architect, heard about Green's greenhouse concept. He was told that there was an NYU student who was attempting to create an aquaponic farm. He sought Green out.

“I had always had a lingering interest in urban agriculture,” Silverman says.

But when the trio first met, the Edenworks concept looked much different than it does today. The initial design was for a modular aquaponic system small enough to fit in individual living spaces (homes, apartments), not atop office buildings. It was a unique and exciting concept, but too niche to allow for real and rapid expansion. Silverman suggested they scale up, increasing the size of the system, and enclosing it in a greenhouse that would appeal to the business to business market, rather than the hobby farmer.

“Ben took the designs and product-ized them. He made them into something we had never imagined,” Green says.

The name for the company came organically. Green says he was walking down the street and tossing around ideas with a friend.

“The first name we came up with was Urban Eden, which was just a terrible name. Then, in riffing on it, we got to Edenworks. It’s similar to DreamWorks or Iron Works. They make dreams, they make iron. We make Eden,” he says.
 

The Farmlab

Edenworks’ first greenhouse is called the Farmlab, so named because it is where the team tests many of its ideas and technology. It was also where La Rosa, Green and Silverman were forced to “bootstrap” much of their technology.

“We didn’t have much capital at the beginning,” La Rosa says. And necessity (which really means lack of cash) is the mother of invention.

The team printed all of their circuit boards and constructed all of the growing systems from wood and metal. La Rosa was frequently described by his cofounders as a construction savant, capable of taking the shakiest napkin sketch and morphing it into reality. His unique skill set has proven extremely valuable for the startup.

Using a good deal of the tech the team jerry-rigged together, the Farmlab recently harvested its first crops of arugula, bok choy and lettuce.
 

Moving forward

Edenworks now has plans for a second greenhouse location. The new site will be 8,000 square feet and will feature plastic growing systems (a material the team can now afford to manufacture) and they will add more data gathering sensors, including Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) sensors.

“The problem we’re trying to answer is the need for local food. Most vegetables are grown in California. If you want local vegetables in New York in January, you’re just not going to find them," Green says. "We’re building hyper-local systems for food production. Our initial entry point is to build on top of commercial buildings and then sell the produce to the tenants of the building."

The business plan could then take one or two paths.

“We could continue to sell food as a service to companies or as an amenity to their employees, or we could sell the systems themselves to a myriad of businesses or even governments.” Green says.

The company’s growth plan is aggressive. They’d like to be operating 250,000 square feet of growing space within the next five years.

To see more photos from Edenworks, visit their Instagram page or follow them on Twitter, both @edenworksgrows.