Growth Industry
Growth Industry
Photo: Buck Ennis
Mission Chinese grows its own mushrooms in its Lower East Side restaurant—without doing any work. The eatery’s staff does not have to add water or worry about sunlight. Those tasks are done remotely by Smallhold, a company in Brooklyn that provides farming modules and manages growing conditions with custom tech.
“It’s a passive unit as far as restaurants are concerned,” said Adam DeMartino, co-founder, and COO of Smallhold. “We control the humidity, carbon dioxide, temperature and other parameters in the mini-farms through our web interface. So a week after a bag of mushrooms at the fruiting stage is put into the modules, restaurants get fresh produce ready to be harvested and eaten.”
Smallhold’s customizable mini farms start at $3,000 for a 6-foot-tall unit that’s 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep. The mini-farm produce 20 to 30 pounds of mushrooms per week.
“Not every restaurant in New York City has the space to do something like this, but there’s value in having customers see their food being grown fresh,” said DeMartino, who also is setting up mini-farms at Whole Foods stores in Gowanus and Bridgewater, N.J. “Local produce is more desired now, and mushrooms are in demand as more people are health-conscious and turning vegan. That demand is more than we can handle right now.”
A version of this article appears in the March 26, 2018, print issue of Crain's New York Business.