Menasha's Fork Farms is Changing The Face of Farming -- And Helping Schools, Pantries

Maureen Wallenfang

February 21, 2018

 

MENASHA - This isn’t your father’s farm.

Or anyone’s vision of a farm, really, outside of a science fiction novel.

This “farm” of indoor plastic growing modules looks like it came off a spaceship. 

Fork Farms is a small, young, agriculture technology company that manufactures plastic hydroponic growing modules.

Inside each one, ruffled rows of lettuce grow vertically without a speck of soil or sunlight.

Fork Farms moved into its current home at 1101 W. Midway Road this spring and has 16 indoor growing machines. It's in a former flooring store just west of Appleton Road near Piggly Wiggly in Menasha.

Prior to this, inventor Alex Tyink operated out of his apartment and garage. He’s spent eight years working on the modules while holding down a day job. He's never taken a dime from the company and has operated on a slim investment of less than $20,000 gathered from family and friends.

“I believe in food. I know that sounds corny,” said Tyink, 30. “I felt better when I started eating good food instead of burgers and fries. A simple thing can make so much of a difference in our lives.”

He went to school to become an opera singer, not an engineer, so he said the years tinkering were spent learning, evolving and experimenting to get the system right.

Since 2009, he has made 28 different prototypes and invested thousands of hours into the venture.

Social service

Working on the growing machines satisfied his desire to create something that mattered, he said.

Growing fresh produce this way can make healthy food more accessible and create a connection between kids and food. 

“Our mission is to put these in food deserts and low-income schools,” he said. “The social service side is very important to me. I never want to lose that.”

Tyink co-founded the company with his father, Steve Tyink, who is vice president of business innovation at Miron Construction, and John Brogan, CEO of Bank of Kaukauna. 

His two employees have taken equity before paychecks. Commercial Horizons gave him a sweet lease on the building.

Fork Farms is a limited liability company owned by a group of 14 people, including employees Gil Shaw and Stewart McLain.

Shaw was formerly hydroponics manager at Riverview Gardens and is now farm manager here. McLain, formerly a music teacher in Seattle, is operations manager.

Shaw said the opportunity to join Fork Farms was too good to pass up.

“It’s one of the most innovative systems out there. It’s in a class of its own,” Shaw said.

“This is a real game changer because of its water use, efficiency and space. The potential of this is extraordinary. It can revolutionize arid land growing.”

Fork Farms' growing system already has one patent and two more pending.

Growing modules

The company's first 20 growing modules have been sold to schools, food pantries and individuals.

Local schools include Mount Olive Lutheran School, Fox Valley Lutheran High School, Appleton North High School and New Directions Learning Community in Kaukauna.

At North, the machine was purchased with a grant from the Appleton Education Foundation. 

"We love having our machine in the classroom," said Matt Hechel, North's alternative education coordinator. "We have a few students who have taken charge of being our main gardeners."

"I like learning about the hydroponic system and am really surprised how easy it is to grow our produce right in our classroom," said J.T. Zubich, one of the students in charge of the module. "It would be cool if every classroom was able to do this."

Students have eaten salads in the classroom from their harvest. Students and staff have taken lettuce home. 

“It’s an improvement on the traditional school garden model,” Tyink said. “It’s highly productive in growing food and makes a nutritional difference in schools. We’re improving the quality of lunch lines.” 

Besides making and selling the growing modules, Fork Farms grows lettuce in its Menasha headquarters and sells it to several hotels and a caterer. Its first and largest buyer has been the Best Western Premier Bridgewood Resort Hotel in Neenah. 

"We use their Fox Valley blend of lettuces for lunch buffets and catering, and their buttterhead lettuce for weddings and corporate events," said Ryan Batley, food and beverage director. "What's so great about it is that it's local. It stays fresher than anything else we're getting. It's very clean and crisp. A great product. The cost is a little higher, but we think it's money well-spent."

Batley said they use whole butterhead lettuce heads on each plate for weddings. 

"One bride called us back and said her guests were still commenting on it weeks later. She said 'I never thought people would remember the salad,'" Batley said. 

For-profit/nonprofit partnership

Tyink’s day job is director of programming at Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin. He previously field tested his growing machines while working at Goodwill Industries of North Central Wisconsin.

Feeding America now provides ancillary support to Fork Farms in what Tyink calls a “for-profit/nonprofit partnership.”

While Fork Farms is a for-profit business, he said it’s “mission-driven” to educate and feed people.

Growing modules cost $3,500. Feeding America provides education, training and a year’s worth of supplies for an additional $1,500.

Each vertical module can grow 288 plants in a four-by-four-foot space, Shaw said. Each machine can grow 15 to 20 pounds of lettuce in three to four weeks.

Indoor farming has been in the national news recently with the large-scale Plenty operation, a Jeff Bezos-backed indoor farm now expanding into the Seattle area.

But at the same time, some indoor farms have struggled.

FarmedHere, for example, closed its indoor hydroponic growing operation near Chicago earlier this year, reportedly because of high labor and energy costs.

At Fork Farms, Tyink keeps a watchful eye on costs and is in the gener8tor’s gBETA accelerator coaching program for startups.

He said it’s self-sustaining and he hasn’t taken a bank loan.

One of the keys, he said, was keeping energy costs low with LED growing lights.

“All of my research started with energy efficiencies," he said. “We’re running at a higher resource efficiency rate.”

“We kept small and kept capitalization small. We haven’t gone after venture capital because we wanted to know what we had before we made promises.”