'Pioneering New Frontiers': Fuqua Alumni Advise 'Farm-At-Your-Table' Food Truck

Photo by Special to The Chronicle | The Chronicle

'Pioneering New Frontiers': Fuqua Alumni Advise 'Farm-At-Your-Table' Food Truck

By Noah Michaud | 09/18/2017

If you stroll down West Geer Street on a Wednesday afternoon, you may be surprised to find a farm parked in front of you.

Meet the Farmery, which Ankur Sanghi and Ryan Graven—both Fuqua ’14—recently adopted. The brainchild of CEO Ben Greene, the Farmery is a multicomponent food truck and container farm model. It cooks with what it grows—whether it is exotic mushrooms, salad greens or herbs—every morning. Greene mentioned that they even had a mini-farm, the “CropBox,” behind a portable Airstream kitchen downtown, which they hope to reinstate soon.

“The model is very cool. It checks all the boxes,” said Sanghi, an advisor to the company. “It’s a much more efficient way of enjoying food. Instead of farm-to-table, farm-at-your-table.”

The Farmery brings to that table a cuisine they call “superfood fusion”—a mix of hearty salads, gourmet wraps, bowls and melts that highlight the fresh yet unique ingredients they grow. Beyond the East by West Bowl—Sanghi’s personal favorite—customers can also taste plates like the Earth First flatbread or the Do the Chimi Chicken Melt, which features their house-made chimichurri sauce. And the best part? 

“All of our food is 100 percent free of preservatives,” Greene said.

In addition, all production is 100 percent free of chemicals and based off of “organic nutrients and growing substrates,” as stated on the website. Additionally, a 40-foot indoor farm only uses as much energy as a “large produce cooler” as a result of its hybridized system of vertical farming, aquaponics—fish farming and hydroponics—and specialized LEDs.

However, the Farmery goes beyond the local endeavors of healthy food and resourceful agricultural practices. Greene and his team are also looking to extend the Farmery’s influence far beyond Durham and the Research Triangle by constructing indoor farms for other clients.

Greene also spoke of his excitement about collaborating with North Carolina State University to perform studies testing the current production capacity of his model, as well as about traveling to Costa Rica in the future to introduce the model internationally.

The company's decisions are influenced by goals to fulfill its self-proclaimed mission of “social and environmental responsibility,” or “how [we] can disrupt that distribution system," as Sanghi said.

“[We want] to refine the fast-casual type restaurant on the restaurant end, and on the business end, become a new standard for production and consumption,” Greene said. 

In the meantime, Greene is satisfied with the quick progress achieved so far.

“[We’re] executing a really good system, doing something new or doing something well that hasn’t been done well before," he said. "We’re pioneering new frontiers.”