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Urban Farming Insider: Penny McBride, Founder Vertical Harvest Jackson Hole

We caught up with Penny McBride, founder of Vertical Harvest Jackson Hole, to discuss the challenges of running a commercial urban farm, why the best greenhouse engineers are from Europe, and much more!

Introduction

Jackson, Wyoming is home to one of the world’s first vertical greenhouses located on a sliver of vacant land next to a parking garage. 

This 13,500 sq. ft. three-story stacked greenhouse utilizes a 1/10 of an acre to grow an annual amount of produce equivalent to 5 acres of traditional agriculture.

Vertical Harvest sells locally grown, fresh vegetables year round to Jackson area restaurants, grocery stores and directly to consumers through on-site sales. Vertical Harvest replaces 100,000 lbs of produce that is trucked into the community each year.In addition to fresh lettuce and tomatoes, Vertical Harvest produces jobs, internships and educational opportunities. 

The greenhouse employs 15 individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities. Click here to learn more about our employment model.

Interview

UV:  Can you talk about how Vertical Harvest started and your experience with that and how you got into the arena and kind of the background story?

Penny: Sure. I had been working as a consultant on a couple of different community projects...this was back when the pine bark beetle epidemic started and the forest service was looking for a lot of different ways to utilize biomass. That's where I kind of got a baseline understanding of what was possible from the biomass side.

Then from the greenhouse side, I was working with a team of experts that was hired to look at building a year-round greenhouse to be heated with biomass.

Unfortunately the project didn't happen, largely because this was around 2008
when the economy tanked. The people that I was working with had worked on greenhouse projects that were kind of functioning as community centers also. Mostly one was, it's in Boston, and it was helping to employ women, single mothers, and train them.

It was really exciting to me to see what was possible. My background does come
from this desire to create businesses and community enhancement projects that
really are tied to more than just one thing. It's not only a business, but it's
also a business that creates food and is just a much more circular model.

Around that time, I got a call from a case manager who is the person who actually is our employment facilitator now. She called asking if I had jobs for any of her clients, with any of these projects that I was spearheading. 

I didn't think I did, but what it did spur me to do was start looking at the possibility of an urban center greenhouse. A greenhouse where people who couldn't drive could get to work by taking public transportation, something that seems a little more core to the community.

I started holding stakeholder meetings to see who might be interested. Really I thought it would be more of a community run greenhouse and not the business that it is today. That's really where (Vertical Harvest Jackson) kind of got its early legs. 

UV: Could you talk about how you gained the technical side of (urban and vertical farming)? Some people are looking to grow something on their kitchen counter and some people have larger aspirations, but (either way) they (often) don't know where to start. 

Penny: You know, I grew up on a farm and a ranch in Colorado. Not that that made me a hydroponic expert by any means, but I did kind of understand these plants and growing because the farm was started by my grandfather and it so it was really something I understood inherently to a certain degree. 

But through the consulting work that I had been doing, I knew this man Paul Sellew, whose family started Backyard Farms, which was at the time the second largest hydroponic tomato producer in the U.S., and it was in Maine. 

I knew that Paul had a really great greenhouse engineer. I also knew that this man was hard to get a hold of because he was very busy. I kind of pitched the early concept to Paul, and he was like "Okay, well I think that you seem to have a pretty good desire at least, even though the concept perhaps was half-baked." That's where we got a hold of Thomas Larssen.

I had initially hired my co-founder Nona just to do decent design work for me, basically some rendering. We presented our early renderings to Paul, and those are what he passed along to Thomas, and Thomas eventually came to visit us and really refined what we were looking at because we were looking at basically every kind of growing system under the sun at that point, even aeroponics, which seemed really far-fetched, and it's not far-fetched now. It's amazing how far the industry has come in eight years, it's pretty incredible actually.

I did things like take a hydroponics short course in the University of Arizona. We knew that we needed a head grower, and even though there were plenty ofpeople who have taught themselves how to be growers, everybody emphasizes the key to success is a good grower. We would hear things like "Oh, tomatoes are an art," and "Lettuce is more of a science,"and things like that. 

UV: If somebody asked you where would you find a kind of elusive or talented greenhouse engineer now, where would you suggest looking ? 

Penny: I do get that question often. The interesting thing is, a lot of the
sales groups (for urban farming equipment) now have developed so much now that they have expertise in their own team, like if you look at Hort Americas, they have their own test greenhouse. They can really basically engineer a greenhouse for you. 

UV: You're talking about the companies that you might hire to develop your system for you?

Penny: Right. so a lot of the sales people kind of have greenhouse expertise on their side now. Does that make sense? A lot of the greatest experience comes from Europe because historically that's where so many of the greenhouses and the long history comes from.

UV: Is that because of the limited space there, or what is the reason? 

Penny: Yeah. I think in the Netherlands, so much of their farmland was, they had to create their farmland and a lot of it was under water and they had limited space.

I think originally a lot of them were growing flowers and turned to food production also and so they've just been at indoor growing for longer than we have. 

I was talking to somebody from Mexico and they were saying that the U.S. has not been responsible for their own food production for years. We've relied on other countries for our food production for such a long time that we haven't really cultivated this expertise.

Now quickly schools are changing, like the University of Arizona has a great
program and Colorado State are developing stronger indoor growing programs because they realize that it is the future. 

I think it's just because we (the United States) went to monocrops that were all about the production of food for fuel and other things like that, and we weren't necessarily focusing on food production because it was so cheap for us to import food. 

UV: What do you think are the hallmarks of (a greenhouse engineer) who's experienced? Is it just a body of experience, or is it like an expertise in the certain crop that you're trying to work with? 

Penny: I do think that if somebody actually has a science background in plants, they
actually understand the science of growing plants (that is important).

I think because now there are certainly a lot of people who just learn about growing and don't learn about horticulture. I have to say that if you can find somebody who has both of those things, it's definitely very beneficial because plant pathology is so
much a part of it, you know because plants are, they're living things and so to say that you understand growing might be fine if you've actually maybe spent
years learning how to grow. I won't discredit those people at all.

It's like a chef. A chef is not made necessarily because he's gone to culinary school, but a chef is made because he maybe has some good experience just cooking. 

Experience is another thing because you can't necessarily just take somebody out of school and expect them to run a whole facility, because there's a lot to it, you know? There are control systems. There's understanding temperature that may be something you would only learn on the job.

UV: Can you talk about some of the everyday challenges from an overall facility management side? 

You obviously have your day-to-day challenges, like you mentioned temperature or what not, but then you also might have overarching challenges, like market dynamics

Can you talk about your insights and what you've learned since you guys have been in operation,and how you guys have improved both in the "whole forest" view, but also the"tree" view as well.

Penny:  For us, since our system was so new and they've (the components) been built in a factory and they actually hadn't operated under growing conditions, there were a lot of kinks to be worked out as you can imagine. 

Those were kind of the initial (set backs). Then were was learning about the building itself because I'm sure any new greenhouse has to kind of get to know and to grow into the skin of what their building is and adapt to that.

Then for us, it was even specific plants because we have a living wall, living three-story wall inside. Within this three-story system, the climate goes from very hot on the bottom very cool, I mean very hot on the top to very cool on the bottom.

 There are challenges like that. It's not because we have a unique labor force that was an interesting thing to figure out too because I think any business has to figure out how to make sure their employees are where they should be according to their strengths. 

Then things that we didn't really aspire to be maybe, like a delivery company even though it's something that everybody thinks is really simple, but adapting to delivering and packaging, I think that was one of the most shocking things for us, like the cost of packaging and the time and correct way to package. We had a lot to learn when we jumped into this.                                           

UV: How would you summarize, or what would be your key points on packaging? For example, how much should people be budgeting for their packaging, common mistakes with packaging, or what are the mistakes that you made that you kind of shot yourself in the foot with?

Penny: We had to laugh because when we started, we had like five different sizes of boxes to ship our produce. It was ridiculous. I think we definitely overstocked on things and under stocked other things like, "oh this label's very pretty but we didn't think about how long it would actually take to put on the clam shell", and things like that. 

I remember one day,  just laughing at myself thinking "Oh my god, this lettuce is the most pampered lettuce that is going to this restaurant." 

Realizing that what you're creating is, of course you fall in love with it and it seems like this living and breathing thing (the produce), but maybe it is like this microclimate that you're creating. It means so much as somebody who was with it from the start.

But what you have to remember is that it's a system. I think looking at it holistically as much as you can to make sure that you think of everything, and having to flow together is so important. 

UV: I know you mentioned working with restaurants. It seems like selling whatever you're growing (as an urban farmer) to a restaurant is a very stereotypical kind of cliché kind of marketing channel as far as the main customer or the urban farming output. 

Can you talk about  what you think, in your experience, people don't understand about marketing and selling the stuff you produce on your urban farm, whether it's a very small amount to a guy down the street, or maybe it's retailers. What do you think are some major misconceptions that have to do with the actual commercialization like after you've grown something, after it's high quality, after it meets the spec of some customer?


 Penny:  I think the important thing to think about that we didn't probably understand would be so challenging, is to make sure that once it's in the store it might be on the shelf for three or four days, and understanding how to ensure that it looks good over that time period is really, really important.

It might be a little different for a restaurant because typically you can take things to a restaurant and it seems to last more because a lot of the lettuces we take are live.

I think it's just a little more challenging on the grocery store's shelf to make sure that things can stay looking fresh for a while on the shelf. 

UV: Can you discuss the pros and cons of a couple of different (marketing and distribution) channels,whether it's restaurants or retail, some people might also be doing farmers'markets, etc? 

Penny: I just think it depends on the size of your greenhouse or your farm. Obviously packaging, part of this is that it adds another element. But then again, it can be much more simple to sell to a restaurant partner. 

I know that a lot of people think that restaurants can be fickle, but we've been so fortunate in that our restaurant partners are really very supportive. 

People do need to look at the added costs of when you take your product to a grocery store, you do have to invest in packaging and your brand and all of things that I think people underestimate. 

The whole distribution question is a whole other challenge too.

UV: Obviously your business has like a social responsibility element, but it's also for profit. Can you talk about that decision and maybe how you came to that decision, but also maybe the ramifications of that? I mean,  would you have done it differently, or how do you think it turned out? 

Penny: I think for me personally, we are starting a non-profit arm to support our educational arm because we're a production greenhouse but we're also a greenhouse that has a lot of learning going on both in that we bring people in and that we're learning ourselves about this whole new growing system.

I've always wanted it to be just a business. It's a struggle because I think the challenge is that I think it's too easy to criticize something that is a charity sometimes or it's too easy not to believe in it as a solution.

Forus, we have relied heavily on the generosity of grants and donations to get where we are, and investors that have a lot of understanding about what it takes to get started. 

Maybe that's just part of being an entrepreneur too and being in an innovative company. I'm sure a lot of innovative companies go through the same sort of financial challenges and they have to have similar support in one way or the other. I guess in the end it doesn't matter. I'm not sure I'm happy that we're able to be a part of a community in a larger way,that we do have educational programs and that we are able to bring in, and most bring in people from the community, and most greenhouses can't do that because of tax pressures and things like that that it brings in.

UV:  What's your favorite fruit or vegetable? 

Penny: My favorite fruit or vegetable? I love apples.

UV:  What's the best advice that you received when you were building Vertical Harvest Jackson or when you were learning the ins and outs of operating this type of facility, like the one you have in Vertical Harvest, or it could even be not related to anything, it could be generalized advice, like what's the best advice you think you've ever gotten? 

Penny: I mean, it's so cliché but I think people just say, don't underestimate how much capital you have to have on hand for startups, and I really thought we would avoid that, but it does. It takes more money than you think to get through those early phases. 

UV:  Do you think that amplifies for like an urban farming company, or do you think it's the same across all company types?

Penny: Not necessarily. But I think the thing that I have learned the most, is that you really have to be honest with yourself, honest with yourself and everybody else. I think that's the easiest thing not to do.

I think a lot of startups are afraid to be honest with themselves because they put so much hard work into it and they don't want to talk about the pitfalls or to be honest about what might be kind of lurking in the shadow. That is what's going to give you a hard time.It really will. I mean, it's something we all have a hard time being, and it's just honest about what the challenge of the day is, or really is that financial really as honest as you think it should be, or are those productions really ...go back and revisit all of your numbers with as many experts as you can. 

UV: Obviously Vertical Harvest had a decent amount of press coverage and you probably have gotten a good amount of exposure from that over the years. What do you think is something that a lot of people don't understand about your company or like a misconception that you would like other people to know? 

Penny: I've never thought about that. I feel like ... Imean, I don't know if it's a misconception, but I do think, and maybe people don't realize that the time that was put into starting this greenhouse. 

It was a monumental effort. Something like this is not for the weak at heart at all.It's scary, and it's hard work and things don't turn out the way you want them to. There's a lot that goes around. It's very life-changing. I don't think it's all like a bed of roses and that. Of course we're smiling on the pictures, but let me tell you. It's not easy.               

Thanks Penny!