Nov. 02, 2021

By Brian McVicar | bmcvicar@mlive.com

WYOMING, MI — Gordon Food Service has expanded its partnership with Square Roots, a New York-based company that grows herbs and salad greens inside modified shipping containers at the family-owned food distributor’s headquarters in Wyoming.

Square Roots now has 20 shipping containers at GFS’s headquarters, up from 10 in 2019, where a team of farmers grows basil, parsley, cilantro, kale, leafy greens, microgreens, and more year-round. Tobias Peggs, co-founder, and CEO at Square Roots, said the expansion was based on customer demand.

“People want to buy it, and the beauty with our model is that we can pop-up these new farms pretty quickly,” he said. “That farm that we’re talking about here took about three months from shovels in the ground to first seeds in the farm.”

Square Roots sells its products to GFS, Meijer, Whole Foods, Fresh Thyme Market and more. Each package is equipped with a digital QR code that can be scanned using a smartphone, enabling customers to see “the complete story” of where their food came from — including which Square Roots farmer harvested it, and when.

The company’s shipping containers, which measure about 340 square feet, are outfitted with a digitally connected, water-efficient hydroponic growing system and an LED lighting system. Together, the 20 shipping containers at GFS can produce an estimated 2.4 million packages of herbs and leafy greens annually.

“Although we’ve doubled the size of the footprint, we’ve actually tripled the amount of food that we can grow just based on our technology getting better,” Peggs said. “These farms are almost like an iPhone. Every new version we create, it can do more mind-blowing things.”

Square Roots was founded in 2016 by Peggs and Executive Chairman Kimbal Musk.

It’s based in Brooklyn, New York, and the company has a research and development farm there and a production farm at the GFS’s headquarters in Wyoming. It has about 30 employees in the Grand Rapids area who maintain the shipping container farm and perform other tasks.

Peggs said the partnership with GFS grew out of conversations with the Wyoming-based food distributor’s CEO, Rich Wolowski. The idea was to develop a way for GFS to provide fresh microgreens and salad greens to its customers.

“The way to do that, as he saw it, was by building a Square Roots farm on literally every single food distribution center that they own across the country,” Peggs said. “That was the plan. That was very much aligned with our mission to bring local food” to customers “all around the world.”

GFS, founded in 1897, bills itself as the largest family-operated broadline food distribution company in North America. The company provides products to restaurants and foodservice operators throughout the U.S. and Canada and operates 175 grocery stores throughout the U.S.

Freshness is one of the values GFS sees in Square Roots’ products, said Sean Walsh, the company’s North American director for fruits, vegetables, and dairy.

Oftentimes, the herbs, microgreens, and salad greens are harvested and delivered to customers the next day, he said.

“That just leaves that operator with such a longer runway to offer fresh foods and fresh product to their customer rather than five to seven days of travel time that would occur from most growing areas,” Walsh said.

While Square Roots’ products make up a small percentage of GFS’ inventory, that figure is growing, company officials said. In particular, that’s true of microgreens. GFS is now providing microgreens to more restaurants it serves thanks to Square Roots’ recent expansion, Walsh said.

GFS also sees value in the company’s emphasis on urban farming and its push to generate new interest in the farming profession, he said. The company also likes Square Roots’ emphasis on sustainability. Through its hydroponic growing system, which recirculates water, Square Roots can grow crops using 95% less water than conventional farming methods, Square Roots said in a news release.

Square Roots also says its products, by being grown near the customers it serves, reduces “food miles” — the distance from where food is grown to where it’s consumed. Many large-scale salad greens suppliers are based in California and Arizona, for example.

“Those are all things that are striking a purpose for people that we wanted to be part of,” Walsh said, referring to the focus on sustainability.

Lead Photo: Square Roots, an indoor farming company based in Brooklyn, New York, has expanded its partnership with Gordon Food Service. It has added an additional 10 modified shipping containers for growing herbs and salad greens at Gordon Food Service's headquarters. (MLive file photo)