While farm to table restaurants are nothing new, not many operators source their own salad greens from right next door. Neon Greens is a newly opened quick-service salad restaurant in St. Louis, Mo., that operates its own 400-square-foot vertical hydroponic farm attached to the restaurant storefront.

The farm yields yield roughly three acres each of 80 different lettuces, all of which Neon Greens uses in its salads, from mizuna lettuce to sweet crisp lettuce.

The two hydroponic farms are in an ancillary room attached to the restaurant, and an elevated conveyor belt delivers the lettuce next door once it is harvested.

Hamilton Horne was the one approaching restaurants when he launched King Tide Farms, which produces leafy greens with names like red streak arugula, fern parsley and bronze fennel — some of which Horne conjures up himself.

His pitch differed from other local farmers: the Sullivan’s Island native promised to deliver what he dubbed the “chef’s cut,” a smaller-sized green that could go directly from his farm to the plate.