USA: NEW YORK: Local Vertical Farming Startup Starting To Scale. It Begins On Buffalo’s East Side

By Dan Miner - Reporter

May 31, 2022

Ellicottville Greens CEO Gabe Bialkowski knew he had a quality product in a hot industry.

The question was how to cost-effectively import his company’s shipping container-based vertical farms into other markets.

Some vertical farming startups are raising gobs of venture capital to support the capital-intensive rollout of their operations on a much bigger scale.

Ellicottville Greens plans to make community-based partners, then become the operating side of their local indoor farming operations.

“We’re the farm management company that will come in, design the farm, build it out and manage it entirely,” Bialkowski said. “The community partner is the one who lives in that community, who is looking to bring a farm there and wants to have a hands-off role in implementing it in their city.”

That model will begin in Ellicottville Greens’ home region. The company is will establish a vertical farming operation on a site in the Broadway-Fillmore district on Buffalo’s East Side in August. The site already has a community partner, its own brand, and locally-based food distributors who have committed to buying its output.

Bialkowski said more details will be unveiled this summer.

That’s not his only confirmation node. Ellicottville Greens is also working with a salad bar chain, based in Louisville, Kentucky, with multiple locations. Powered by Ellicottville Greens, that chain will bring its own local farming operation to Louisville later this year.

Bialkowski said the company’s ability to control its environment – from soil quality to lighting – is a potentially attractive element for large groups that struggle to maintain consistency across their operations.

“Food distributors, grocery chains, hotel and hospitality management groups, all these places buy tons and tons of produce from local buyers,” he said. “We can give them a consistent product in every one of their locations. It doesn’t matter if it’s East Coast or West Coast.”

Bialkowski said those two projects will occupy much of his startup’s time in 2022, serving as proof points for more expansive growth strategies in the years ahead. Ellicottville Greens raised about $300,000 this year on a convertible note, bridging the gap between last year’s $1 million funding round and a larger seed round later this year.

Ellicottville Greens has six full-time employees from its home base at the Eastern Hills Mall, where its indoor farms sell every bit of produce they make. That's the beginning of a much bigger vision.

“The goal with EG was never to have 50 of these containers,” he said. “The goal was to have hundreds of them, and not just to supply Western New York, but to offer hyper-local product all over the country.”

Ellicottville Greens is the 15th local startup to confirm a growth-oriented capital raise this year. The others are Circuit Clinical ($29 million), PostProcess Technologies ($5 million), VeriTX ($4.5 million), HELIXintel ($3 million), ShearShare ($2.3 million), Azuna Fresh ($2.5 million), Patient Pattern ($2 million), BetterMynd ($1 million), Cahill Tech ($375,000), Swift Rails ($255,000) AireXpert ($125,000), Arbol ($110,000), Timberhut (undisclosed) and Ognomy (undisclosed).

Lead photo: Gabe Bialkowski, CEO, Ellicottville Greens. Joed Viera