How an indoor vertical farming company stays sustainable yet profitable

Ever wonder how an indoor vertical farm achieves its sustainability goals while remaining profitable? Well, we definitely do, which is why we had a very long conversation with Katie Seawell, chief commercial officer at Bowery Farming, a New York-based indoor vertical farming and digital agriculture company at the Porte Conference in June.

Seawell told Retail Brew about keeping the business afloat while meeting its circularity goals and being able to communicate all of it with its customers.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

On being sustainable yet scalable

One of the biggest things we can do—and I think this is really important when you’re thinking about the environment—is a material assessment of your business. You can’t measure everything. So what are those things that are actually going to move the needle? So for us, energy consumption is one of them. But we also know that scale and output is one of the biggest levers we have to drive efficiency through the system and drive efficient efficiency and energy consumption, which is why we’re very focused on yield and output and efficiency coming out of the farm.

You have technological advancements that are happening every day, which is fantastic. We’ve got a commercial farm in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It’s our third commercial farm. LED lights are 15% more efficient there than our original farms. The other thing that we’re focused on right now is renewables. This is, again, where we think it’s a multi-stakeholder approach, we pull renewable energy for all of our farms right now. We’re fortunate enough that we’re in municipalities where we’re pulling off the grid, that’s possible. That’s not always the case throughout the United States, we were looking at Florida a little bit. That wouldn’t be an option today, it would be a future state. But that’s another way we’re tackling it. So those are just some of the things. Our footprint in terms of transportation is much lighter, again, because we’re growing closer to the point of consumption, so you don’t tag on the food miles in terms of economic sustainability, or profitability. But again, what drives that cost curve down in the farms is absolutely maximizing production and product out of the farm. But even within that context, today, we are pretty close to price parity, at least with organic segments in the stores, if not the conventional field-grown product yet. We have broad distribution. You’ll find us in Whole Foods, but you also find us in Walmart. And what you’re seeing on the retailer side is they understand the business risks to supply continuity if they don’t think differently about their purchasing of produce and fresh fruit as well.

On technology innovation in food

I do think there’s a mega trend happening, and I think Gen Z is a part of it. It used to be perceived that the more natural the better, in terms of sustainability. I still think there is a piece of that that still holds true. But I think there’s an increased awareness and understanding that technological advancement is going to be key to sustainability as well. And I think when you look at what’s going on in the food-tech movement, you’ve got cell-based meat, you have precision fermentation happening. I think 10 years ago, people would have been afraid to lean into this “Frankenstein” food. And today, I think consumers are starting to understand. If I understand why it’s good for me, and it truly is, and I understand why it’s good for the environment, then I am open to technological innovation, that’s going to help solve part of the problem.

On communicating its message with the younger consumers

I don’t think there’s like a silver bullet here. I think it’s actually more complex for us because we have different messages at different points in the customer journey. So we absolutely understand the messaging that needs to work on packaging on shelf for us, which is much more functional benefits to the consumer: pesticide free, longer, fresher, and great tasting. And then we find them at different points in their customer journey, whether that’s online, whether that’s in real life where they’re thinking about a broader set of things around the environment, sustainability, creating with food, and that’s where we’ll engage with them there. But it’s more of a complex matrix of calm strategy, for sure.