A vertical farm in Central Avenue, Colombia Heights in Minnesota, is tucked away in the basement of a one-story plaza. There you’ll find lifelong friends and business partners Andrew Rescorla ’10 and Joel Love ’10 tending their hydroponic herb farm, Urban Greens.
“We’re trying to grow the highest quality herbs in the world with the highest performing team in the industry,” says Rescorla. How they accomplish that goal matters to both of them, at least as much as the goal itself. “Our location is part of our philosophy,” says Rescorla. “You can only get to it by the alley. People have no idea it’s there.
“It’s always been very important to us to fix our little piece of a broken food system, which is just pouring gobs of pesticides on plants to maximize yields and do whatever it can to keep costs down. That’s not our model,” says Love. “We want to grow food that we’re proud of, that we’re eager to have our friends eat straight out of the farm.”
In its infancy, Urban Greens sold fresh greens to friends and family, then at farmers' markets. For a few years, Rescorla and Love even offered a home delivery service. Now, they primarily sell wholesale to grocery stores.
Read the entire article at Spark Magazine