Page 27 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

“It was super tiny-scale but we were able to build our customer base, process and reinvest in the
business to the point where we had a fairly substantial operation at our house. We were serving
about 60 customers including restaurants, farmers market and retailers in the Seattle area,”
Albert says.

“We are super local in that we grow our greens and deliver them to you within hours,” Albert
explained in a video. “That means longer shelf life. They are fresh and more flavorful. We can
do this because we are in a controlled environment system. That means we provide the perfect
nutrition for the plants, we provide the right lighting and we are pesticide and herbicide free.”

Albert initially began growing with an
aeroponic production system but transitioned
to a self-designed vertical farm with LED
lighting and recirculating nutrient film
technique (NFT) irrigation.

“We are working on becoming the most

sustainable farm we can be by minimizing

our carbon footprint, reusing and recycling

our nutrients, not having waste products and

trying to minimize our overall footprint on Farmbox Greens General Manager Dan Albert
the environment as a farm,” Albert adds. with his wife Lindsay Sidlauskas

Unlike many vertical farm startups, Albert started small and learned the ropes along the
way. But as his company grew, retailers took notice. In 2016, he was approached by Charlie’s

Produce, one of the largest independent produce distributors on the west coast with distribution

centers in Seattle, Spokane, Portland, Anchorage, Los Angeles, and Boise.

Alberts says he basically faced two future paths: “Be a “farmer” and focus on growing products

and developing technology and the process to produce it. Or focus on sales, marketing, and a
distribution network (in addition to the “farming”) to move the products we were growing.” He
decided to focus on the Farmbox road and let Charlie’s focus on produce sales and logistics.

“I started this business with the idea that we are here to ‘Scale to make a difference.’ We
chose to scale by acquisition and doing so with the help of Charlie’s made it faster that I
could have done it on my own.”

Albert is still in charge of Farmbox, but as part of the move, Farmbox was housed in a much
bigger and better facility on the Charlie’s Produce campus.

“Everything from the lights, to the growing system, to the water treatment system has been
improved. Perhaps the biggest improvement was to our food safety plan. When I was on my
own, I just didn’t have the scale or resources to implement rigorous GAP (Good Agriculture
Practices) and GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) plans.” Now he’s able to serve thousands
of customers instead of the 50-100 customers he could fulfill from inside the garage.

When asked about his top advice for others interested in urban, vertical farming, he admitted that
it was tough to boil it down to a sentence or two.

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