Bowery Farming is a New York City startup company that just raised $7.5 million in funding to bring its indoor farming technology to market. Here’s our Bowery Farming review.
What is Bowery Farming?
Bowery Farming is an organic food startup company that has created technology like robotics, LED lightning, and data analytics to maximize the efficiency of indoor farming.
The New York, New York-based company just raised $7.5 million in one round of funding from four investors.
Bowery Farming was founded in 2015 by Irving Fain. The company, according to its Crunchbase profile, is “the modern farming company on an ambitious mission to transform the future of food and change the face of agriculture”.
In order to do that, the company is leveraging modern technologies like automation, software, and controlled environment technology.
More importantly, Bowery Farming’s technology appears to work as advertised: the company claims to be able to grow food locally that’s over 100 times more productive than the same square foot of farmland. The technology also uses 0 pesticides and 95% less water.
Today, Bowery produce is available at a small number of restaurants and supermarkets across New York City – including certain Whole Foods locations.
How does Bowery Farming’s technology “create the ideal conditions for growing the purest produce imaginable”? Let’s take a closer look at why the company has attracted the attention of investors.
How Does Bowery Farming’s Farming Technology Work?
Bowery Farming calls its farming technology “the next evolution in farming”. All crops planted at a Bowery farm are precisely cared for using technology that controls its growing environment – not pesticides.
Bowery goes into more detail about the technology here: http://boweryfarming.com/how-it-works
Bowery calls this “post organic” vegetables. Every aspect of the vegetables is controlled, from seed to store, to ensure quality and care at every step. Bowery claims this leads to unparalleled freshness, flavor, and nutrition.
Bowery sources its seeds from partners who have spent nearly a decade developing the ideal seeds. Bowery claims that they don’t rely on genetically modified ingredients (GMOs).
Ultimately, all of this technology allows Bowery to grow its crops indoors in highly productive settings. So whether you live in the middle of Manhattan or Nebraska, you’ll have access to fresh, tasty, locally-grown produce.
Bowery Farming Features
Some of the features you’ll see in Bowery farms include:
- Ideal Conditions: Bowery controls the indoor growing environment for its farms, which means they can grow the purest vegetables year round with no pesticides required.
- Optimal Lighting: LED lighting mimics the full spectrum of the sun.
- Precision Farming: Bowery meticulously measures the growing process and captures data along the way, so they no longer have to rely on “eyeballing” crops to determine what they need. From water to nutrients to lighting, Bowery farms control every stage of the growing process.
- Purified Water: Bowery farms use purified water to deliver the same nutrients you would find in high-quality soil. Farms also use 95% less water.
- Shorter Growing Times: Crop cycles at Bowery farms are faster and more frequent than traditional agricultural techniques. Bowery claims this process is becoming more and more efficient with every crop they release, as they learn more about their food and what makes it grow.
- Harvest at the Perfect Time: Bowery farms use sophisticated analytics to harvest crops at the ideal time to ensure flavor is at its perfect level.
- Fast Delivery Times: Bowery farms go from the harvest to stores and restaurants within a day – as opposed to traditional agriculture products, which can take weeks to arrive at the place of consumption.
What is Bowery Growing?
Bowery is currently growing and selling a small selection of vegetables, including:
- Baby Kale
- Bowery Blend
- Butterhead Lettuce
- Arugula
- Kale Mix
- Basil
How to Buy Bowery Farming Produce
Bowery produce is sold at supermarkets and restaurants across the NYC metro area. you can find it at Whole Foods and similar stores, for example, as well as a small selection of restaurants (including Craft and Fowler and Wells).
To view the full list of participating restaurants and retailers, visit the official website here.
About Bowery Farming
Bowery was co-founded by Irving Fain (CEO), David Golden (finance and business operations), and Brian Falther (systems engineering).
The company’s first round of financing saw investments from Box Group, SV Angel, Red Swan, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and Flybridge.
You can get in touch with Bowery by phone at 646-493-1322 or by email at [email protected].
Bowery Farming continues to change how we grow produce – and consume produce – in urban areas. Stay tuned to see what happens with Bowery in the future!
