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“You can't run a business if you have to refund people for bad cucumbers,” says John Karwacki, founder of Inspired Go, who appears on Greenhouse Success Stories to reveal how fresh produce supply chains are truly the backbone of any food delivery operation—and why relentless focus on quality has driven Inspired Go’s explosive growth across North America.

From launching with office deliveries to pivoting during COVID and forging a deep partnership with Dominick DiMucci at Haven Greens, John Karwacki pulls back the curtain on the logistics and data that keep your salad fresh on day five, while Dominick DiMucci shares the real story behind controlled environment agriculture’s glossy image and the hard work it takes to build consistency customers crave. If you think greenhouse-to-buyer partnerships are simple or automated growing is a breeze, this episode will challenge everything you thought you knew—and show what it really takes to deliver perfection from greenhouse to doorstep.

Key Takeaways

1. Don’t build a greenhouse and then search for a market—start relationships with buyers before you ever break ground.
2. Let quality drive your decisions. Obsess over your product, and put the plant’s needs first every single day.
3. Invest in the right people upfront—team strength and early collaboration fuel lasting success.
4. Make your operations customer-focused. Gather direct feedback, track retention, and adapt your offerings to what people actually crave.
5. Approach technology as a servant to the plant—not the master. Use automation and innovation only when it strengthens output and flavor.

Memorable Quotes

"Our job is to provide the plant what it needs to succeed and thrive, not try to force it down a different path for our own reasons. At the end of the day, the plant comes first."

"I think it’s important that we’re transparent about the industry. Controlled environment agriculture is often wrapped up in a nice bow, but it’s a lot of work and difficult to execute on a daily basis. Despite things being controlled and sterile, it’s not hard to unsuccessfully operate a greenhouse."

"Investing in the team early is something that, at least for Haven Greens, I think has led to us having so much velocity in year one. People are the drivers for your business, and putting the right people in the right places early really sets you up for success."

Connect with Dominick & Haven Greens

Dominick's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominickdimucci/

Haven Greens Website: https://havengreens.ca/

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Haven Greens YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HavenGreens

Haven Greens Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557929468630

Connect with Jon & Inspired Go

Jon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-karwacki-4a49521a5/

Inspired Go Website: https://inspiredgo.com/

Inspired Go Facebook: https://facebook.com/inspired.go

Inspired Go Instagram: https://instagram.com/inspired.go

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2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews

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2025 Precision Ag Report

But again, it all comes back to, like, the most important thing is

quality of meals every week and getting great

suppliers because really, the fresh produce supply chain is the backbone of the company.

Right. Like, you can't run a business if you have to refund people

for bad cucumbers. Welcome to

Greenhouse Success Stories.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Greenhouse Success Stories podcast.

Today we've got an interesting discussion ahead of

us. We are actually interviewing two people from the

greenhouse industry. So this will be very, very interesting. We have

Dominic DiMucci, who is the director of cultivation from Haven

Greens, and we have John Karwacki, who is the

owner and founder of Inspired Go.

So Haven Greens is the

greenhouse grower. They are providing fresh produce

to John Inspired Go for their

salads. So we'll hear a lot more about their backgrounds and how they work

together. But thank you for both agreeing to do the show.

Thanks for having us on, Trina. Yeah, thanks for having us.

Okay, so just to get this conversation started,

you know, I briefly mentioned how, you know, Haven Greens, your growing product

that Inspired Go is using in their salad kits, but

maybe give us a bit more of a breakdown, you know, of how your

relationship started. Like, how did you both start working with

one another? Where did you start with your companies

and how are you, you know, doing today? So maybe, John,

we'll get started with you if you can. Go ahead, you know,

answer a bit how Inspired Go was started and then how you came

to start working with Haven Greens. And then, Dominic, we'll hear from you

from Haven Greens. Sure. So it goes

a long way back, but my dad started a fresh produce company

in western Canada about 30 years ago, and I

grew up on the US Mexico border in Nogales, where

the tomatoes cross. So I've kind of been in the industry my entire life. And

so I worked around the world. I worked in Mexico for a lot of

time, a long time, and in Europe, and came back to Canada

to help with my dad's company. And he

built a lettuce greenhouse very similar to Havens in

Western Canada. And I helped was a big part of that for about eight,

eight years. And I'm actually embarrassed about how much I know

about. Lettuce now. And so we had this incredible

lettuce that we were growing, and his company had access, whether

they were growing it themselves or procuring it to basically every

fresh produce item under the sun. And I was eating at

a quick service restaurant every day, paying 25 to $30

for a salad. And I was like, this is crazy. I can

know make this for way more. I can make this way more

economically and only charge customers, you know, 10 to $12

for the most amazing salads. And so I ended

up thinking there was a pricing arbitrage that we could take advantage of

and consumers could really win. And I approached a good

friend of mine who founded the company Skip the Dishes,

named Josh Samair. And he kind of helped me, or he really pushed me to,

to go direct to consumer. And he obviously was.

Skip had a ton of knowledge on the last mile front, so delivering

to customers. So he helped me get started. And then, yeah,

we launched in Calgary right before COVID We

were actually delivering to office buildings. And Covid wiped out our

first business. It went to zero. So we pivoted to home delivery

and ended up, you know, kind of working across

Western Canada. We expanded into Ontario about

two years ago, and then now we've opened up in the United

States as well. And so how I met Haven and

Dominic was actually, to be totally transparent.

My business partner wanted to go see another lettuce

greenhouse, and I did not want to go. I've been to

quite a few lettuce greenhouses that aren't very good, to be

totally candid. And I didn't think it would be worth worth the

visit, but he convinced me to go. I walked into Haven

and I walked out of there thinking that was one of the best greenhouses I've

ever seen in my life. Their attention to detail is absolutely

incredible. Their team's amazing, and you can really tell by the

product quality. All of those little details add up to an incredible product.

And that's all we want in our salads. Like, what we do is really hard.

Fresh produce at people's door, especially when you put a knife to it and cut

stuff, is really, really difficult to do every week at a high level.

And as soon as we find a supplier that can execute at

that level for us, you know, we're all in. So I walked out of there

being insanely impressed with Haven's operation.

Bob, that's very impressive. That must feel good to hear

that kind of feedback, Dom, as the director of cultivation. Yeah, it

does, and I appreciate that, John, but I also understand where he's coming

from. I've been in, in plenty of greenhouses myself and can

understand that skepticism. You know, I've been talking to a

lot of people lately and you know, I think it's important that we're, we're

transparent about the industry. I think that CEA is kind of wrapped up

in a, in a nice bow, maybe publicly, but you know,

it's a lot of work and it's, it's difficult to execute on a daily basis.

And it, it is, despite things being controlled and

sterile and clean and whatnot, like it is not difficult

to unsuccessfully operate a greenhouse. Right. That's, it

happens. And we've seen turmoil in this industry. Just going

back to kind of where all of this started.

Professionally, all I've done is lettuce. I did my undergrad

and master's degree in horticulture and controlled environment agriculture at

Colorado State University. I'm originally from outside of

Chicago where my family owns and operates a compost

farm. So growing up like I was

at that farm, it wasn't produce, but you know, taking data,

collecting data, that's kind of what, what led me into the industry.

And then, you know, not only have I only focused on lettuce,

I've only focused on lettuce in these mobile goalie controlled environment

greenhouses. So began at a greenhouse in

Colorado. I won't say the name, but it's of the greenhouses that John

is, is referencing, that ended up not doing too well,

but took those learnings, applied it to the next project which

was a more of a high tech greenhouse in Central Texas actually.

And that's a successful greenhouse, it's a well run greenhouse and it's also,

you know, quite a challenge to grow in in a harsh environment. Kind of on

the opposite of what we deal with in Canada where we have many months of

cold, there's many months of hot in Texas. And so that was,

you know, a really good learning experience and how to

operate a greenhouse at a high level with suboptimal conditions.

And through that experience in Texas, quite frankly, I didn't think I was

ever going to leave there. But our chief agricultural officer, Eric

Highfield here at Haven Greens had been working with

our leadership team on developing this project in the background. Me and

Eric had a very strong relationship with each other. He actually

was doing work for the automation provider for

our company or our greenhouse, I should say. And so kind of through that

relationship over a few years that, that led me to take on

this role of director of cultivation here at Haven Greens. So at Haven

Greens, just a little bit of background because it isn't your

conventional type of produce greenhouse,

it is Canada's first fully automated mobile goli

greenhouse. And so for the listeners that maybe haven't been exposed to that,

what that means is, is our product is hands free from seeding to

harvest. So we automatically seed directly into gutters or

gullies. Those gullies move perpetually throughout the

grow system and then come time to harvest

automatically fed via conveyors into a cutting and packaging system.

So kind of the 10,000 foot overview, but through my experience working on

these mobile go systems, probably prior to this project is what led

me to this project. And it's basically just been a journey of kind of like

John said, we do really focus on the details. That's really important to

operate a greenhouse at a high level. And kind of just through those learnings have

been able to apply myself and Eric combined as kind of the brain

trust for the horticultural side of Haven Greens operation.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, thank you for that overview. I definitely have a couple of

follow up questions. I'll start with John,

just out of curiosity, you know, why did you start with

supplying offices? Like why'd you go directly to

offices and not to people's homes? And how many staff do you currently

have? Yeah, well at the time the thinking was the last mile is

very, very expensive. And so it made more sense to drop off,

you know, 30 salads at one building versus two or three at

somebody's house. And we actually built a really cool SMS

texting system where like you, if you were in a big building, you get a

text at like eight in the morning. And, and if you clicked one, it would

charge your credit card, you'd get like a chicken Caesar salad or if you click

2, like a taco salad, whatever. And it was working really,

really well. And yeah, it was, it was going great. And

then Covid wiped it out and we actually found out that the

business model in direct to

homes scaled a lot better in the long run than

the mobile SMS platform. So we, we stuck with it and

we were able to figure it out. And so yeah, it was definitely

challenging but worth it for our company to

go through that. Right now we have about 30

management staff and then we have

probably 60 others. And we

operate, our business model is a little bit different now. We used to make

the salads ourselves. Now we have co packers that are doing it that were

really partnered intimately with that. We go in there, we

teach them how exactly we want the salads made. Works really well

for them because it's a great compliment to their already existing operations. Allows

us to scale a lot faster as well. But we still do have a

pick and pack team, people actually putting the orders together in

Calgary, which makes up a good chunk of the staff we currently have.

And we also have about 500 independent contract

drivers across North America right now delivering

salads every weekend. Wow. Congratulations. So sounds like

pretty good size and it sounds like you're scaling and growing

quickly, if I'm hearing you correctly. Yeah, we,

the first couple years is really about figuring out the business model and how to

the salad's shelf life to last long enough. Like the

aha moment for our customers is when they open that salad

on day five and it's the same freshness as when they got it on,

on Sunday. And so once we figure out how to do that

with each individual item, you know, then it's, it's possible to have

one bigger facility that can make everything and then you can ship it out

from there. So, you know, that's what we're doing in Toronto. We have a

facility we're partnered with in Las Vegas which covers basically all of

the south southwest of the United States. And we just launched New

York about three weeks ago now in New Jersey. And we're

planning to be across the eastern seaboard kind of by spring and

probably all of America by this time next year if

everything goes well. So we're definitely on a rapid expansion

plan and we're lucky because we've been able to

keep the business healthy enough to fund it out of profitability and not

have to raise a bunch of money or go crazy. So yeah, we're excited about

it. But again, it comes all comes back to like the most important thing is

quality of meals every week and getting great

suppliers because really the fresh produce supply chains, the backbone of the company.

Right. Like you can't run a business if you have to refund people

for bad cucumbers. You know, when they buy an $11 salad for

a 20 cent ingredient, the math doesn't really work. So

it's all about finding really good partners to, to help us.

Yeah. So with that being said, have you found that by working with Haven

Greens and you know, getting this really, really high quality lettuce premium product where

they're paying very close attention to detail to grow it, that that's

improved, you know, the shelf life and you know, quality

factors of the salad? Yeah, we, we actually

measure our customers in cohorts. So each week is a new cohort

of customers and we can actually trace an increase in

customer retention, which is our most important metric, to when we switched

over to Haven in Ontario. And it's been high ever

since. So not only can I sit there objectively and say, yes, this lettuce tastes

amazing, it's perfect with our salads, all of that, we can actually see it

in our, in our data as well. Okay, Dom, going

back to you. So you made a comment about how CEA

is wrapped up, you know, in a nice bow. And I know what you mean

by that comment, because young people think cea, they think of like this

picture perfect setup that, you know, is going to solve all of our

problems with food security in the future. And I have to hold myself accountable

because sometimes when I promote cea, I think I might be

giving people that interpretation, you know, as well,

which is very, you know, flawed and inaccurate. But I'm

curious to know, from your perspective, what do you think is a

common misconception of CEA and growing in a greenhouse,

you know, and growing with a fully controlled environment that you wish

people didn't have? Well, I think it's

exactly that. I've been saying this for a few years now. I like the

term mitigated environment agriculture. Right.

So this is, this is greenhouse production. Right. And so that's going to be separate

from your vertical farm. And I'm going to just leave vertical farm out of this

discussion because I don't focus on that whatsoever. Or do I? I find it to

be the right tech for the application, but I think that's a different conversation,

despite the two kind of being lumped together. But the biggest

misconception that I think people have is

that one, it's very easy because it's fully automated and

everything runs itself. Right. Of course that's not the case. And

two, you're still very reliant on what happens outside

for what happens inside. And now that's not going to

necessarily affect. We have a lot of tools

in place that are still going to maintain quality and get us through those peaks

and valleys. So it's something that's more of a, know, an internal metric

where, very simply put, right, like we're getting into lower light levels

this time of year, right? You're going to see fluctuations with your output. You

know, things can still happen in a greenhouse that I don't think, you know,

people outside of the industry fully understand.

You know, I think it's an important discussion to have that, you know, while you

put a lot of pieces in place to mitigate what happens

outside, you Know, a really high performing greenhouse is still

going to see, you know, modulation and fluctuation throughout the year,

mainly like on the output side as opposed to your, your quality side of

things. But yeah, it's, it's, it's hard work and

it's long hours and you know, there's a lot of things to manage, especially when

you're blending together horticulture and a pretty extreme amount of, you know,

mechanical automation and mechanical engineering. So

yeah, you know, I don't think that like CEA can't

be wrapped up in a nice bow. I just think that we've seen

over the past few years like either

inventing problems to solve or using the wrong pieces of

technology to fit an application or a

narrative. And this kind of misconception

between like technology companies and farming companies, like

very important to me is like using the right tech for

the right application and using that to like be able

to scale. But at the end of the day we're still farmers and the plant

comes first. And I think the difference that you see in

greenhouses that, you know, as John alluded to earlier, maybe don't

look as good where people expect that they, they should look better is

because the plant isn't the one making the decisions. And, and as

silly as that sounds, like at the end of the day, like we are,

we, our job is to provide the plant what it needs to

succeed and to thrive and not try to force it down a different,

you know, alley to do something that we want

from, for, for whatever reason. Like if we're trying to push,

someone's trying to push a piece of technology to make it do something right.

Like it sounds really silly, but like the plant makes the decisions and

you need to design your facility around like knowing

what you're going to put into it, putting the right pieces in place,

you know, managing that, that CapEx and OpEx and not just

spending a bunch of money on a bunch of random things to, to try to

solve issues. And so I think when you see the

operators with high quality and you know, I'm, I'm

proud to be recognized with Haven Greens in that category is

because they're the ones that are letting the plant

inform the decision making for, for the greenhouse. Because at the end of the day

all that what matters is the customer experience. What matters is a high

quality product delivered to the consumer. And you know,

like it's the logistics behind fresh produce distribution

is complicated enough and you know, John's taking it one step further of

putting that on people's doorsteps. As opposed to us just getting it to the

grocery store. Right. So that quality is, is

paramount if you want customer retention, if you want brand

awareness. It's really, really cool to hear John, that, that you could

actually statistically see that. And I do

think that the quality speaks for itself and working with the right

types of plants with the right technology for the application.

Just another question to you, Dom. You know, I know your title is director

of cultivation, but can you just give a brief description of kind

of what your day to day looks like as the director of cultivation? Because

you know, it's not the classic head grower title or assistant grower

whatnot. So just something that the listeners can better understand

what your role is. Sure it's not too dissimilar from, from a head

grower with slightly more like management responsibility in

place. But you know, the day generally starts with, with a meeting with

our, our production and logistics team. Just making sure everyone's on the same page. Like

we know what, what we need to make priority orders for, for everything that needs

to go out. Just kind of confirming, you know, what our projected output is going

to be for that day for that week. That's a couple minute huddle and then

our system's moving. We like to say that this is a

perpetual lettuce growing machine and it's all one big loop.

So if there's downtime for whatever reason on packaging

equipment or something as simple as a motor goes down, that just extends our

day because we have to, we have to hit our quotas. Like we

don't falter on that. We, we are non stop in

production. We'll get things moving, check in with the production team, make sure

those first few gutters coming into the packaging area are running

smooth. Then generally I'll circle up with my team, the what we call

it our technical cultivation associates or assistant growers. But what kind

of separates them from your traditional assistant growers, they also are

heavily involved with the operation of the equipment on the sewing side

of things and like the removal of spat organic matter

from the building. So they're operating our drum seeders. They're you

know, getting things mixed for the day. So check in with them, you know,

see if we have anything new happening for the morning, putting new variety

trials in place, something like that. And then like most growers like to

give my line walks in, spend time in the greenhouse, just see if there's

anything that, that seems unusual. And then you know,

after that it's a free for all. It's a greenhouse and

there's a lot of variability. It's really dynamic, it's fast paced

on a smooth day. It's, you know, managing the climate,

managing data, managing the team, you

know, fertigation, water management, things like that. But you know, we're

also heavily involved with our maintenance team in terms of pointing

out if we have equipment issues. You know, there's a lot

of mechanical components here and we kind of, you know, work

synergistically with that team to make sure that the

building is running and that the system is running and everything is doing what

we want. And it takes a lot of people to do that. Yeah.

I remember asking you before this call kind of what your day to day looks

like and it sounds like you guys have a really team oriented approach.

And one thing that I really love about Haven Greens is

I saw a LinkedIn post and you guys referred to your greenhouse.

That's the lettuce minds. That's funny.

Yeah, like whole team, you know, conquering these mines. I think it's very

hard to imagine if you haven't seen it and like

a high density mobile goalie system like this with, with all the automation

in place. Okay, so just moving on to the next set of questions, but you

know, what are some challenges you guys have had with working together?

You know, I think that this might be a good topic for people to hear

more about because usually, you know, people are thinking about just the growing

side specifically or they're in like the production side specifically, you know,

new people to this space and maybe they're not necessarily thinking so much

about the relationship and the interaction and how, you know, your,

how greenhouse growers are working with buyers like, such as yourself,

John. So maybe if you could touch a bit on that, you know, some challenges

you've had with working together and what you've kind of done to overcome those.

And this time we'll start with dom. Sure. Yeah, I won't

be too long winded on this segment. You know, as you know, Trina, I manage

the cultivation side of things and we have good people in place that kind of

manage the distribution and logistics and sales. But certainly like Inspire

Go came on very early for us. It was a large account for us. They

put a lot of faith in us early on in our tenure. I think it's,

you know, I don't know if I mentioned at the beginning of the show, but

we're in year one of operation here at Haven Greens.

The facilities has been being designed and

constructed for the past four years now. And then, you know, year five is

year one. Of operations. So you know,

we have our own internal kinks and scaling

and getting equipment online and getting personnel in place and getting, getting the

plant up to the quality that we want. So you know, we're dealing

with that on a day to day basis while also, you know, having

trust and faith put in us from, from large buyers

with big accounts that, that need their, their orders and their, and

their quotas met. So the, the one thing that, that stands out to me from

early on is inspired Go is like the furthest west we

had begun distributing. You know, we're, we're here in,

in the GTA in Ontario and so shipping west,

multiple shipments a week west. With that had, being our only, our

only customer that far, there was a bit of a logistical

challenge with that. But you know, we've been able to consolidate deliveries. We've

taken on some retail accounts west and have been able to you know, work

together on the, on the shipping costs for things like that. So you know,

for me every customer is just as important and every like

piece of lettuce is, is just as important for me. So like the, I guess

the struggle is just a never ending day to day like making sure everyone is

getting quality and everyone is getting, you know, their order fulfillments. And you know,

as we, as we scale and, and we get big,

we're, we're effectively at a, at a sold out status right now. And so it's

kind of managing. Like I said, there's not

exactly, you know, X amount of lettuce coming off the

line every day. We're still dealing with a living, you know, biological organism.

Right. And so managing expectations, making sure, you

know, everyone is getting what they're ordering is certainly

a challenge and, but something that you know, we take very

seriously and work very diligently on. And how about you,

John? Yeah, I mean I would say their biggest problem right now is they

can't grow enough of their lettuce current state. I know there's plans

to expand and get going on that because

it's so great and I think the market has really seen that. But

there's been no, from my perspective, no actual issues

with working with Haven. They've been incredible, knock on wood. You

know, stuff always happens. But to date it's been really smooth

operating together. And the one cool thing though I will say that's maybe different from

a normal buy sell relationship is

we're really starting to collaborate on varieties as well. You know, like

they've identified or even identified that their red is

not yielding what they need and so we're actually approaching

this different seed companies together, you know, the right swans of the world, the

ends and saying, hey, we, our customer wants

this color red and this feel and mouth feel and shape and

all that. And it's also Haven saying, hey, we got to like work, make

this work from, you know, a yield perspective. I love this and all those kind

of things. And so yeah, when you, when you have a partnership like this, it

allows you to get a lot more creative and quite frankly, put a lot of

pressure on those bigger companies to innovate at the genetics

level so that, you know, we're happy, our customers are happy and

Haven's happy and not having to take a big

financial hit by growing something that isn't up to what they

need. Yeah, no, I really, I really like that. It's like

you guys are collaborating on R and D almost. I mean, you're not

like, do maybe doing your own. Maybe you are doing that research and

development together, are you? No, it's more

just them, you know, because they got us like every greenhouse also

works differently and every microclimate is different, so they got to go figure it

out. We're just kind of working together on like, here's what we'd like to see

and you guys take it from there and show us what you

come up with kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, I understand you guys

are working together to put kind of the pressure on, you know, a larger company

to innovate and provide a new variety. But I think that's really

interesting because, you know, that could be a good

role or something that happens in the future between greenhouse

growers and their buyers is innovating and doing research

and development on something similar. That's, that's very. I just

wasn't expecting that response. So one question I

have is how do you get feedback from your customers, John,

like, how did you know that they want this color red and this cream crunch

taste? Like, are you putting out surveys or where was that decision

coming from? Yeah, I mean the amount of data that we have is

quite staggering. And we. It's all we care about is making sure that

customers are having a great experience because our business model doesn't work.

We're all, you know, e commerce driven and we use meta or Facebook

to get acquire customers. It's that whole game. So if you don't have customers

coming back, it falls apart pretty quickly. So we're

measuring everything, like week by week, every meal you can rate.

We constantly do surveys. There's a ton of feedback there.

I would say the red specifically isn't coming from a group of

customers as much as it's coming from our internal product development

team who's made literally thousands of salads and

kind of has a pretty good gauge on what customers are

expecting. And so that's where most of that is coming from.

Um, but in terms of data, yeah, we, you tell me what you want

to measure and I'm sure we have it somewhere, you know. Okay. Yeah,

interesting. Well, I like the. You can rate your meal

on a week to week basis and you know, I haven't ordered Inspired Go

salads, but is it like I just started ordering hellofresh

and like with hellofresh, you know, you can choose like three meals

per week, you know, once a week type of thing. Does Inspired go

do the same thing with like subscriptions with solids? I'm, I'm assuming

you do. Yeah, we do both though. So like we never want to be one

of those companies that's like locking people into subscriptions and you can't find the

cancel button and it's, it's hard, you know, and it shows up on your doorstep

randomly, all of those things that have happened in meal kits. So you can

go in and you can do a one time order as long as you hit

like, I think it's five salads is the minimum. Or you can subscribe and you

obviously get like a discount if you're doing that. And we're finding a lot more

people are subscribing in one time, which is a good sign

for the health of the business and that people want to come back. But yeah,

lots of people try it once and then subscribe after. So it doesn't matter

to us. But yeah, we'll definitely get you a code so you can try it

out. And then, you know, you kind of, so you, you mentioned, you

know, putting the pressure on to get a new seed variety from

these companies, but I'm wondering if either of you have made

adjustments to either, you know, your production

or to your menu items based on like feedback from one

another. Like, was there ever a time where it was like, oh,

you maybe requested a type of leafy green, but it was really challenging to

grow in the greenhouse and so a different green

should have been used instead. Or was it, you know, haven

maybe growing this new variety? It's quick, it's a lot more profitable, the quality

is great and then that influences like the salad type. Has any of that

ever happened at all? I can speak to that a little bit.

When you know, you're dealing with a Variety of different distributors and

retailers and you know, someone like Inspire Go, who is accumulating

a lot of data, you're going to get requests

for, you know, can we do this, can we do that? And

we are trying to be a partner with all of our

customers, trying to be a partner that facilitates the needs for

all of our customers. But like John is saying, what's,

what's really important and what's, you know, really nice to hear, quite frankly, is

that partnership, you know, that, that needs to go both ways because,

you know, as a business we have quotas to hit too. And

we, we want to be healthy from the business side as well.

And so what that means for us is that

the high density crystal greens are where

we focus a lot of time and energy because that's the best tasting, that has

the longest shelf life and it has by far the highest output.

Now, consumer demand very much, you know, appreciates

color, it appreciates flavor, which we do provide

with the greens. But those reds, like John was saying, it

can be tricky. You're generally going to look at a 25 to

30% reduction compared to what you get out of your greens.

And with another thing that, you know, people might not realize about this

type of system, despite from an overhead view, those greens or

those, those reds looking very, very red, any part of that leaf that is

not exposed to lighting is, is

going to be green. And so that tends

to lead to more leaves that end up with just kind of like a red

tip with kind of like stem and base. And so we're on

the hunt right now for how much red can we actually penetrate

in? Can we squeeze a few more, you know, kilos out of those lines, not

only does that help us, that also helps the customers. Right? And so having that,

that partnership where, you know, this is kind of what we need and this

is what you need, how do we, how do we get there is, is really,

really important. You know, something would have to be

extremely drastic for us to consider, like just

fully pivoting in terms of, in the greenhouse, we are

constantly exploring new varieties. We constantly have trials running on our

lines to see how things perform and have a full SOP and system

in place for, you know, pursuing product development to

next step stages. If it's something that we

think will do good for us, you know, then we start giving samples out

to customers and, you know, getting their feedback and their

customer feedback on if this is something that could work for both

of us. But you know, we're certainly, we certainly have to focus

one, the varieties that we feel have the highest quality. But it's, you

know, for us a little bit about being able to convince the consumer that this

staple green crystal variety, like it's brand new in Canada, these. These types of

varieties in these high systems is very, very far and few

between. You know, it's. We were the first and there's another greenhouse in Quebec

that's doing it and that's it. And so it takes time, I think,

to build consumer awareness that some of these varieties that

are beneficial for us from the business side are also very

beneficial for the consumer from the consumer experience and eating

side. What do you do for promotion to the consumer on

Haven Greens? Like, are you guys mostly on social media or have you ever had,

like a booth at some of the grocery stores and sampling things out directly to

customers? Yeah, we're super active on social media. We have a really, really

good social media team. I think we have a really cool.

And like, our mission is to, like, make lettuce fun and make this

unique. Right. Because it is a super cool way of cultivating and,

you know, we're trying to kind of modernize this industry a little bit. So, yeah,

super active on social media. We're in the grocery stores. We've done

sampling booths before. We've run, you know, promo

promos at those. At those grocery stores and whatnot.

So, yeah, we try to be as active as possible on our personal, you

know, branding as well, and also with some, you know, collaborative things. Like this is

a great example, like this is inspired Go. And Haven Green's kind of kind of

talking as one. And so, you know, like I said earlier,

it's really important for us, like, we're trying to build partnerships as well as

our personal brand awareness. And, you know, no

customer has higher precedent than the next. We really value these

partnerships, especially with how much, you know, trust people have given

us in year one of operation here. I'm just going to

give a shout out to Mackenzie in Newfoundland.

He started up the Canadian Hydroponics Association Association. I'm not sure if

you've ever heard of him, but he sells lettuce

and he's got like a superhero character of his

lettuce that it's like defeating all, like, the enemies which are

chocolate bars. It's very funny. You should check that. You should, you should check that

out for making lettuce fun. How about. How about you,

John? For same question again. It was on, you know, adjustments

to production or menu items based on feedback. Yeah,

it actually is pretty shocking that Haven got it right. So fast. In year

one, I remember commissioning a lettuce greenhouse myself and it was

a disaster like most startup greenhouses are,

but they came up with a great blend as soon as I walked into the

building. Anyways, I know it was a couple months after they started, so we haven't

needed to adjust anything on our end. It's been great. Like I said,

we're trying to work with them on the red. Besides that, it's

been pretty smooth sailing. And you know, on the

promotion side, that's all we do. We're, you know, a food company and a

marketing company basically. Right. Like we are running an insane amount of

Facebook ads and Google Ads and TikTok and like, you name

it. But it is really cool to, when we push these

supplier partnerships, like our customer base loves to hear

where their food's coming from, the story behind it, the provenance of

it. And so it's been cool to link up with Haven on some social media

posts and contests, some. Some different things to really educate

our customers on, on how great of a product this is.

That's awesome to hear. You guys have such a good relationship. What

do you think that like, most people misunderstand

about greenhouse to buyer relationships? Like, I guess, you know, John,

from your point of view, have you ever, you know, do you, do you know

of any, I guess, retailers or food service

providers who they don't have as good of a relationship

with their produce providers or do you think that there's any

like, misconceptions between that kind of relationship? And then same

question to you, Haven, have you ever ran into greenhouses that

misunderstood, you know, what kind of relationship you should be

forming between your buyers and your operations? Maybe,

John, we'll start with you. Sure. That's a

tough one. Like, I think that I, I kind of came from that world

where I was selling lots of different products to retailers and

all of them were great and. But they've got big businesses to run, so

they have the luxury of choosing and sometimes that, you know, hurts. If

another good company comes along, they give them a shot and, and it is

what it is. But overall I think the relationships are, are really strong in Canada,

at least between buyers and growers. And

then I can't say there's much misconception about it. At the end of the

day, if you're like, if you're producing a great product and you have the

right price, you're in the game, you're in the market. It's really

when you know, on the suppliers and they're

not holding up to whether that be quality is a

food safety issue, you know, something happens, usually it's

pretty much set it and forget it. And now that I'm on the other side,

where I am basically, you know, we're, we're kind of a retailer in a way.

That's what we want to do. We honestly want to find great partners,

agree to the right price for everybody, and then

not really think about it because we have a whole other business to run outside

of, you know, where all these things come from. So our goal at

Inspired Go is to find the best supplier for the best variety of

whatever particular product and then set it and forget it

and keep expanding, you know, so. Yeah, and

I, I agree with John on that. You know, I don't, I don't have too

much to add there. I, I think it's just really important to, I don't think

there's some like, big truth or misconception. Right. You know,

it's, it's a business relationship and we're, we're turning that into, you know, a full

blown partnership. And so, you know, quality, getting it to

Inspire Go is, is of the utmost important to us and Inspire

Go, getting it to their customers is the utmost importance to them. Right. And so

I think just the biggest thing is, you know, earning the, the

trust of your buyers requires consistency. That's the one big thing,

you know, that I, that I've learned doing this on the growing side of things.

Right. Like if you're fluctuating with, with consistency

or, or you're, you know, consistently, you know, shorting, you know,

that that's, that's where you're going to run into more issues. But, you

know, being, being good partners helps you, you know, navigate

those waters if things do get difficult. And that's why, you know,

it's important for us to build real relationships and not just be like, you know,

thanks for buying, see you next week. Right. So I,

I think that's really, really important to us and you know, just kind of

collaboratively working together. What advice would you

give to any new growers trying to, you know, work with

major buyers? Maybe give advice. Dom, you give advice on the

greenhouse grower side and John, you give advice, you know, on

the buyer and the purchasing side. What advice would you give to anyone looking to

start up a new greenhouse? Yeah, on the grower side I would say,

like, know what you want to do off the bat, don't build a structure and

then be like, well, let's figure out what, what we want to put in Here,

like based on, on customer feedback, kind of like I was talking about earlier in

the episode, like the plant comes first and you have to know that,

you know, obviously there's going to be a little variability and you'll be able to,

you know, move a few things around but like know what you want to do

right away as much believe in like the build it and they will come

method. Like you need to be tactful, you need to be have a

strategy, you need to have a plan and you need to know what you want

to put in place and you have to let the quality and the

eating experience drive your decision making and

almost nothing else. So you know, on the growth side

it's just, it's really important to, to

start strong and then maintain, maintain that

consistency. And if you're someone that's in

that like pre construction or even like idea phase, like don't

build it and then start developing relationships with retailers or distributors.

Like that conversation needs to start right away. Right. Because that could

influence how you do things in your operation. And especially like

in our, our position where it's somewhat of a new type

of product in the market. You know, it takes trust

building and it takes some convincing of like why, why is

this lettuce any better than, than anything else? Right. And so I think the

earlier that you can start those conversations with, with your potential partners

and knowing that, you know, it's your job to keep

quality at front of mind and make your decisions around that,

I think that's how you position yourself for, for success.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you about do not just plan to

build something and then they will come. Like anytime someone is like, oh, you

know, I want to start up a greenhouse or a vertical farm or whatnot, I

always say, okay, who's going to buy the product? You know, what market research have

you done? What are people looking for? Because like that should be the first thing

that you're thinking of. How about you, John? Yeah, I would

completely echo that. I've seen it work out the

wrong ways for sure. And I would definitely say that

for anybody interested in the space, which is a really, really interesting

space. Like I think that's one thing. You know, when I was growing up, my

family, their business was more on the buy sell side and not

too intimately on the growing side. And one of the mentors

that I got to work with really opened my eyes to how much fun and

how cool of an industry it is. Although your days can be very crazy.

So I definitely encourage more people to get into this industry just to begin

with, piling onto that, make sure you work at a couple

greenhouses to make sure it's for you, it's not for everybody. But you

know, do that acid test first and then if that, if you pass that,

then there's just a ton of opportunity around the world to go learn. And

it's a lot less expensive than putting up a couple million dollar

greenhouse. So you go to Europe, you can go to just a whole bunch of

different places that you can really learn about what you want to do. And this

is a one way door. As soon as you build it, you're stuck with it.

So don't build it unless you're, you're confident. And then

definitely, definitely make sure you know where your

marketing, you know, strategic advantages and where your product

can, has a place in the market. And from my perspective we're

all about flavor, we're all about quality. If you have a great product

and your food safety standards are where they need to be, I think you'll

have success. But you definitely need to do all the pre work before

taking the plunge and raising a bunch of money and, or taking a bunch of

debt, whatever you do. And putting a greenhouse up.

And echoing to that just real quick I'd like to add, like

investing in the team early is something that at least for Han Greens, I think

has led to us having so much velocity in year one

you'll see a lot of operations like we'll put one or two key people in

place and then as things start to pick up we can, we can build

from there but you're going to just, you're going to get stretched so thin.

There's so many moving parts to all these greenhouses, right? And

so like putting the right people in the right places, despite all the

automation people needed people are the drivers for your business. And

so you know, that's not just greenhouses. You know, any business putting the right people

in the right places early, making that investment upfront is

really going to set you up for success. Do either of you have

any exciting upcoming, you know, expansion plans that you'd like

to announce? We're doubling in size.

So like as John alluded to, we, we really can't grow enough right now.

It's, it's, it's, it's been a crazy year and it's been really, really

rewarding to see how much steam this has picked up. Like currently we're

the, the fastest growing lettuce brand in, in Canada

or in Ontario. And so we are right

before Frost hit here. We leveled out

another 5 acre pad. So we'll go from 5 to 10, 10 acres,

you know, doubling our capacity, hopefully getting. Right

now we're about £10,000 a day in output and we'd like to get

that up to, you know, close to

£25,000 a day with some upgrades for

our phase two expansion. So we have Earthworks done. We kind of got

to let winter, you know, turn into spring and then we'll, we'll

hit the ground running, get our pad laid and we're going to try to have

plants coming out of that greenhouse in Q1 of 27. Wow,

that's exciting. Good for. Congratulations on all your guys success.

Thank you. How about you, John? Yeah, well, we just launched

New York and New Jersey three weeks ago and it's gone really

well. Even though it's the hardest time to launch. Just with American

Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, not everybody's thinking about eating

salads but you know, it's past our expectations so far.

And you know, January, we call it like the Salad super bowl. Right. Everybody's healthy

again and wants to eat, you know, get in shape and all that. So our

business just explodes, you know, every January. So we're kind of

just gearing up for that. But we'll be basically like

Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago,

hopefully all the way down to Florida by April. And then

we are looking at a Texas expansion for early next year.

So we're always on the move doing something, but we're

really excited and yeah, we're just happy we can provide this many

healthy meals to people with great. Partners like Haven

Maha, Make America healthy again.

Okay, well thank you both so much for, for your time and for

sharing all of this information. You know, we are coming up to the

end of the podcast but some place something that we like to

do to end off every show is, is to leave with this

question. So I'm going to ask both of you, you know, what is

your proudest moment from working in this space in the greenhouse industry?

For me, I would say, you know, it's difficult to say but, but this

year a really neat thing happened. I mean one, just getting this project online

so fast and kind of hitting our quotas so fast.

To be honest, I didn't even expect to do it. I was hoping, hopeful that

we could do it. So you know, I'm really proud of the whole team here.

But on a personal note, earlier this year I was nominated

four and one greenhouse, Canada's top four under 40

growers or like, you know, people in the horticultural industry.

And so that was a really neat thing for me just to, you know, kind

of meet the other three, you know, candidates and nominees from that and have a,

have a little ceremony at the Canadian Greenhouse Conference there.

So that was really, really cool to me and do a little, little piece in

their, in their magazine. Congratulations. Thanks. Yeah, appreciate it.

Yeah. For myself, I, I don't know if I could pick a moment right now,

but I would say that the proudest thing about

the, about my experience so far is just watching this grow from

a startup literally selling 10 salads a day to selling

10,000 and, and the team behind it that we've built and

watching, honestly, a bunch of kids fresh out of university

become a real business has been insanely gratifying. And

now we have, you know, the best people working on every part of the company

and, and just going as fast as we can. So, yeah, I can't really take

a moment, but that's definitely when I look back and kind of take it all

in, it's, it's a little bit surreal. Yeah, that's amazing. Like the whole journey

from where you've come from to where you guys are now. Well, congratulations to

both of you. It's very interesting to see that, you know, Haven Greens is

so successful and at the same time inspired Go is so

successful. And I definitely think your individual success us is probably

complementing one another for growth. So this, that's super cool and

thank you so much for sharing, you know, all of, all of your story.

Of course. It was great. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Trina. This was

a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed this episode of. Greenhouse

Success Stories, hosted by Trina Semenchek. Thanks to our guests who make this

all possible. Special thanks to our title sponsor, Arnois Greenhouse.

To read the full shout outs for each episode, which includes an episode summary,

key takeaways and guest resources mentioned, please visit

greenhousesuccess.com.