Alex Tyink is the President of Fork Farms, an organization that started on the principle that growing fresh and healthy food is a vehicle for positive change in the world. It is their belief that having consistent access to the freshest, highest quality food is a human right. Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he and Alex discuss Alex’s unorthodox path to entrepreneurship, hydroponic farming and the impact Covid-19 has had on Alex’s business, Fork Farms.

Special thanks to our Season 1 Sponsor

IGS – https://intelligentgrowthsolutions.com/

Key Takeaways

02:54 – Alex expounds on the impact Covid-19 has had on his business, Fork Farms, and how he got involved in AgTech

13:02 – Where Alex got his entrepreneurial drive and motivation and Alex’s experience moving to NYC

20:12 – Alex breaks down the business model of Fork Farms, the curriculum package they offer and the idea behind Flex Farm

32:28 – What Alex has learned throughout his entrepreneurial journey in AgTech

37:55 – Challenges and obstacles Alex has had to overcome as he continues to grow his team and business

43:14 – Alex talks about what excites him the most about the future of Fork Farms, AgTech, and a tough question he had to ask himself recently

50:29 – Harry thanks Alex for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can connect and engage with Alex and Fork Farms

Tweetables:

“I started eating food that I was growing, and it completely changed my eating habits. I started eating better. I started feeling better. I started taking better care of myself.” (09:21)

“Labor efficiency and energy efficiency is really what we [Fork Farms] are all about.” (12:26)

“When I really started to dig into the industry, I learned how broken the food system really is. Sixty percent of all the food that we’re eating as Americans is ultra-processed. And we know – through all of these clinical studies – that ultra-processed food is directly linked to increase mortality due to all sorts of chronic diseases.” (18:25)

“I would say the majority of our growth as a company is organic.” (25:46)

“Every dime that we’ve made in the company we’ve put back into innovation. We are a for-profit company but we really act like a non-profit in a lot of ways. We have shareholders, but they understand what we’re trying to do and they’re willing to wait on the return in order to see something bigger than any one of us happen.” (33:08)

Links Mentioned:

Alex’s LinkedIn

Fork Farms Website

Fork Farms YouTube Channel

Fork Farms LinkedIn

Fork Farms Facebook

Intelligent Growth Solutions

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That food I brought home that I grew, for me, was the transformational

piece of this. I mean, it sounds corny, but it's true. I

started eating food that I was growing, and it completely changed my eating habits. I

started eating better. I started feeling better. I started taking better care of myself.

I got through some personal stuff that I needed to get through. It just was

a really great time in my life.

Welcome to the Vertical Farming Podcast, weekly conversations with

fascinating CEOs, founders, and agtech visionaries.

Join us every week as we dive deep into the world of vertical

farming with your host, Harry Duran.

Vertical Farming Podcast, welcome back, episode 11. If you're

new to the show, this is the podcast where we interview fascinating CEOs

and founders of some of the leading vertical farming companies from around the

world. I'm your host, Harry Duran. In case you missed last week's episode, I

had a great conversation with Scott Massey of HelioPonics

and their fantastic GrowPod solutions. As a new CEO,

Scott told a fascinating story of how he got started with the company

and what he's quickly had to learn on the job as interest in the GrowPod

has picked up steam. If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend you check

it out, episode 10. This week I have the privilege of speaking with

Alex Tink. Alex is the president of Fork Farms, an organization that started

on the principle that growing fresh and healthy food is a vehicle for positive

change in the world. It's their belief that having consistent access to the freshest,

highest quality food is a human right. In this interview, we discuss

Alex's unorthodox path to entrepreneurship, hydroponic farming,

and the impact COVID-19 has had on Alex's business, which has been a consistent thread

throughout the season, given where we are in the world today.

Alex talks about how he got involved in agtech, where he got his entrepreneurial

drive from, and his experience moving to NYC, which

we have a shared passion for. He breaks down the business model of

Fork Farms, the curriculums they offer, and the idea behind

the Flex Farm. We learn what Alex has discovered throughout his

entrepreneurial journey in agtech and the challenges and obstacles he's had to

overcome as he continues to grow the team and the business. We talk a little

bit about what excites him about the future of Fork Farms

agtech, and a tough question he's had to ask himself recently. As

promised, here are a couple new reviews that came in the past few weeks.

Thanks to Dananasplit617,

great name. I've listened to about 4 of these podcasts so far and I've really

enjoyed all of them. The speakers feel genuine and their stories are fascinating.

I'm using this podcast to, quote, learn the language of vertical farming

so that I can hopefully transition into the space in the near future. Keep these

podcasts coming. Thanks so much for that inspiring review.

Tommy Wami writes, fascinating and diverse guests with great

discussions, a significant source of information that just isn't available

anywhere else. If you're enjoying this episode or you've enjoyed past

episodes, I'd love it if you leave a rating and a review at

ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

Okay, let's jump into this conversation with Alex. So Alex

Seink, Thank you for joining us on the Vertical Farming Podcast.

Thanks for having me. Having a chat in the pre-call, and I

understand that this is your first podcast interview as well, so thanks

for allowing us to experience that. I've done some interviews in the past, but this

is my first podcast, so, uh, exciting. Thank you. Do you

listen to any? Yeah, I've got my favorites just like everybody. I'm not a huge

podcast junkie, but I can definitely appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. I

think the benefit of it, what I've seen, I've been doing it since

2014, is the portability of it. So

whenever I get some free time, if I'm making dinner, walking the dog, or just

go out for a walk, and I was like, oh, I gotta catch up on

a couple of episodes, and I can just queue them up on

my podcast player. And I'm actually listening at a higher speed now, so I can

listen at like 1.5x, 2x as well. And get through more faster.

Yeah, we just moved our offices and I've got a longer commute, so they've come

in very handy. Yeah, commutes are almost for a

while there were a thing of the past, right? All right, yeah, I know.

It feels good in a way to get at least a little bit of semblance

of reality. So yeah, maybe that might be just a good

place to add some context. We are towards the end of July

still. I don't know whether this is considered phase 1.5 or

phase 2 of COVID at this point. We sort of like stumbled

our way through this. So I'm wondering what was the impact initially

for you and the company? What's been happening so far since then?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it seems like generally

affected people in the industry fairly well,

which for me, there's a little bit of guilt that comes along with

it, to be honest, just because there are so many people out there suffering and

so many people where this has been really a difficult challenge.

But at least at Fork Farms, People

have to eat and people still want to eat good fresh food. And, you know,

there's a lot of places where people are stuck in place

and, you know, the opportunity to grow their own

food right there on site has

been a blessing for them. And so we're, we're really lucky that we get to

help them with that. And was there a

big disruption? What did you see in terms of the supply chain? Because that's what

I've been hearing from earlier conversations I've had with folks as well.

Well, for us on the manufacturing side, we, again,

we're lucky we do all of our manufacturing in the US and actually we do

it within a 100-mile radius of our office in Wisconsin. So it really is

an American-made product, a Wisconsin-made product. And a

lot of our manufacturers had to go to half production time because they

have to socially distance the assembly lines. And so— Yeah.

That was a challenge. We just had to get through the initial

lead time lag that that created. But luckily, we've got a really great

set of partners on that side of the business, and, you know, they were really

accommodating. And we kept, you

know, in a lot of ways, some of the— I think we were a benefit

to their business because, you know, some people had to slow down their production during

this period, and ours has been going the other way. And so I think

that was really good partnership development. And we're just hearing all

sorts of reports, though, from the folks that are calling us looking for

the hydroponic systems, that they are, you

know, really feeling the food supply chain disruption side of it, where,

you know, we're seeing the reports. I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar

with this too, of all the food that's being tilled under in Southern

California and Mexico and places like that. And, uh, I think

that's really where a lot of these vertical farming organizations, even more

broadly, are, are really finding a deeper social

benefit that they provide, right? Is that we, we don't have to stop

production. We have that consistency, we have that year-round availability,

and, you know, it just has become almost a matter of survival for some people.

I mean, we work with some broadline distributors where they're talking about

significantly increasing their investment into their

vertical farming programs because they're really feeling it. I mean,

on top of, you know, all the COVID stuff, then you also

have foodborne illness outbreaks at the same time, right? Yeah. Where

we're throwing away— And for us, it's a perfect storm.

But again, you feel terrible saying that because you just wish it

wasn't as necessary as I think it's becoming.

So winding the clock back a bit, can you talk a little bit about how

you actually got into the world of vertical farming,

agtech, agriculture, wherever you think it's appropriate to start, just to set

some context for people to hear the origin story?

Yeah, well, I have a unique story and I won't give

you all the nitty-gritty details, but I actually come from classical

music. Seems like in the industry there's a lot of career refugees. There's

a lot of people who found their passion through this in a lot of different

ways, but you have a similar story too, Terry. Yeah. So, no, for

me, I love music and I was an opera singer and I moved to New

York. That's what I went to school for, moved to New York, and that's where

I was first exposed to urban agriculture and During a summer,

I volunteered for a rooftop farm. Really, as being a kid from

Wisconsin, I needed something to do during the summer months just to get outdoors a

little bit. But the gentleman who had started this

rooftop farm had a very cool model. He would grow all this food

and all of it ended up— majority of it ended up being donated to the

food pantry that was right on the first floor of this building in

Bushwick, Brooklyn. Yeah. I just thought that that was cool. I had never

seen such a tight ecosystem like that, and to see it in

East Brooklyn like that was very cool. I mean, you just could see the impact

immediately with the families coming through, getting this fresh food. And so

that was really inspiring. And at the end of the summer, he let me bring

a bunch of the food that I had helped grow back to my apartment. And

that was the first time I had ever really eaten what I had grown.

Which is wild in New York City and in Brooklyn. I mean, to even think

about the possibility of that happening. I grew up in Yonkers and I've lived in

in Greenpoint and Lower East Side as well.

Exactly. And a kid from Wisconsin where you drive 10 minutes in any direction, you're

in the middle of farmland, right? So yeah, it really is wild. And

I tell you that, that food I brought home that I grew for me was

the transformational piece of this. I mean, it sounds corny,

but it's true. I started eating food that I was growing and it completely changed

my eating habits. I started eating better. I started feeling better. I started taking

better care of myself. I got through some personal

stuff that I needed to get through. It just was a really great time in

my life. And I think through that process, I had this little aha

moment where that blood, sweat, and

tears, when you put your energy into things, really can be

a powerful vehicle for change, personal

change, and I think social change. I think as I've done more and more of

this work, I've really realized that emotional connection and getting people

involved and connected to anything is what

ultimately drives behavior, in my opinion. And, we've seen

it now time and time again. But so anyway, to make a long story

short, I decided I wanted to do this for more people. So, we

got involved with New York Public Schools, a couple other groups, got some United Way

New York funding. And, just with the other ragtag

band of folks, we were really passionate about it and started building

rooftop farm soil and hydroponic aquaponic

systems. All using what at the time was

state-of-the-art technology, and in some ways still is. A lot of the,

you know, the vertical rack systems, you know, horizontal tiered system, tower-type

systems, and they all worked great, but none of the

programs that we had were really willing to scale to feed a lot of

people. And they were all up for, yeah, build us basically a

demonstration-size thing. They'd use it for education. That was great,

but you don't really feel the impact until until

people really get the whole seed-to-plate experience, right? They grow the food

and they get to eat the food, right? And so I did a little study

to figure out why. And what I learned was that every one of these partners,

it came down to the price of the food. So they were

reporting that using these systems, again, educationally, it

was great, but it was costing them anywhere from $3 to $8 a pound just

to grow it, right? And you figure out the energy and the lights and the

grow medium and nutrients and the time, and, you know, it can be very expensive

to do vertical farming. And so, it really put this bug in me to

figure out maybe there's a way to do it a little bit better in

a slightly different way. And around 2014, and this

is after 30 prototypes, Harry,

and flooding the apartment floor. I'm not an

engineer and I don't claim to be. So it took me—

Trial by fire. Exactly, a lot of

trial and error. But I stumbled into this really simple idea where

if you put a grow light, a particular type of grow light in the

middle of a bunch of reflective surfaces that the light will actually

bounce around inside that enclosure. And if you build it

right, you can dial back the wattage of the bulb by

50+% in order to achieve the same yield outcome

compared to other systems. And so that really dropped that energy cost really

substantially. And from there, I just listened to the folks we were

working with to learn how do we make this thing as easy as possible to

use. And that was how the technology was

born. Labor efficiency and energy efficiency is really what we're all about. So

keeping that cost really competitive, you know, we're growing food, you know,

commercially now for sometimes less than a dollar a pound,

which we think is really good. And our goal through the

technology is to utilize it to do the most good,

right? So when I moved back home, I worked for Goodwill Industries and

Feeding America, both kind of in the hunger relief side of this. And I

learned a ton. And I think what I learned was it was such

a deep passion that I just had to start the company. And I guess the

rest is history from there, so. Where does

that drive come from? 'Cause you mentioned goodwill

and something that I thought was also interesting is this idea of having that emotional

connection. So is this something that, you know, comes

from your family or is this just inspiration you've gotten over the years in terms

of like, I sense like a trend of like, wanting to do good for the

communities and probably on a bigger scale just for the

betterment of humanity as well. So, I'm wondering where that might

come from. Well, I think everybody in the vertical farming industry is

trying to do something good. I mean, I know there's obvious

profit motivation to do it. There's a lot of financial reasons to be

in the industry, but we all see the

disruptive benefit that this can do, right? For sure. But for

me, that's a really good question. I mean, I'll have

to hire a shrink and maybe dig into it a little bit. But, uh, yeah,

you know, I, I think part of it is, I, you know, you come into

the world, I think everybody, and, you know, we can debate this, but

I think everybody at their core, you know, is, is a social being and

wants to fundamentally do good. And I think I've got great

parents, you know, I was really lucky. lucky on the parent lottery. And,

you know, they always encouraged me to follow my heart. You know, I mean, who

lets their kid get into opera, right? I mean, it's not like we

come from a wealthy background, right? It's like, it's not like I grew

up in a mansion. So, I mean, it takes a particular parent

to trust you enough to let you go down those paths. And

I don't know, I think one thing my dad always says is if your intentions

are pure, You know, if you really are true to who you are

and what you believe, that you'll end up surrounding yourself with people that you

like and you'll end up doing work that's meaningful to you. And I think that

there's a lot of wisdom in that. Totally. Yeah, yeah. Just out of

curiosity, what type of opera singer are you? I'm a

baritone. Okay. Yeah, lyric baritone. I sang a lot of

Mozart. That was my thing. So you always have that as a backup to

fall back on. Although

not a lot of people are going to operas these days, so I don't know.

Yeah, that's true too. So how did you end up in the city?

It was on a music contract. I actually went to school in Chicago. I went

to Northwestern, their music school. They got a great program. And out of school, I

ended up with a 2-year young artist contract. It was like a

residency program, actually with Opera Tampa. But the

whole crew lived in New York. So the agent, the

manager, a lot of the people that were involved in the music

side, we all lived in New York. And so it was just a natural place

place to be. And along with that, I could do other things. I mean, you're

not doing operas all year round, right? So you'd have these 2 to 3 month

breaks in between the opera. And so I'd, you know, do, uh, voiceover

gigs or theater gigs, or, you know,

I'd try to get into movies and stuff like that. So it was

fun. It was a great time in my life. Yeah. Any of your voiceovers

floating around the internet somewhere? Yeah, I'm sure you can find them. I'm not going

to tell you where to look though. What was

your impression as a— it's funny because I live in Minneapolis now, but I grew

up in Yonkers in New York and I've lived in LA, so

just both coasts. And now I'm in the Midwest and you grew up

in Wisconsin. So what was your just first impressions of New York City?

First impression was it was dirty

and huge. I mean, the biggest

thing I think that struck me immediately is that when I moved there, I lived

in Inwood, which is way up. Oh yeah. The listeners that don't know, that's

way on the top of Manhattan, but you're basically in the Bronx. Yeah.

And It's a very Dominican-heavy community, right? So I

moved in and I was the minority. And coming from

Wisconsin where I was white people everywhere, being the minority was a

really incredible experience. I mean, just

really alters your perspective in a great way. So a lot of good

mofongo and other good Dominican dishes

up there that I miss. So. Yeah, I love mofongo. That's great. Well, it's

interesting because you got to see both perspectives. And, you know, as

we're talking now about agriculture, I mean, coming from Wisconsin, you think

agriculture, you think farm, you know, big farms. And then you go into the city

and you just see how everyone is so condensed into one

area. And even in places like New York City, you do have like

these deserts where people don't have access to fresh food, and it's all

they have is the bodega at the corner. So, you know, I imagine, you know,

can you speak to maybe seeing that dichotomy in terms of like,

and how that may have influenced, you know, some of the work you're now

doing? Oh, it's huge. I mean, there's poverty everywhere,

but in my community in Wisconsin, it's very hidden. We

do a pretty good job, you know, during the winter making sure that the homeless

are inside and things like that. And with a city the size of New York,

it's, it's almost an impossible task. And so you see it

everywhere, right? I mean, you see people sleeping on the street, you see the

food lines, you see it, and To see it is what really,

I think, first turned me on to the idea of volunteering with

that urban farmer that I had mentioned. Just

really hard to wrap your head around coming from privilege. I mean,

I'll admit that I didn't come from a wealthy family, but we

certainly didn't starve. I mean, we were never in a hurting position.

So that was big. And then when I really started to dig into the

industry, I learned how broken the food system really is. I mean,

60% of all the food that we're eating as Americans is ultra-processed,

right? And we know, yeah, through all of these clinical studies that

ultra-processed food is directly linked to increased mortality due to all

sorts of chronic diseases, heart disease, type 2

diabetes, stroke. And if you're in poverty, what are you eating?

Right? You're, you're buying food based on price and based on convenience, right? Yeah.

Because generally you're working a lot of jobs, you're struggling to figure out how to

make all the ends meet. And you don't have time to, you know,

cook a lot of fresh food. And all of this processed

food is really, really affordable. And look at what we

grow. You know, we grow corn and soy and all this stuff that's easy to

be processed. That's the stuff that's subsidized by the government. I mean, we all know

the story. So, you know, I think the food system is

literally killing people and it's disproportionately killing people in poverty. And

that to me is wrong. That is not okay. So how do you take

vertical farming technology and drop it into areas where you're going to move the

needle there the fastest? And that's really the whole idea behind the company.

And, and believe it or not, some of the largest food deserts in the country

are in rural communities, which is crazy to me. The people who

are growing food in this country are the ones that are disproportionately

starving. So, you know, we're actually working with a lot of healthcare

systems that serve rural populations to figure out, all right,

let's put vertical farming systems in the rural schools and in the

rural clinics and in these places so that we can start

building food system resiliency

right where people live. And it's really working.

We're really having a lot of luck with that. Yeah, I think part of this

is also just educating people in terms of what the challenges

are and how the different variations of vertical farming can fit a wide variety of

needs. Because I think when people initially come into it, they think, of like

the historical model of like, you know, the big factory with like the tall

towers and like that's all that vertical farming is. But when I had a

conversation with Virginia Emery of Beta Hatch and she's doing

insects for feed and, you know, and that's vertical, you know, that's

indoor farming as well. So it's just, and then I spoke to the folks at

Smallhold who are doing mushrooms. And so it's really interesting to kind of see the

variety of what's happening. But specifically for what you're doing with fork farms,

can you just kind of Talk through what the initial models— you

touched on it briefly, like what the model is, but for folks who don't know,

what is the actual product and what are the use cases for it?

Yeah, yeah, sure. So we're in our 4th

generation, commercial generation of the system. The first one was

made out of stainless steel and cost $12,000, so we only sold 8 of those.

But it's grown pretty quickly since then. I think the 4th generation of the

product we launched earlier this year and There's already, I want

to say, 100 or 200 out there. So for us, the idea

is let's put a farm in a box and

let's make it so easy to use that anybody can be a farmer. And so

the FlexFarm is a product that grows highly

perishable foods. So we decided to focus the grow environment on

things that were going to provide the fastest ROI and the fastest nutrition

outcome for customers. So the way I explain it is that potatoes don't

really work in indoor farming right now, commercially. It's grown regionally all over the

country. They're cheap to ship. They're really dense. It's a storage crop. We have year-round

availability, all of it, right? Why are we going to grow it indoors, right? It

doesn't make a ton of sense. Yeah. But leafy greens,

your lettuces, spinach, all your herbs, soft fruits like strawberries,

these are the things that have a lot of value to a local food system.

So that's really what we focused our design on. Now, we've had

partners, especially on the educational side, teachers love playing around with things. So

they'll grow kumquats and apple tree starts, and pumpkins and all

sorts of weird stuff in it. And it works. I mean, they've had success. If

you're really looking to feed people, we try to push people into these highly perishable

products. So, it fits in about the size of a standard

refrigerator, about 3 feet by 3 feet. It's about as tall as I am,

5.5 to 6 feet tall. Wow. But, it has in it 288

plant positions. And so, it grows 20

to 30+ pounds of food every 21 to 28-day cycle.

So, a lot of that's depending on what you're growing, the varieties you choose, but,

you know, you can see how 20 to 30 pounds, it's a

serious food production system. I mean, we're not talking about

tabletop unit or something that is more for

hobby purposes, right? These are for people who really want to feed people. And

what we find is that, like an educator, they'll partner

with us because there's so much intrinsic educational value with something like this.

But also, there's a serious impact that they can make on the lunch line.

And over the years, we figured out how to— when you talk about use cases,

we've really templated out for a lot of these industries ways that we can

break some of the farm-to-table paradigms that have

existed. So one example is I ran a

farm-to-school program when I was at Goodwill, and it was really hard to figure out

how to get local food on the lunch line just because a lot of these

schools use a third-party food provider and it can be hard to

navigate the food safety side of it. And it's just, it's overwhelming for the food

service director. So it was hard to implement, but we've been able

to create templates with our system that creates a really clear

and easy pathway to get this food on the lunch line

in a consistent, safe, easy way. And it doesn't require us to reinvent the wheel,

right? We have it. It's worked. It's been approved by some of our best food

service partners like Chartwells, Aramark, Taher Food Service, you know,

folks that they've been doing a long time. And the collateral benefit is that a

lot of these schools then, they know how to do it. And so it makes

it then easy for them to start to bring in other local food products into

their program as well. So that's a lot of what we do is we really

see ourselves being a learning organization first and foremost. The

agricultural technology that we have is the vehicle on how we get there,

but really who we are at our core is We're a group of people

very focused on our social mission and providing as much

value as we can back to the partners, right? So, you know, another example is

with assisted living facilities, right? We develop programs

that bring a lot of purpose to the work of running a Flex Farm to

the residents, right? So how do we have these seniors who are there

living get as much value and sense of purpose and love

for this indoor farming program that they possibly can, right? So,

you know, that entails— cooking lessons and activities that they can do

with the staff there and ways to share the food into the community. And,

you know, all of these ideas that frankly we didn't come up with. A

lot of the initial go-to-market for this product was,

is this something that you could use? I mean, we didn't— I mean, there was

nothing else like it at the time. You know, what I tell a lot of

people is it's almost like, you know, I'm not trying to equate us to Apple,

but it's a little bit like having the Apple II in the '80s. People were

like, I have a typewriter. Why do I need like a

personal computer that's twice as expensive? Or the Lisa. Right,

exactly. So for us, it's a lot of we're educating the market, right?

It's a part of learning organization, educating the market, what this can really do for

them and the value it can bring. And I would say the

majority of our growth as a company is organic. It's, we found that

one partner and they loved it and they have been referring

us to people ever since then. It's been this giant

spiderweb effect, very Grassroots, very

person-to-person. Food is really personal to people, and

we've learned that. Yeah. You can't control it, right? You can't force them

into the K-Cup model, right? If you want to use your grandma's seeds that are

heirloom from your backyard, you have to be able to do that, right? It's the

right thing to do. Food justice and culture has to play

a real significant role in who we are as

stewards of a better food system, right? And you've also— can you talk a little

bit about the curriculum package that you offer as well? Because I think that's an

important part of what you guys are offering. Yeah, and that's the kind of

stuff that we're constantly building, right? We— and that's stuff

that we provide at little to no cost to the

customers, right? So for us, we want you to use our technology. We want it

to be the best in the world at what it does. But in

terms of all that wraparound programming, we want to make sure that

these things are used not just for the next couple years, but for the next

couple decades. And that's how we do it, is we do it through the underlying

programming that we provide. So right now we have a 28-lesson

plan curriculum, if you will, that's been used all the way

K through 12. Actually, there's been some community colleges and universities that have

used it too. We've got some learning modules that are video that you

kind of click through, and learning modules really focused on community college

space. We really think that you know, the future needs

farmers, but it needs a different type of farmer than in the past, different

types of farmers. I mean, we need more of the same to a certain degree,

but we need different types of farmers. And so how do we attract

the smart, innovative people that are going to be able to think differently and

encourage them to enter into this space? So that's something that we're really

invested in and care a lot about. We've got, again, programmatic stuff,

application-based things where Well, what else can I do with

this, right? Well, there's a whole set on if you want to grow

food and sell it, right? So instead of a school growing food and eating it

on the lunch line, how do they start a little junior achievement program or

entrepreneurial program with their system and grow basil and sell it to the local restaurant

for $10 a pound, right? Awesome. And then they— everyone goes on a field

trip or they buy band uniforms or— Better and probably healthier than the Girl

Scout cookies. No offense to the Girl Scouts organization, but— Feels a little

better, right? And a great, great model that we have is

you know, there's a bunch of, you know, at-risk programs that run the system and

they'll sell the food. And actually the teacher will use the income to buy

breakfast, like a free breakfast program for these kids who are usually truant.

And, you know, it's that sort of stuff that just feels really good and it's

what helps you get out of bed every morning, you know? Yeah. And then I've

seen that now, I guess it's bigger organizations

that have seen the benefits of the Flex Farms now are

doing the The multi-farms, can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so

it's a pretty simple idea. We figured out a way to daisy chain the systems

together really easy. So instead of having to take care of 8 individual

Flex Farms, we tie them together, put them on one larger

pump, and then you're taking care of one centralized reservoir that

feeds all of these systems. And really what that is, is

to encourage people to grow to scale, right?

Grow to form-fit what your need is. And so we have a lot

of partners that'll reach out and say, okay, this is how

much of this product that we go through, build us a farm that

will make it so that we don't have to buy that stuff ever again, you

know. And what we find, which is interesting, is we usually encourage them to bake

in an extra 15 to 30%, because when people

are growing it and they start to see the quality that can be produced

from locally fresh, you know, clean food, The

consumption rate inevitably goes up pretty significantly. And that's one of the big value

propositions to the food service industry is that if they can

get people eating more fresh food, that's better for their bottom line.

Do you see a mix in terms of the consumers?

And you mentioned schools, you mentioned retail, restaurants. Do you

have personal folks put in it? Is it suitable for

residences as well? Absolutely. We've had communities, you know, little

neighborhoods, Like 3 houses will buy one together

and it's on wheels, right? So it's not hard to roll it from one house

to the next. And, uh, or one person's really into it and so

they'll take care of it, but then they'll share the food. I mean, the one

thing I'll tell your listeners is that this thing puts out a lot of food.

You gotta be ready because it's like bringing your outdoor raised bed

indoors is really what I tell people. You know what I mean? This isn't gonna

be like 6 basil plants on, but you're gonna have to freeze your

pesto if you're, all you're growing is basil and everything. But a lot

of people love that, you know, they want to have that year-round consistency, the year-round

quality. I mean, most people don't know a really good, let's

say lettuce, a really good head of lettuce stored correctly, fresh, if it's

fresh from the farm, it should last 3 or 4 weeks in the fridge and

still be ready to eat good. Oh wow. I mean, how many times do you

go to the grocery store and you're picking out the garbage

from the little clamshell that you bought the day after you bought it? I mean,

that's because it's been in transit for almost 3 weeks. It's not

right. It's just you're paying so much for that product and the

quality needs so much work. So, once you— we create lettuce

snobs as part of what I think we do, which I don't know if that's

good or bad, but a lot of people, they say, all right, now that I'm

eating the good stuff, I'm never going back to the bad stuff. Have you

found certain varieties that are more popular that people are experimenting with?

Yeah. People love They love wow factor a lot of times.

So we've got a couple of varieties that we recommend that have like really

deep color that people love or different

flavors. You know, we've got a lot of experimentation people love to do with

basils. You know, you can get lemon basil or, you know, a citrus

basil or purple colors. I mean, there's just the amount of

variety of seed, if you aren't familiar, will shock

you. I mean, there are thousands of lettuce types alone out

there. I mean, not to mention, the gamut. Mints, I

mean chocolate mint, right? I mean, most people don't even know that that's a thing.

Yeah. It's delicious, right? I mean, that's why restaurants love it, right? Is

that they, you know, high-end restaurant, you know, a cafeteria, they'll put this in and

all of a sudden they have an offering that no one else in town has

because they can't get it. You can't buy it from your— you can't get chocolate

mint off the back of the truck. It's not going to happen. So

all of a sudden you have this significant value add where You're providing

something that, that is really exclusive to you, which people love.

So I imagine there's been a lot of iterations because you're at the 4th generation

with where you're at now. What have you learned along the way? And

are— have the improvements been towards just making it as

self-sustainable as possible and just easy to maintain? I would say

that's number one. It's really been a customer-first

type approach for us is You know, let's talk to people

and be continuously learning. Again, learning organization, constantly learning.

How do we make this thing work better for you? How do we— what are

your pain points? What do you not like about it? And, or what do you

struggle with? I mean, whatever it is, we want the feedback and we've really tried

to take that feedback to heart. And I'll tell you, Harry, every

dime that we've made in the company, we've put back into innovation. Mm-hmm. I mean,

no one has— there's been no— we are a for-profit company, but we really

act like a nonprofit in a lot of ways. I mean, we have shareholders, but

they understand what we're trying to do and they're willing to wait on the

return in order to see something bigger than any one of

us happen. And it's bigger than me. I mean, I was the idiot that started

the whole thing, but like, but I got,

there's a lot of other people to blame at this point, right? I mean, I

can't claim all the development and certainly

not any of the success that we've had. I mean, all the way from the

business development to the, you know, the product development and everything in between. I

mean, you know, there's been a lot of smart people that we've roped into this.

You know, I would say for us, the biggest things that we've

learned from customers are they want the ability to have it be as

easy as possible, but they also want to be able to bake in complexity if

they want. So— Okay. Like an FFA teacher, Future Farmer

of America teacher, may not want this thing to

only take 5 minutes a week, right? They might want the kids to spend a

couple hours on it a week. So how do we do that, right? Well, okay,

here's the way that you strip out some of the automation and make it a

bit more manual and more applicable to some of the other systems that these

kids may run across if they decide to get into the business. So there's, there's

a lot of that work that we've done, but the biggest upgrades from Generation

3 to Generation 4 was actually on the cleaning side.

People hate cleaning. Generation 3 had this snapping gasket

mechanic that was really nice because you could easily pull different plants out, you

could do different sizing and things like that. Okay. But, you know, really they were

tough to clean. You know, there were a lot of little grooves in it where

you had to, you know, either soak them and things like that. And we

decided to completely do away with that, and we instead moved towards

a panel model where this panel is removable and it's the size of a dinner

plate, so it fits in any residential or commercial dishwasher.

It's made out of a food-grade plastic that's dishwasher safe.

The cleaning of this, you have to do a deep clean once every 3 to

6 months. Okay. And the clean itself used to take about 90 minutes and now

it takes about 15 minutes. And so for us, that was the biggest thing. Also

on the assembly side, our light tower internally, it used to be made

out of powder-coated steel LEDs, and we moved

towards a different LED design where it actually comes

pre-assembled now. And so the goal is just to have

people focus on the thing that's gonna build that emotional connection, right?

That's really the highest level goal that we have. Yeah. And so how do you

do that? Get 'em up and running as quickly as possible, have 'em

have a lot of success for their first crop, teach 'em how to experiment

intelligently so that they continually have success. building

programming that has a lot of staying power, make them feel really good

about what they're doing and the network that they're a part of. We do a

lot of community building as an organization. There's like a Facebook

group of users where, um, you can get in and talk to other

users. So instead of calling us, hey, how are you using this thing in this?

Yeah, perfect. Better coming from somebody else, right? Because they're the ones with that

experience. I mean, we run our own units, but it's limited,

right? I mean, against the 500+ installations that are

out there. I mean, we gotta leverage that knowledge that's out there,

right? And bring that into the ecosystem that we're building as a

company. And the community that you're building, 'cause that was something that I was gonna

ask you about. Like if you've started to see and started to, you know,

get all the customers talking to each other and, you know, there is something that

happens when you're all feeling like you're working, you know, you've all got the same

product or variation of it and you're excited 'cause now

people are sharing success stories about what they're growing, what they're trying, experimenting. And

it's interesting when that starts to happen and they start to have conversations and

help themselves out as well without waiting for like a rep to jump in and

answer a question. You'll know it's taken off when like they're helping

themselves and answering their own questions. Well, exactly. And now

that's the information that we pull when we say,

okay, this person, they solved this problem, which is amazing, but we can

make it even more intuitive by improving the product, right? Okay. Yeah.

pull information out of the community, or you can say, hey, a lot of people

are asking this question on the community. We can do

like, this is a stock thing that comes included now, right? So

always learning and trying to just amplify

that voice. But you're absolutely right. I mean, our partner— we call our

customers partners because they really are, right? I mean, we, you know, we're trying to

continually check in with people and make sure they're having a good experience.

And, you know, I would say that's also, in a lot of ways, our

sales force. I mean, we've got all these folks out there who are

having a good time, and it's always been our theory that if we take really

good care of them, you know, hopefully they take care of us. And I think

that's by and large been the case. Can you

talk a little bit about growing the team as a new

CEO and some of the challenges you've had, and even thinking about like, when's

the right time and who's the right person? Because they're obviously important

as you grow the organization. Yeah, it's a great question. Timely actually,

because we're in the middle of a hiring process actually. So if any

of your listeners are looking to get into the business, you know, give us a

call. You know, I think in the beginning I didn't do this as well

as we are now. And there's, you know, a long way for, for me to

go, which I think is true for everybody. But I think our focus has been

on really helping people understand what this is on the front end, really

helping people understand who we are as an organization, because now we do

have And it takes a long time to do this, but we do have a

real good sense of our culture and it's continually evolving and growing. But

in the beginning, you just, you don't even really know what your identity is.

And I think being able to share that identity in a strong way

will help people almost self-select out, which I think is an important part of

that process, help people understand if this isn't right for them, make it very clear

what's critical culturally, but also the team is

evolving the culture as we speak, right? I mean, we are, who we are as

people. And so I think the key is to hire people who

diversify your team skillset and diversify the opinions, but also

really jive with the kind of key behavioral aspects

that you want out of your work culture. So, you know, things like

humility and things like the ability to, you know, fail forward

fast and to be inclusive in your thinking. And, you know,

a lot of these qualities don't come naturally to everybody. That's okay. It

just means that maybe maybe it's not the best fit. And

for us, you know, we're really looking to build out a team

of people who don't necessarily think all the same, which I think is,

it's sometimes hard to wrangle that. But

I think the value is that you get really

strong opinions sometimes about things. And,

you know, there are times where sometimes I have to say,

you know, We're not all going to agree on this, so this is the way

that we're going to go. But generally speaking, you know, if you hire a lot

of smart people, we can logically come to

consensus. And I think that's been a huge

milestone for us, is getting to that point where we can really sit around, not

necessarily agree with each other, but listen to each other. Not just listen to be

heard, like not speak to be heard, but to be understood kind of thing.

Yeah. Those sort of qualities don't come naturally

Yeah. And what's important, some of the things you talked about are actually the core

values that you've listed on the website. It says here empowerment, integrity,

unconventional, relentless, humility, and inclusive. So I

think, you know, when people come to the site, it's already

speaking to the type of culture you're looking to build there. Yeah. And none of

that was my idea, right? Like, that's the thing is people,

they look at the leader of the organization and they're like, if it's a

success, he's a genius. And if it's a failure, he was never going to succeed.

And I'm like, no, I'm not a genius. succeed to begin with, right? But the

reality is that you just surround yourself with people smarter than you.

Yeah. Yeah. And they have good ideas like, hey, you have to have a very

clearly defined mission statement. You have to have a very clearly defined set of values.

And that's what you hire for, right? And they give you these

tips. And if you, you know, don't have such a big ego that you can't

acknowledge that that's a huge learning opportunity, again, the whole learning

organization thing, I think that's been core to our success. Is

there someone in this space, as the company has

grown in the vertical farming industry, or just someone in business that you

admire or have drawn inspiration from?

Yeah, I mean, everybody. I think the whole thing is inspiring. I mean, I

remember way back when I was getting started, there was a gentleman in

Milwaukee named Will Allen who was running Growing Power, which is a

nonprofit where he started just growing food and flowers with

at-risk teens in his neighborhood, and that model exploded. The

idea of, you know, how do we

use urban agriculture as a mechanism to,

you know, not just empower communities and to have great

programming, but also to sustain the nonprofit. I mean, he was selling

food too so that he didn't have to go and get donations every year to

keep the program running, and I think that's sort of social entrepreneurship. was

really inspiring to me. You know, Cornell University puts out

incredible information. You know, I, I didn't go to school for this, right? So, I

had to self-teach myself how to grow food hydroponically, right? So, that lettuce

handbook that Cornell put out was the original gospel for

me, right? I mean, I read that thing 300

times. And then, you learn as you go, right? I mean, part of it is

there's— it's very iterative. But, I mean, I remember when Ed

Harwood at AeroFarms was getting started, I watched that. I remember Nate

Storey with ZipGrow and that whole thing. I mean, I've been following

everybody and all the work is important and inspiring. And I

think there's room for more, to be honest with you. I think this sort of

work is still in its infancy in a lot of ways. I think it's growing

very quickly and exponentially. And I think we need to do it. We need to

get it right. And I think, you know, working together is going to be the

key. And that's something that we're just starting to do as a company, you know,

is, you know, find partnerships in industry. And that's something that I really want to

do more of as we, as we grow. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about

that as well. Like, what's been your experience

as you've started to engage with other folks in the vertical farming industry

or in the agtech world? I think it's been great. I mean,

everybody— I mean, there are a lot of new startups in this space. We're

actually— we just formed a partnership with a venture

capital group named Titletown Tech, a joint venture between the Green

Bay Packers and Microsoft. We were lucky

enough to get offered a place at their table. And so

that's actually where we're moving our offices to. And they

actually have a much deeper understanding of what's happening kind of in the

emerging side of the industry because they're hearing just all these pitches.

I think they've said, they told me that they've heard

450 agtech pitches since they

started just like a year to 18 months ago, right? So they've

heard a lot and I've, through them, I've learned a little bit about the

state of the space, and it is growing quickly. I mean, I will say that,

you know, there's a lot of people entering the space, but I will also say

that a lot of the people that have been here and a lot of the

people that have been working on it for a long time are in a great

position. And I think, you know, for me, the key is to

figure out how to find the strategic partnerships that are going to grow

the mission, right? That's really what it comes down to for us. Yeah. Is that

we want to stay really true to this idea of using food as

medicine and using agriculture agriculture technology as a vehicle for

economic development and as a vehicle for social change

in a way that improves our healthcare system and then improves our educational

system. And I think if we find folks that, you

know, are willing to partner with us to help us get there, there's a

lot of ways that that can go, right? That leaves a pretty wide open sphere

for partnership, you know. So I think it's easier said than done, but that's going

to be our focus. Very, very cool. What's a hard question

you've had to ask yourself Lately or recently? You

know, I think I'm talking a lot about the mission today, but

the reality is that we do run a business. We've got people that we

employ. We're in the middle of a pandemic and

the unemployment rate is high and people are suffering. And, you know,

there are constant stress factors on, on the business to

produce, right? And to sell and to grow and to do all of

those things. And, and we You know, we've been lucky in that sense, but also

that being the day in and day out, you know,

working on the ground with customers, growing the business, you know,

being in the trenches, sometimes you can lose sight of

really why you were here to begin with. And I actually

recently had to do a lot of reevaluation

personally to reconnect myself with all this. And I think it's going to be an

ongoing practice, to be honest, in the business. It's going to require me to

ongoingly check back in with that part of this. And for the team too, too,

I mean, we're actually doing that work as a team because it is easy

to get caught up in, you know, the next person that you're

serving and the next deal that's going to come together and the

next installation, you know, that we're building. And

you've got to extrapolate yourself out of that periodically and you

have to maintain a laser-like focus of what you're trying to do and why you

exist. And that's easier said than done. For sure. You know, I've had to

take a hard look as we grow where my gaps are as a leader. So

I had some leadership experience at Feeding America and Goodwill, but before then I

was, you know, running my own little deals as an artist. Yeah. And

so, you know, I've done a lot of reading and I've done a lot of

self-education, but, you know, also sitting down with people and

trying to really get honest answers from them of where are your gaps and being

self-critical in that way is Is also hard, but really important work.

I think I'm better for it. And I think the team is and the company

is, but yeah, those, those are, it's hard to look at yourself and realize that

the way that you were doing things is not necessarily the right way. And

part of it is, as the organization grows, you have to grow as well and

things can't stay the same, but also, you know,

the business will beat you up. You know, startups are difficult, you know, and I

think you also have to be gentle with yourself at the same time. And that's

a hard balance to strike. Yeah. Well, I think what's important is that you

realized that what got you

here won't get you there, and you have to continuously look to

do that self-improvement, improve, uplevel your skillset.

And at some point you actually start hiring people who are smarter than you

and then just not feeling like that's overwhelming for you or not

intimidated by that. Being able to let it go, right? As a founder. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah, sometimes the hardest thing is just being able to let it go.

Yeah, I can't explain it. It's hard to explain how deep that

difficulty is. Yeah, it's like a baby, you know? I mean, you've been

nurturing this thing for years. So as we wrap up, what's

just— what's the future look like as you think out, you know, next couple years?

What has you excited? A lot of things, but I

think the biggest thing is that we're really looking at

scale. Now, I mean, I think up until this point we've been growing at a

really aggressive rate and the market response

to our work has been really strong. And I

think now we're in a phase where we're really trying to figure out how do

we exponentially move that into new markets

and to affect new people and do that in innovative ways

and creative ways that really support the mission. And so some examples are we

brought on some channel partners that are going to help us find

those types of— that type of work, right? So people who can help

connect into the healthcare space more concertedly

and help us add value to the educational sector in

the times of COVID right? And how to

work in the food service space to, you know, get out in

front of the foodborne illness issue really intentionally, really

start to build a better food system. than what we have now. So,

you know, growing the business exponentially, but also doing it in

an intentional way. And I think it's exciting to

see the number of people now that are involved, that are on board to help

us do that. Well, it's really exciting to hear

your journey, your personal journey, and even coming from a background that

most people wouldn't expect would lead to a career in vertical

farming. So, but I think, like, you know, like polymaths, right? They have so many

different hobbies. And I think— I'm sure a lot of what you

learned just growing up in Wisconsin, living in New York City, you

know, studying opera, just all these little facets of what

makes you you, I, I think is what makes you— adds to your

personality and I think enhances you as a leader in

terms of this company. And I think that's what you, you know, you can draw

on a couple of different things and you, you're not just classically trained in

agtech business. And so I think that colors the way you approach

your business, I would imagine. Yeah, and I think it keeps us differentiated.

It makes us not as competitive against some of the other people in the space.

You know, we're doing different types of work because of that. And, and

hopefully, you know, when doing podcasts, I don't stumble over my words as

much as maybe I did because I got some of that theater training. So that's

true. Yeah, classically trained too. Thank you so much for taking the time to come

on the podcast. Hopefully it was a good experience for you as your, as your

first interview. Yeah, it was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. And I appreciate you

sharing the story. What's the best way for folks to engage with Fork Farms and

to connect with you online? Well, the first place is the website. So that's

forkfarms.com. So

forkfarms.com. And you can

also, you know, Google the business and we've got our landline there. And, you

know, there are real human beings that answer the phone that live in Wisconsin

that work on the business every day. So give us a call.

And yeah, we're looking for partners and we're looking for We're looking for people that

we can help in the space and folks that potentially even want

to, you know, work with us to propel the work. So any

interest you have in the business, we'd be happy to talk to you. We'll make

sure we'll include all those links in the show notes as well. Thanks again and

hope you have a great day. You too. Thank you. Thanks again to Alex for

sharing his inspiring story on everything that's

happened with Fork Farms and how he got to this great place with

his company. If you want to read the full show notes for this episode, which

include a summary, timestamps, and any links mentioned, please visit

verticalfarmingpodcast.com. There you'll find the

information from this episode and any past episodes. And as a reminder, you

heard me read them off at the beginning of the episode. If you're enjoying this

podcast, please leave us a rating and a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

As you heard, we'll be sure to read these out on future episodes. Stay

tuned next week for a very special interview with David Farquhar,

making a return engagement from Intelligent Growth Solutions to talk about some of

the great new projects that they're working on there. Until we meet again,

here's to your health. Thanks for listening. To read the full show

notes for this episode, which includes any links mentioned in the

episode, as well as a full show transcription, visit

verticalfarmingpodcast.com. There, You can sign

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