The Company Bringing the Farm Right to the Table
On Wednesday, the restaurant adds its newest piece of kitsch. Nestled between the entrance and the bar, above an interior window, sits a rectangular box emanating blue light. It’s filled with extraterrestrial looking life forms: mushrooms.
Designed and built by Smallhold, a Brooklyn-based, certified-organic, “distributed farming” startup, the “Minifarm” has been in the works for months. If all goes according to plan, blue, yellow and pink oysters, king and pioppino mushrooms will replace varieties such as beech, button and enoki in Dimayuga’s beef jerky fried rice. Dimayuga beamed with excitement. “A just-picked mushroom tastes the best.”
The fungi begin their life in Smallhold’s Bushwick headquarters and partner farms outside New York, in bags filled with such waste products as sawdust and coffee grounds. After three to four weeks, they are then transferred to Minifarms like that of Mission Chinese to finish growing. Harvesting on-site gives the mushrooms a longer shelf life, in addition to what Smallhold said is competitive pricing. Unlike other experiments in urban agriculture, the Minifarm uses very little space. The system, according to the company, is simply a better way to grow and distribute food.
A small Minifarm starts at $2,000, measures 4-feet wide by 2-feet deep, stands 6-feet tall and can produce up to 2,300 pounds of mushrooms a year. Inside, Wi-Fi and embedded sensors allow Smallhold to constantly monitor growth and adjust inputs such as lighting and temperature. Restaurant clients put a deposit on the machine and pay a monthly subscription fee, plus a price—from $5 to $12 per pound—for the produce.
See the full story here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-11/the-company-bringing-the-farm-right-to-the-table