Smallhold Opens First LA County Indoor Mushroom Farm
In May, Smallhold will begin delivering locally grown, USDA Certified Organic specialty mushroom varieties s to Southern California from its 34,000 square foot facility in Los Angeles County. This West Coast expansion, alongside existing farms in Brooklyn and Austin, furthers the 5-year-old company’s mission to build a hyper-local solution to a broken global food supply chain.
Smallhold is launching in more than 90 stores, including Whole Foods, Erewhon and Lassen’s. Southern California customers will also be able to order Smallhold mushrooms online via ecommerce players Good Eggs, Imperfect Foods and others. Acclaimed restaurant Kismet, known for celebrating fresh and vegetable-based Mediterranean-inspired dishes, is officially Smallhold’s first culinary partner in Los Angeles.
With the opening of this newest farm in Vernon – less than a mile outside of downtown Los Angeles – Smallhold now operates four commercial farms across the United States for a total footprint of more than 75,000 square feet. The goal is to not only to feed more than 2 million people in 2022, but to use mushrooms to change the way people think about their environment, sustainability and biodiversity.
When COVID first took hold of the country in 2020, Smallhold was on the shelf in a single grocery store in Brooklyn, N.Y. Now, Smallhold can be found in approximately 400 retailers and restaurants, including Whole Foods, Safeway-Albertsons, Central Market, and top restaurants including Mena, 232 Bleeker, Hungry House, and Maison Yaki in New York City as well as Uchi, Comedor, and Intero in Austin. This growth has been driven by consumer demand for lower impact, cleaner, better for you produce that will help our society deal with the impacts of traditional agriculture and climate change, the company said.
“This is a huge step for Smallhold, a business we founded five years ago inside a shipping container under the Williamsburg Bridge,” said Andrew Carter, CEO and co-founder. “Having grown up in Los Angeles myself, it’s exciting to bring our mushrooms to my environmentally conscious, culinary-focused hometown.”
Smallhold brings increased choice to consumers by growing harder to find mushroom varieties including organic lion’s mane, blue oyster, yellow oyster, king oyster and more. The average U.S. mushroom case is dominated by button, crimini and portobellos, ignoring an entire kingdom of texture, flavor, and nutrition, the company said.
By building hyper-urban farms in key regions and exclusively using compostable cardboard packaging, Smallhold reduces food miles traveled, improves mushroom quality and extends shelf life – all while drastically reducing carbon footprint, food waste and plastic usage. In comparison, 68 percent of mushrooms consumed in the United States are grown and shipped from Pennsylvania. Almost all Shiitake mushrooms are grown off logs originating outside of the United States, the company said.
“Educating and sparking curiosity about mushrooms is an integral part of our mission,” Carter said. “We want people to ask where their food comes from, think about their diet, and reconnect with the planet. This means installing our Minifarms in unexpected places like The Standard Hotel, or having Smallhold mushrooms on the menu at places like Eleven Madison Park — all while concurrently placing locally grown packaged mushrooms in grocery stores across the nation. We want people to have multiple touchpoints and opportunities to taste delicious, quality mushrooms.”
Smallhold’s indoor farms use proprietary systems to create optimal conditions for organic mushroom growth while ensuring maximum efficiency of water and energy usage. A patented system captures hundreds of thousands of data points per day, giving them the ability to imitate natural environments. This results in higher organic mushroom yields, lower resource use and allows a certified organic, hyperclean, efficient operation. Smallhold mushrooms also grow off byproducts from the lumber industry (mostly sawdust) and then 100% of spent substrate is composted or donated.
Smallhold has composted more than 2 million pounds of spent substrate. The goal is to compost 8 million pounds by the end of the year. Additionally, the Smallhold Community Compost Program provides spent substrate for free to the public through partnerships with community growers, hobby mycologists, compost enterprises, farmers, ranchers and others looking to celebrate fungi and build soil fertility through the power of mycelium.
In Los Angeles, Smallhold is part of a groundbreaking mycoremediation field study testing locally adapted and sustainable solutions for brownfield (AKA contaminated site) cleanup in L.A. County. Led by PhD candidate Danielle Stevenson at the University of California and in partnership with the City of Los Angeles, the study has been using Smallhold’s spent substrate blocks since December 2021, monitoring effects at contaminated sites including a former rail yard, auto shop, metal shop, and others. The results could reclaim contaminated land for future sustainable use and prove to have far reaching ramifications in the field of mycoremediation.
In Los Angeles County, Smallhold continues its practice of hiring locally, always paying above the living wage and partnering with regional non-profits and groups.
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Future of Grocery Retailing a Topic at Fresh Produce Summit
On the heels of a global pandemic, much has changed over the past two years in the world of grocery retailing, and these changes may influence what lies ahead for the entire fresh produce industry. To discuss the future of grocery retail and its impact on fresh produce, a pair of leaders from Whole Foods, along with its former co-CEO, have been confirmed as panelists for a keynote presentation this July at Organic Produce Summit 2022 in Monterey, Calif.
The Future of Grocery Retailing will be moderated by Walter Robb, principal of Stonewall Robb Advisors, senior executive partner at S2G Ventures, and former co-CEO of Whole Foods. Joining the conversation will be Karen Christensen, senior vice president of merchandising for perishables for Whole Foods, and Madhavi Reese, Whole Foods’ vice president of marketing. The discussion will explore how Whole Foods is addressing supply chain issues, the role of technology and e-commerce, consumer shopping behavior, new formats, and innovations in grocery retailing.
As an investor, mentor, and advisor to the next generation of American food companies, Robb has a long and varied entrepreneurial history, ranging from natural food retailer to farmer to consultant. He joined Whole Foods Market in 1991 and in 2010 was named co-CEO, at which time he also joined the Whole Foods Market Board of Directors. Christensen is a true food visionary who previously served as regional vice president of the Whole Foods Northern California region. Reese spent 18 years working on the agency side before joining Whole Foods as VP of brand strategy in 2017.
“The world of grocery retail has evolved significantly over the past two-plus years, as consumer demand for a seamless shopping experience continues to create opportunities for retailers to grow their business. To have leadership from Whole Foods — consistently recognized as one of the nation’s most reputable and progressive retailers—share their thoughts on the future of our industry is something OPS attendees will not want to miss,” said Susan Canales, president of Organic Produce Summit.
OPS 2022 is a two-day event specifically designed to bring together organic fresh produce growers, shippers, and processors with retail and buying organizations from across North America.
The Future of Grocery Retailing will be the third keynote presentation at OPS 2022. In the first keynote, John Ruane, senior vice president and chief omnichannel merchandising officer for The GIANT Company, will discuss The Growth of Omnichannel Merchandising That’s Driving Retail Sales. In the second keynote, Empowering the World to Stop Ocean Plastic, David Katz, founder of Plastic Bank, will share how the world’s most progressive companies are stewarding the collection of ocean-bound plastic waste and empowering communities to thrive.
OPS 2022 also includes a selection of field tours for qualified retailers and buyers, a gala opening night reception, and a sold-out trade show floor featuring more than150 producers and processors of organic fresh produce from across North America and the globe.
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National Inventors Hall of Fame to Induct 27 Innovators
A horticulturist and biochemist who identified a novel compound that extends the freshness and storage life of fruits, vegetables and flowers and a team that created the Kiva system, which advanced warehouse order fulfillment for e-commerce, are among innovators being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Twenty-seven innovators will be honored May 6-7 during the Greatest Celebration of American Innovation in Alexandria, Virginia.
Horticulturist Sylvia Blankenship and biochemist Edward Sisler are being honored for identifying 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP), a novel compound that significantly extends the freshness and storage life of fruits, vegetables and cut floral products by mitigating the effects of ethylene. Contributing to large reductions in food waste, and year-round access to fresh fruit, 1-MCP is best known for its use with apple crops under the trade name SmartFresh. For floriculture crops, it is known by the name EthylBloc.
Ethylene, a naturally occurring gas, stimulates plant development and fruit ripening by docking in plant cell receptor sites. 1-MCP docks in these same sites, in place of ethylene, and alters the signals that drive cellular processes. As a result, produce and flowers treated with 1-MCP remain fresh much longer.
1-MCP was patented in 1996 and was soon licensed by Floralife for floral crops. In 1996, AgroFresh was formed to commercialize 1-MCP for fruits and vegetables. That product, SmartFresh, was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for use in the United States and introduced in 2002. Today, SmartFresh is used on more than 30 crops, including 50 to 70 percent of the apples harvested in the United States.
Licensing fees for 1-MCP have brought in more than $25 million for North Carolina State University, the highest royalty revenues in the school’s history.
Blankenship, who has received multiple awards for her work, earned her bachelor of science and master of science degrees in horticulture science at Texas A&M University, and a doctorate in horticulture science at Oregon State University. She is professor emerita at NCSU.
Sisler, a biochemist at NCSU, had been studying the various aspects of ethylene physiology and biochemistry for years before collaborating with Blankenship in the 1980s.
Sisler, a native of Friendsville, Maryland, earned bachelor of science and master of science degrees from the University of Maryland. He obtained his doctorate in plant physiology from NCSU, where he spent his career as a biochemistry professor and researcher. Sisler is being honored posthumously.
Raffaello D’Andrea, Mick Mountz and Peter Wurman created the Kiva system, which has dramatically advanced warehouse order fulfillment for e-commerce. Using thousands of autonomous mobile robots to lift and move racks of inventory shelves to workers who select items for individual shipments, the Kiva system substantially reduced the time from order placement to shipping.
In 2003, D’Andrea, a co-founder of the systems engineering program at Cornell University, and faculty adviser and system architect of the four-time world champion Cornell robot soccer team, had just started his sabbatical at MIT when he met Mountz over a 15-minute cup of coffee. After several more meetings, D’Andrea quit his sabbatical at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined Mountz and Wurman in their quest to revolutionize order fulfillment. In 2005, the trio renamed their company to Kiva Systems and Staples became the first of many customers. In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva and eventually named it Amazon Robotics.
D’Andrea, an IEEE Fellow named on more than 40 U.S. patents, earned his bachelor of science degree in engineering science from the University of Toronto and his master of science and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.
In 2013, D’Andrea co-founded ROBO Global, which launched the world’s first robotics exchange traded fund. In 2014, he founded Verity, which creates autonomous indoor drone systems, where he serves as CEO and chair.
Mountz earned his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a master of business administration degree from Harvard University. In 2002, he conceived of a more efficient method for order fulfillment: robots delivering shelves of inventory to people working as pick-and-packers. He asked Wurman, his former MIT roommate, and NCSU professor, for software advice. Together, they decided on a centralized software architecture to wirelessly command the robots in real time. D’Andrea joined the company then known as Distrobot to develop the motion layer.
Mountz holds more than 60 U.S. patents. In 2012, Fast Company magazine ranked Kiva Systems as one of the most innovative companies in the world for their game-changing solutions using mobile robotics. He is a member of MIT’s School of Engineering Dean’s Advisory Council.
Wurman earned his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering at MIT and his master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science and doctorate in computer science at the University of Michigan. Named on more than 60 U.S. patents, Wurman is director of Sony AI America.
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