Smallhold

Smallhold provides retailers and restaurants with contained-­environment vertical farm units that produce large amounts of mushrooms, herbs, and leafy greens with minimal labor. Their current product offering is with on-site mushroom production and can produce up to 120 lbs / week in the space of a bookcase. The mushrooms are certified organic and are competitive with conventional ways of growing. The major innovation comes from the Smallhold Subscription Service, which is required for their customers. Smallhold pre-­grows plants and mushrooms to ensure no contamination, crop health, and quality, and delivers them directly to the user, not only giving them the best quality produce, but decreasing the amount of time it's actually sitting in their unit, giving them the maximum amount of output possible. In effect, Smallhold operates as a large farm, distributed throughout a city. The centralized hub does all the lab work, initial stages of growth, purchasing, labor management, and traceability. It then distributes the final, low-­density growth stages (plants that are almost ready for harvest) among the customers. We call this “Produce-­as-­a-­Service.”