Canadian vertical farming startup Adapt agricultural technology has partnered with Reef Technology to bring their mushroom growing containers to major cities across the United States, starting with Austin.
Reef transforms urban real estate like parking lots into mobility and logistics hubs and currently operates more than 8,000 locations in hundreds of cities. The partnership will help Adapt place its shipping containers within walking distance of customers like restaurants and supermarkets, without having to pay sky-high rent for commercial or industrial space downtown.
Adapt opened its first shipping container in Austin and began restaurant deliveries this week. Over the course of the next few years, the startup plans to expand to more than 50 locations, including Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and Miami.
“Our model is to create hyperlocal farms in densely populated urban areas to reduce the distance between farm and fork,” Jonathan Murray, CEO and founder of Adapt AgTech, told TechCrunch.
Adapt’s network of shipping container farms specializes in “aberrant gourmet mushrooms,” which are gourmet mushrooms that have not been available in North American retail stores until very recently. Think pink, yellow, blue and king oysters, chestnut mushrooms and the trendy lion’s mane.
“Mushrooms are very, very well suited to container growing compared to other crops like leafy greens because of the energy consumption,” Murray continued. “They don’t require a huge amount of light. It’s really just the temperature and humidity.”
Launching in February 2022, Adapt delivered its first farm in June of last year to a Toronto location. The company has been growing ever since and now has farms in Ottawa, Vancouver, Halifax, Kingston, and Austin. On February 17, Adapt says it will launch a partnership with Loblaws, Canada’s largest retailer, starting with two flagship stores in downtown Toronto and then dozens more in Toronto and Ottawa before expanding to other locations in the months that follow. .
Adapt will also launch with retail banners under Canadian supermarket chains Sobeys and Pattison Food Group in 2023.
“By the end of 2023, we will be available in the stores of at least three of the five largest retailers in Canada, from Halifax to Vancouver and in between, which combined represent more than 3,500 stores,” Murray said.
Adapt recently closed a seed round with climate VC congruence and will use the funds to expand its base and recruit more support.
Sustainable fruiting, cheaper mushrooms
Image Credits: Adapt agricultural technology
Adapt AgTech designs and manufactures its shipping containers in Delta, British Columbia. In addition to the five containers operating today, Adapt recently started production on a further 16 units and aims to deploy more than 25 units in the next 12 months. Some of Adapt’s shipping containers are solar-powered with backup plugs, but in the interest of a quick launch in the US, the startup will be connecting its shipping containers to the grid. Power consumption, Murray said, is low: about 10 kilowatt hours per day.
The company’s distribution model is similar to a hub and spokes. Adapt uses a centralized facility in Kingston, Ontario to do all the lab work and colonize the substrate blocks, which means it allows the mycelium, the root structure of the fungus, to grow on blocks of sawdust, used coffee grounds or coconut fiber. The startup then ships the blocks to shipping containers, where the mushrooms can fruit near customers. Murray says this allows Adapt to deliver mushrooms within a couple of hours of harvest, which means not only fresher mushrooms, but longer-lasting mushrooms and less spoilage.
The startup deploys and operates the containers and also fulfills the orders. An operator oversees everything from harvesting to order management and mushroom delivery.
“Currently, all of our containers are essentially run by a full-time farmer, so we’re enabling them to become what we like to call ‘agricultural entrepreneurs,’” Murray said. “So, unlimited commissions, grow your territory as much as you can. We will add containers, we will grow your territories. This allows us to attract new and young people to agriculture as well, which is exciting.”
Murray also noted that existing mushroom farm operators have approached Adapt about converting their home-based businesses to Adapt farms.
The entire process allows the startup to remain vertically integrated and therefore save money on materials such as the substrate, which Adapt manufactures from whatever is available locally. Adapt’s control over each farm also allows the company to keep track of which mushroom strains are fruiting well and propagate more of them, providing even healthier margins for the company and a high-quality product that is cheaper than expected. you’d get at the farmer’s market, Murray said.
