Shipping Container Farming is the Future!

imagine producing what takes 45 football fields 194 Olympic swimming pools or 594 basketball courts worth of Farland in your backyard traditional Farms lose 90% of their value before it actually reaches your plate so we're growing food with the highest nutrient value 365 days a year inside we're immune to weather pests and outside forces this is the future here's how this entrepreneur turned her garage experiment into a $3 million a year shipping container farm so we did not have money for a warehouse we had to get creative what I want to know is can anyone start

a farm like this so I had no farming experience when I started this so whether you're starting in your garage or a former garbage dump I think anyone can do this how much can you make this rack alone generates $10,000 a year and at last how can we get in on this revolution before everybody catches on all right Shannon I walk in here it looks nothing like a farm so tell our viewers where we are at what happens here and what is the future of farming well absolutely first of all thank you so much for

being here today we are at Brick Street Farms this is our Urban Hub this is a vertical hydroponic Farm we're growing almost 70 Acres of fresh pesticide free non GMO produce here on a third of an acre 70 Acres on 68 to 70 Acres yes on a third of an acre here in downtown St Petersburg I can't wait to see the Farms how many containers are we talking about total so we have 20 containers 17 of them are growing leafy greens and three of them are growing herbs or micro greens also known as Sprouts so

tell us about the scale of re operations as it is today of our 20 Farm containers each container puts out between 1,000 and 1500 lb a month of fresh leafy green produce we're very excited about that that's hard to believe when you look at it because we stack them we're able to get to that level of scale so we actually consider ourselves a commercial producer so while we look small we are actually commercial industrial size producer but our mission here is to bring that scale production to the point of consumption how many employees are running

this operation here so including management and all of our marketing folks we have a total of 24 employees and each container takes about one full-time employee and then you have on call people I didn't think you would need that for a farm yes so what that means is because we are based on technology and we are based on the electric grid we do need to have an on call staff just in case something happens in the middle of the night someone is on staff so there's about seven of us that rotate every week our systems

are smart enough to tell us when there's an alarm or an alert that requires human intervention otherwise it's pre-programmed to be proactive wow can you give us an inside look on one of these containers absolutely we're actually going to start in farm container number four which grows our red gem lettuces red gem let's let's go check it out y it's ready water look how beautiful it looks why shipping containers because it was a small controllable space that allowed us to start with a more affordable budget instead of building a huge warehouse and hoping we would

grow into it tell us a little bit about your background what Drew you to specifically Hydroponics I actually don't have a background in agriculture I'm an electrical engineer by training so prior to this I used to work in the electric utility industry and I was a hobbyist gardener when I moved down from the north originally from Pennsylvania to Florida I took the same approach to gardening and it's extremely difficult down here so I decided to turn my garage into a hydroponic farm and that's really the birthplace of Brick Street Farms so the hobby turned into

what we see today a failed Garden experiment in my backyard which then turned into converting my two-car garage into a hydroponic grow room once I realized that I was growing More Produce that my husband and I could eat ended up feeding the whole block and that's the birthplace of Bricker Farms we bought a shipping container and then after that it kind of snowballed we both both worked full-time for the first 2 and 1/2 years of Brick Street Farms ultimately I left the electric utility and decided to go all in on brck Street Farms that's awesome

well you're doing a tremendous job let's go check out the inside absolutely so how much does this one rack then Genera in Revenue the whole container and how does that compare to a traditional farm so this same lettuce has actually three different price points based upon my customer base so this one rack can range from about $2,200 to about $5,800 based on who I'm selling to it can go to one of three Avenues retail wholesale or Distributors and it can range from about $2,200 to $5,800 just for this Zone every week what about the whole

container anywhere from $8,000 to $155,000 a month in Revenue per Farm container then you can times that by the 17 leafy Green Farm containers that we have but then we also have three micro green containers which I will be happy to show you which has completely different economics okay yeah let's go check out the other ones that we got absolutely let's go check out our mixed Farm head all right so this is a different setup here absolutely so this is our mixed Farm heads it has five different varieties so we Harvest as 24 heads to

a case or the heads get broken up and it gets mixed together in our baby green salad mix for our home consumers so how does this differ from the traditional model of farming and how much attention does each case require on a daily basis so what you're looking at here is an nft system so this is a hydroponic system what that means is all of these channels are filled with water the water is constantly flowing all of the nutrients vitamins and minerals that the plants need are in the water this environment is like a spa

day for plants so we set up the environment in this Farm to grow this variety so that these plants are happy and healthy and they can spend their time growing and not fighting against the element it's almost like we're talking about individuals here relax enjoy I love it how many years now that you're in operation we bought this property in 2016 and we built our first couple of containers uh right here on this property was it success right off the bat and then what were some of the challenges in the early days when you be

officially became a business no it was absolutely not a success right off the bat but we kept it small and we kept our finances tight the crazy thing is we started our expansion and put our shovel in the ground to build what you see here today in March of 2020 then the world shut down so nobody knew what was going to happen when was the world going to reopen how are we going to get our supply chain how do we get construction workers to show up all while dealing with employees that are scared but I

can tell you I came out the other side of the co years with a PhD in business and supply chain for sure break down the here over here VES for us and then the sources as well sure well when we first started uh we actually were strictly wholesale I think our first year in business we did somewhere around 60 70,000 in Revenue I mean that's year one with only a few Farm containers um but we actually were profitable because we kept our cost so low because we were spending our 401K at that point in time

so we were very tight by the time we reached year three we had expanded to about 16 containers and we broke our first million in Revenue wow so so we had about 16 containers at that point in time and I remember the first time we broke seven figures I was ecstatic about that and then came the investors so after that uh we ended up scaling so throughout that time we also transitioned because you asked about our sources while we started strictly Wholesale direct to restaurants at that point in time the consumers had begun tasting our

product at the restaurant seeing our name on the menu and because we're in such a great location right here in the Heart of the City people literally started knocking on our door and they were like bad front that was the best salad I ever had how can I get some and I was like oh maybe we should sell direct to Consumers so we started doing popups that's when the retail came in and then ultimately with our restaurant Partners some of them have many locations throughout the state and they wanted to figure out how to get

our product to their other locations that are not in our delivery territory and enter Distributors we are on track for our Revenue somewhere about $3.2 million this year amazing what we're working towards um interesting that revenue is a combination of Distributors wholesale including grocery as well as directed consumer retail so directed consumer retail is about 6% of our Revenue wholesale is 30 to 40% of the remainder Distributors Blitz time with Shannon are you ready I'll do my best all right what's the weirdest experiment you've conducted on your Farm strawberries harder than I thought what's a

myth about your industry that you'd love to debunk that it set it and forget it what's the most unexpected skill you've learned from running a hydroponic Farm people management okay what's your go-to meal after a long day of running to farm oh my God don't say salad you probably have enough of it here actually probably naked farmer what's one piece of technology do you wish existed for hydroponic farming smart tanks what's your favorite thing to grow and why favorite thing to grow is probably the crunch love lettuce and I like it because it's a mix

between Iceberg and ROM super crunchy yum all right what's your favorite memory ever since business started our holiday parties and employee get togethers if you weren't doing this what would you be doing instead if I wasn't doing this I would 100% be back at the utility industry awesome that's a wrap shanon knows better than most starting a business takes more than just planting the seeds of a good idea properly laying the groundwork and nurturing it from the start is how you set yourself up for growth from day one that's why if you want your next

big business idea to Blossom you've got to check out bsy whether you're launching something brand new or taking your business to the next level byy handles the foundational tasks that make growth possible LLC formation compliance tracking and even tax support making sure your business is protected and set up for Success from the very beginning is what busy is all about and with Z LLC formation plus State fees and a free registered agent service for your first year bzy makes it simple for you to focus on the future without worrying about costly startup fees a thriving

business starts with smart preparation click the link in the description and let bsy give your big idea the tools it needs to succeed all right let's say I want to start today just like you did years ago yeah uh limited budget uh how do I bring in customers what's the marketing strategy well like I said we started on a Sho string budget we had no marketing budget so literally cold calling so I felt confident in our product we had an amazing product and necessity will drive you to do almost anything that needs to get done

so I literally went out and started cold calling on restaurants and showing them with this great product and I was just so excited almost childlike enthusiasm for it that I think that was contagious and there's a few chefs that really gave us a chance with this small really unknown potentially unreliable business source and it grew from there and then fast forward to 2024 almost 2025 we still only have one marketing person her name is Alicia she's amazing she handles everything from our websites to our labels to our social media and she really is a one

woman shop so we still don't have a fancy budget for marketing we don't do any paid ads uh we don't have any influencers working for us so because the product speaks for itself right what you're doing there's very little selling that needs to be done once you try it you're like we just got to get it into people's hands once it's into people's hands and we get them to our website it usually job is done okay awesome well let's show you guys what vertically integrated farming looks like and let's let's go upstairs vertically integrated [Music]

upstairs talk us through the process of looking for this location any regrets how did you end up on this one give us a story absolutely not that is one thing I have zero regrets on is this location so when we purchased this property in late 2015 this was actually a garbage dump good time to buy by the way it was so we were smart in the sense that we knew that agriculture is not a common land use in an urban area so you have to be extremely careful about your location selection and we did thorough

research about uh land uses in the city of St Petersburg that would give us the best chance of success because we we knew we needed to get a business certificate so when we purchased an industrial property uh we then went before the zoning Review Committee to get that special exception to operate an a business and we were unanimously accepted at that point in time so I would say look in in an underutilized area and I could tell you that once we started investing I started to see the properties around us so I think we caught

the neighborhood on the upswing and we were effective change agents at that point in time you took on some debt to keep the ball rolling right to keep scaling what are some lessons cuz you were hesitant then that changed well I think what allowed us to even get there is we were extremely Frugal at the beginning we used our 401ks yeah we refinanced our house so I guess does that count as debt I guess Tech technically it does um but not as much as if we had gone in a straight business loan yeah um also

we purchased this property and then we were able to borrow against it so we reinvested because uh the appreciation of this property we were able to take some money out and invest in infrastructure and then after that after a few years that's ultimately what led us to venture capital so our venture capital is was a combination of of debt and Equity however it just wasn't feasible for us to raise funds through a traditional business loan like through an SBA or like Bank of America or something like that because this is such a nuanced and young

industry it is okay um we also were interested in the expertise and Outlook that Venture Capital brought to us we wanted to get into that world well the network the network The Experience um that alone is worth a lot yes some of the mentorship that came with it was great so my recommendation is delay debt as long as possible SM if you're looking specifically in this industry the USDA has such an amazing amount of resources for land for equipment low interest rate long borrowing terms honestly that's going to be your best way to go because

a lot of traditional commercial Banks really don't work in the a space so you want to work with a lender that definitely understands the business model you need to know your unit economics make sure your interest rates are smart make sure your terms are smart and make sure then you're pricing your product appropriately so that you can make your payments if someone was to start what you're doing today at home their garage give us a brief overview how much would it cost what kind of items things needed to get going you just wanted to started

growing like hydroponically like for your family for yourself for your own consumption fresh lce every day yeah there's a ton of options on Amazon start anywhere from a couple hundred to $1,000 and that's an extravagant home system let's go check out I don't think I've seen the micro greens mic micro how different is this container compared to what we've seen already Shannon this so very much a hydroponic container but this is called flood and drain so what happens is actually the water will fill the top container once every 12 hours and then that'll water fall

down to here waterfall to here waterfall to here through these pipes here yep through these pipes and the water raises up and Waters the plants from below so they don't need the consistent water like lettuce does cuz this is all dry right now right yes so micro greens actually like to dry out between waterings and help makes them actually grow faster and be a little bit more resilient so we actually flood from the bottom up every 12 hours for these micr greens and is this the most profitable then out of everything you grow here is

the micro greens the micro greens do have the highest profit margins and the reason for that is they grow so quick I'm able to turn over the trade space very very quickly in addition it's a lot less labor so we'll actually run these through a harvesting machine and then they'll get packaged straight away unlike having a whole Farm where you have to have a human pick all the different lettuce heads so micro greens is a lot less labor and a lot faster turnover so this style of farming clearly has a lot of incredible benefits right

the food the environment Etc why do you think more farmers are not getting into it they've already invested so much into their land and into their equipment and into their processes I mean they're probably paying 30-year loans on most of that equipment it's not so easy to just switch models but what I think is more farmers are embracing like Hybrid models they're adding green houses and I also think more people are getting into Hydroponics that have never been Farmers before mhm awesome can we try one of these I've never seen these guys before go ahead

pull a leave all right I'll take the whole thing yeah go ahead take the whole thing so this is actually one of our fanciest crops and it tastes like across between sour green apple and lime wow that's delicious it goes in salads it goes great on top of a fish or seafood offsets whatever is in the pallet there that's amazing whenever we do popups this is actually the number one crop that we bring with us for people to taste test what is it selling for just on a resale side if I would come in and

pick up a few so this is actually one of our more expensive crops I would yeah so uh 2 oz starts anywhere around $8 and the maximum size we sell is8 8 oz which gets up into $28 to $32 wow the interesting thing about red cell is that the seeds look like black salt they're super tiny and it's the most expensive seed that we buy fun fact yeah let us know what you guys think what's your energy bill per month I always wanted to find that out and then what's the other line item that's the

most expensive to operate this Farm our energy is mostly dependent on because of two major systems we're running our grow lights which is our number one contributor to our cost which you see right here the high efficiency LED light and the other thing is our environment so our back wall has a 5ton bar unit so it's an HVAC system including dehumidification so we keep our farms in here at about 70° so between the lights and the agx each Farm container's monthly electric bill is about $1,000 oh so you can range anywhere from 17 to $30,000

a month in electricity and we are actually one of the most energy efficient Farm compan and then you have to think about in terms of labor but labor is our most expensive we're farming 70 Acres of Farmland on a third of an acre that takes a lot of bodies are you ready to skip the traditional startup hurdles use the upflip quiz specifically tailored to your goals personality and situation to pick the perfect business model and launch your business in 10 days guaranteed seriously guys this is the perfect opportunity for you to launch your business so

hit that link in the description below and launch your business in 10 days guaranteed all right so once everything's grown what happens you call it a production Center where everything gets packaged ready to go oh yes absolutely so all of our lettu uses and our microgreens get harvested here in the farms and then they get broken down by customer pack type in our production room gotcha let's go take a look absolutely all right so we are at the production area take us through the production as soon as the plant gets harvested any lessons mistakes you

guys have learned especially over the last few years over the years so for our lettuce all of our lettuce get harvested in their cases so most of what we sell 24c count cases those actually get packaged and sealed inside the farm containers and actually don't come in here but what you're seeing here is sometimes we have other products that get broken down like what's getting packaged here right now is for let's take a look yeah yeah this is actually for our grocery stores and it's sold directly to our consumers so our micro greens and our

loose leaf varieties all pass through here what are some benefits for the consumer when it comes to using Hydroponics products does it taste better I mean absolutely so Hydroponics are hugely beneficial to the consumer so what happens as soon as a living product like a lettuce gets harvested it has nutrient degradation oh wow but the fact that ours gets harvested and is in your home or the restaurant in less than 24 hours means it's almost completely whole as far as its nutrient contents so not only is it cleaner it's pesticide free we use all certified

non-GMO seeds there's no pesticides there's no chemicals there's none of that in the Farms it has almost 100% nutrients and you've got a longer shelf life wow so in my opinion as far as leafy greens go I think Hydroponics is definitely the leader can you share with us anything about the biggest deals you've landed maybe customers you've landed uh what's the story behind that so we service everything from Mom and Pop delies and Community restaurants all the way through some of the largest distributors in the nation we Service uh lunch deli style restaurants all the

way up through Michelin star high-end restaurants so we do the Marriott Hilton Hyatts Ritz Carlton's and you don't just walk into a marot and say Hey I want to sell you some lettuce on the retail side I remember it was like the first time that we got our like thousandth Farm member and I just remember thinking like when we finally accumulated that many people that are paying a subscription fee to be part of us I just that was really Monumental especially since we didn't get to Market it it was entirely organic but I also remember

the first time we actually saw ourselves on the Shelf of a major grocery store and I see our beautiful labels and I see our product there and some of the stores are only a few miles from here so that that was a hugely Monumental piece for us what is this what are we looking at okay so this is actually not on right now but this is our seating machine and this is a coconut Coy plug we actually fill this tray right here with seeds we turn this on and then what will happen is this conveyor

belt feeds this tray through here and drops a seed in each one of these holes well the reason why this is so important MH is it used to take three people up to 3 days to do our weekly seating oh wow now one person can do all of our seating needed for the week in less than four hours the power of having the right tools thec it was an average of maybe 36 hours a week of human labor down to 4 to 6 hours uh with this machine so this machine was about a $10,000 investment

and it paid for itself in 6 weeks there are a ton of other inspiring entrepreneurs similar to Shannon but I need your guys' help if you're not yet subscribed take a second hit that Bell hit that subscribe button and not only lets us know that you're appreciating and enjoying this episode but it helps us bring more incredible entrepreneurs so this is actually the location as well where if I wanted to buy from you directly okay I show up to this address and pick up right up front up front Okay let's go take a look all

right so uh how many orders do you ship daily what does the shipping process look like we offer delivery as well as pickup for our retail customers we can range from anywhere from 10 to 100 home orders in a day so where we're standing right now we are entirely online so go to our website tons of products tons of offerings you're going to get the freshest product so you make your purchase online your order will be ready for pickup in 5 minutes whoa so talk about a record yeah so a lot of people even just

sit in their car place the order it's ready in about 5 minutes on top of that we do deliver all of our wholesale customers so we have anywhere from 10 to 30 wholesale deliveries a day and for our smaller local wholesale customers there's actually a wholesale pickup down the street because there is a minimum order for wholesale for delivery and they show up themselves yes right here in this location Wholesales on that side retails on this side you come in we work on the honor System find the order with your name on it sign the

sheet and and your out the door what have you learned about the secret of finding great talent how do you retain people besides actually engineering these Farms people management is probably the hardest thing so we know everybody we bring in we are training from scratch we learn to look for characteristics and skills that maybe don't originally seem to apply but can be transferable other thing I've learned is that when you find an amazing employee I would take someone that is reliable and eager to learn over somebody that is already trained or extremely skilled so what

I've also realized is when you do find those people those humans that just shine you really need to hold on to them you need to work with them you need to incentivize them let them grow find out what motivates them and hold on to them would you like to start generating your own six figure income but just don't know where to start grab our free Report with 137 businesses across 17 different Industries we break down everything you guys need to know from start to revenue so make sure you get your free coffee by by clicking

the link in the description below all right well I'm excited to see the brain behind all of this operation absolutely let's go let's go take look all right so we are at the brains of the farm yes literal brains literal brains perfect time to talk about systems that you've implemented in your business that make it more efficient y give us a quick breakdown 101 what this is all about this is a lot going on here so what we're talking about now when we say systems I'm talking about technology systems so what you're looking at right

here is called our PFF propagation filtration and fertigation this container here and everything you see behind me is actually a very unique aspect to The Brick Street Farms Hub model so we have what's called centralized fertigation and you're actually looking at our fertigation skid right here we partnered with a company called groing that designed this to our specifications and this control panel here is the literal brains wow so this is actually the intelligence system behind our entire Farm container so F gring to our specifications for our Hub so this brain controls every piece of equipment

on the entire property this is the fertigation so these are all of the different nutrients we custom blend all of our nutrients so each Farm container has a programmed recipe this brain controls this fertigation skid that has tentacles into these fertilizers based on the recipes it hols from these barrels remixes it in this container and then sends the recipe through those tentacles to each of the farm containers so when we actually centralized our fertigation we reduced our labor cost by about 40% oh so now I only need one to two employees really smart to actually

manage own and operate control maintain this container higher upfront cost but a huge saving down the road how does it feel to maybe finally make it uh has the how's the entrepreneurial Journey been for you entrepreneurial I mean like as I mentioned we built during pandemic so it's been it's been through its ups and downs it's trial by fire Peaks and valys like I said I got a you know even with two graduate degrees I feel like I've learned more with Brook Street Farms than I ever did in grad school I think it's an entrepreneur

unless you're those rare famous CEO celebrities I don't think there's ever a true feeling of you've made it it's always what's next on the journey well um and so for me I feel extremely accomplished with what we've built here at this Hub but to me I still don't feel like I've made it because now I'm already thinking about how do I replicate this how do I make it more efficient how do I continue to increase profits so I'm not sure the journey is ever done I mean maybe if you're some famous CEO I'm not going

to name names out there billion doll billionaire CEOs I mean that's great uh but for most of us you know that's just a whole different level unless you found at Amazon or something like that but for me it's how do I scale this how do I continue to serve our community how do I make a better product and how do we make this business model better how do I make it easier you know I always think about this in terms of what if I was a franchise list and I think about that you know I

think about how could I I want to replicate these throughout the State of Florida and hopefully up through the East Coast maybe even my hometown of Pittsburgh someday but ultimately I want other people to be able to do this you know that maybe don't have my background in 70 years of experience so I try to think about how can I make it more self- sustaining and how can I make it more profitable so how do I make it leaner and smarter what's the most surprising part about running your own business the good the bad I

think there's a saying that goes entrepreneurs are the only people that will work 80 hours a week to not have to work 40 hours a week for somebody else yeah we've heard that especially when you get started I think people underestimate like even if I'm not here at the farm I'm always working but I don't think the stress of an ownership of a business ever really leaves you you know you you have more sleepless nights and you know you do blow through holidays especially when it's early on so I don't ever think you clock out

as an entrepreneur especially in the early years as it gets more mature and your systems become more self-sufficient and your employees are well trained I think you can start to put some boundaries U but I think the most surprising thing is how all consuming it is really when you start a business but also How Deeply rewarding it can be I mean you can have the highest of highs and and the lowest of lows and I mean I'm just so proud and when I have moments of like with my staff and I get the opportunity to

share this and I see us on the news or we've got our customer off the street that is recovering from chemo that will only eat our green because the family knows that they're from you just really got to take those wins Jenna there's a lot of entrepreneurs that show a lot of Revenue right but there's not a lot of profit left at the end of the day so what's the secret to being profitable well it's a really interesting question considering this is uh controlled environment agriculture our industry has gone through tremendous amount of change in

turmoil the last few years but what has allowed Brick Street Farms to Prevail has been our focus on scalability unit economics and as i' uh mentioned in an earlier conversation is really making tough decisions and knowing your numbers early on and that really is just the nature of the agriculture industry so a lot of farms including indoor agriculture or controll environment agriculture do have to finance every season in order to get the crops to sell and in the end you're hoping that you're making the right decisions the smart decisions you're managing your cost you're putting

your funds you know where it's uh going to get you the greatest return as you takes a lot of faith it takes a lot of faith they say Farmers yes they say uh Farmers tend to have the strongest Faith because we we believe in a future that hasn't happened [Music] yet how do you decide when to add new products how many skews I guess are you growing right now if you count all of our unique micro grain we're somewhere in the 40 plus range exuse that much as far as lettuce is though we are very

much much more minimal on the leafy greens so combined as a company probably around 40 with our lettuce it's eight okay yeah basically we look at consumer demand so who's buying our product and what do they want and as far as lettuce is sometimes lettuce is really isn't that exciting where we are able to have fun is with our micro greens they're great uh minimal investment and they turn over quick so we're able to have a lot of fun there but our lettuce we stay very consistent and we rarely introduce anything new on the lettuce

side so someone who wants to start a Hydroponics Farm they can just focus on micro greens oh 100% 7day turnaround and a lot of people do and there's almost unlimited options with them if you start looking through micro green seeds it's a little bit addictive what's one habit that you practice daily that contributes a ton to your success what do you say I wish I had one of those super fancy you know morning routine answers for that but for me it's really two things perseverance remembering why I got into this I've got a commitment to

my investors I've got a commitment to my employ EMP es so it's really perseverance is number one and on a personal note for me I've got a couple puppies at home I love to run at the park so I try to keep my sanity and my stress levels I love going running with my dog plus they're both high energy so that helps keep me saying how much can you make running this operation out of your garage you can never run this operation out of your garage but you can it's think about a home Garden you

know whether you're doing raised beds in your backyards you want to grow Hydroponics maybe you have some garden beds hydroponic tower in your garage you can certainly feed your family maybe even your block you can certainly do that I think the other alternative is there are some micro Green Farmers that have started strictly only doing micro greens I think there's an opportunity there but you can very quickly outgrow your home garage just like we do what's your approach to competition so just like in regular or traditional agriculture there is a ton of competition so not

only are we competing against traditional Farm FS but we're competing against Bowtique high quality and other even hydroponic or indoor Farms so what we really focus on is what we can control we want to provide the best product to our customers we want to convey the quality the importance the nutritional value of the products we also provide top-notch customer service so even though we service retail and wholesale we treat our wholesale customers as if they are retail we focus on account management customer management we give everyone a personal touch and we figure that if we

focus on what we can control and what we do best while keeping an eye on Market forces that uh we will prevail uh by building a strong customer base with repeat customers as well as a strong referral base can you share with us uh a moment when a customer provided feedback which then LED you to make an impactful change to the business so the interesting thing about feedback we could also call it constructive criticism so to speak I can actually think of two quick examples on the retail side we started hearing back from our customers

about the use of plastic and plastic packaging so the traditional tubs of salad that you see at the grocery store because they were coming and picking up from the farm they kept challenging us on the use of plastic and how much plastic is in the containers even though our plastic is recycled and recyclable so what we decided to do was look for an alternative plastic solution unfortunately salad greens don't really keep in any other packaging material at least not that can be cons consistently like traveled or transported so what we decided to do was here

for our retail customers we moved away from the square tubs and into the plastic Ziplock bags while it is still plastic it's 80% less so that was one that actually allowed us it reduced our costs which also allowed us to keep our pricing consistent over the years instead of having to raise prices and it also allowed us while it is still plastic to use 80% less for our retail customers so that was great feedback that we got and then on the wholesale side the interesting thing was uh because they don't come from an EG background

we started presenting our products to our customers the way that we use them in the way that we see them over the years we've had to evolve more in the Standard Produce packaging process and methodology so we actually used to sell our product by weight which in some instances we still do but now we sell our products by the case when dealing with Distributors and wholesale let's talk about the most important kpis for your business what are you measuring to track succcess and growth well interesting thing is um Farms are historically really bad at tracking

kpis so that is something we put first and foremost so we've got a really great inventory software management system and we've actually got a powerbi model that uh integrates fully with our farming system as well as with our inventory management system so I'm able to get real time on demand reporting for our kpis proprietary Buu software or just a third party that you sign up uh we built it using powerbi so that we could get a dashboard view of all aspects of our business because we wanted to make sure that we had that insight and

we also had that insight for our investors which was so important so we have uh many different views so we've got our sales kpis our farm kpis our production kpis but some of the most important that I follow as a CE I've got my CEO dashboard that I look at every day I look at my cost of goods so I look at my con my raw cost inputs I'm constantly following my energy utilization and I'm watching my labor rates because those are going to have the biggest impact on my profitability in addition to that we

uh focus on the customers that uh we have repeat business with standing orders so we look at Revenue by customer and we also follow the sales Trends we watch very very closely uh what products are moving how fast they're moving how long they're sitting on the shelf and we very strongly monitor our waste or our shrink so we want to make sure anything that either gets wasted or ultimately is harvested and sits in our refrigerator anytime that product is shrunk AAA not sold that's money down the drain for us so we watch our inventory turnover

extremely close because that is an indicator of monthly sales what's it like Shannon to kind of reflect back in the early days realize you started in the garage now you're here on track to do $3.5 million at the end of 2024 just describes you as the feeling the journey the nostalgic almost nostalgic you know when we started it was 2015 in the garage 2016 had our first container here no one could have predicted 2020 and what was going on but looking back uh the Simplicity I'm very proud of how we started how constrained and controlled

and I think uh we were not frivolous with our resources and we really appreciated it mhm and where we're at today you know this facility has been running now for about 14 months as you see it today I see and uh I can even just tell you the Lessons Learned operating in a hub like this which is really first of its kind and I am optimistic and excited about the future because I know I can replicate this and it's only going to be more cost efficient and smarter that's exciting and I could tell you building

another one of these not during a pandemic is going to be so easy so the real mission for us is to replicate extra ordinary amount of production on a very small footprint in your urban area that's awesome Hydroponics are cool but what if I told you there's a guy who turned his backyard into a six-figure aquaponics Farm seriously you don't want to miss it check it out right here