This salad concept grows its own lettuce through an on-site hydroponic farm

While farm to table restaurants are nothing new, not many operators source their own salad greens from right next door. Neon Greens is a newly opened quick-service salad restaurant in St. Louis, Mo., that operates its own 400-square-foot vertical hydroponic farm attached to the restaurant storefront.

The farm yields yield roughly three acres each of 80 different lettuces, all of which Neon Greens uses in its salads, from mizuna lettuce to sweet crisp lettuce.

“We are all about embracing radical transparency in food and piggybacking on this new food movement of folks wanting to know more about their food and where it comes from,” founder Josh Smith said. “Most of the lettuce that you eat coming from California and Arizona is almost two to three weeks old by the time it makes it to you…. We wanted to focus on creating the best possible base for our salads.”

The two hydroponic farms are in an ancillary room attached to the restaurant, and an elevated conveyor belt delivers the lettuce next door once it is harvested.

Installing the large container farms that look like large shipping containers was no easy feat, Smith said. They had to use a 150-foot crane to place the farms into the space, “almost like a claw game at an arcade,” he said. The farm also requires a lot of machinery maintenance, as well as plumbing, electrical, and mechanical. But Smith said that the extra complications are worth it in the end.

“We gain so much when it comes to reliability, and we are able to adapt and change to whatever the climate throws at us,” he said. 

Neon Greens knows its limits, however. For example, the restaurant does not grow kale on premises because of the long maturity time, so that is sourced from the outside. Additionally, the company does not grow any produce outside of the salad greens. Lettuce, Smith said, is the “highest yielding and quickest growing product we could grow.”

“A lot of other produce comes from other states in the country, like sweet potatoes, strawberries, citrus from Florida,” Smith said. “But 90% of the lettuce in this country grows on the West Coast, and if you think about the emissions from transportation of food, we can make the largest impact if we focus on lettuce.”

Besides saving on emissions from transportation, Smith said the restaurant saves lot on water usage. Six months of conventional farming of three acres, he said, would use about 900,000 gallons of water. But Neon Greens uses just 2,500 gallons of water for each farm annually.

But hyperlocal farming isn’t the only way Neon Greens makes a difference environmentally. The company also composts most of its scraps and uses only recyclable plastic. Between the hydroponic farming, recycling, and composting, the restaurant only has minimal waste. Moving forward, Smith said, it will be even easier when Neon Greens begins to grow.

“We are one location right now, and when it comes to quick-service restaurants, there is an economy of scale,” he said. “Our lettuce is more expensive right now because we have one location, but with scale and growth, you're actually able to get to well below the typical cost of lettuce per pound. Right now, it's not as efficient as it could be, but the plan is to be more impactful ecologically and economically with growth.”

Contact Joanna at [email protected]