Building a Better Berry

After successfully growing salad greens and herbs in warehouses, Bowery Farming is tackling the strawberry

- By Kate Krader

On a cold winter day, chef José Andrés steps into a warehouse in the shadow of Newark airport. After donning a Tyvek suit and hairnet, he passes through a code-protected door and is ushered into a narrow, high-ceilinged room that smells … well … like a strawberry patch on a sunny June day.

The warehouse, in Kearny, N.J., is owned by Bowery Farming Inc., a seven-year-old company that’s grown into the largest vertical farming operation in the U.S. Like most others in the business, Bowery specializes in salad greens and herbs, which require relatively little space and time to grow. But Bowery is adding a splash of crimson to all that green: shiny red strawberries. And Andrés, the founder of World Central Kitchen—a nonprofit that brings food to disaster-stricken communities—as well as an investor in Bowery, has come to sample the crop. “The smell is as good as you can find,” Andrés says after biting into a juicy red berry. “And so is the taste.”

The berry project is the latest initiative by Bowery founder Irving Fain, who’s raised about $650 million from investors. Fain is an evangelist for vertical farming, which he says is far more efficient than growing crops in fields. By precisely controlling variables such as water, light, and nutrients, Bowery says it can deliver high-quality produce to local consumers with less waste and without concerns over fickle weather in the age of global warming. “We’ve always understood that the market opportunity for what we’re doing is certainly much larger than just leafy greens and herbs,” Fain says.