Adapt AgTech a Canadian vertical is partnering with Reef Technology to bring it’s mushroom-growing shipping containers to major cities across the United States, starting with Austin.
Reef transforms urban real estate like parking lots into mobility and logistical hubs and currently operates over 8,000 locations across hundreds of cities. The partnership will help Adapt place its shipping containers steps away from such customers as restaurants and grocery stores, without having to pay the astronomical rent of a commercial or industrial space in a downtown area.
Adapt opened its first shipping container in Austin and began deliveries to restaurants this week. Over the course of the next few years, the startup plans to expand to over 50 locations, including Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Miami.
“Our model is to create hyper-local farms in densely populated urban areas to reduce the distance from farm to fork,” Jonathan Murray, Adapt AgTech’s CEO and founder, told.
Adapt’s network of shipping container farms specializes in “aberrant gourmet mushrooms,” which are gourmet mushrooms that haven’t been available in North American retail until very recently. Think pink, yellow, blue and king oysters, chestnut mushrooms, and the trending lion’s mane.
“Mushrooms cater very, very well to container farming versus other crops like leafy greens because of the energy consumption,” continued Murray. “They don’t require a tremendous amount of light. It’s really just temperature and humidity.”
Adapt, which launched in February 2022, delivered its first farm in June last year to a location in Toronto. 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 elsewhere over the following months.
