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They’re planning on a yet to be determined second site in the northeastern pocket of North America, ideally this year. “Our vision is to grow food closer to where people live, and grow it more sustainably,” Rathmell says. Inside VSL (a reference to Ville St-Laurent, the district in which the farm is located); it’s the company’s newest greenhouse, and it sits atop a former Sears warehouse. As for the ubiquitous tote, Bélanger explained that it arose out of necessity. Before Lufa Farms offered delivery, the only options were pickup points, where labelled boxes awaited their Lufavores.
A commercial business, Lufa Farms is advised by farmers, marketers, and university researchers. We built a second rooftop greenhouse in the Laval suburb of Montreal and got hundreds of local producers involved with the launch of our online farmers’ market, the Marketplace. The weekly baskets became fully customizable with the innovation of our own e-commerce platform and warehouse logistics software.
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Growing food locally on rooftops and sourcing from local farming families allowed us to swiftly adjust and respond to this demand. We saw what the future looks like and it’s all about local and sustainable,” says Mohamed Hage, Co-Founder and CEO of Lufa Farms. Lufa Farms launched their fourth commercial rooftop greenhouse in the borough of Saint-Laurent, Que. this week. We delivered over 20,000 baskets each week throughout Quebec while adding more electric vehicles to our fleet. We’re working with local nonprofits so that individuals and families in need can become Lufavores. Thanks to weekly Marketplace credits from our community pool and a 50% discount on us on all fruits and veg, hundreds of community members will get the chance to customize their own baskets and have access to fresh, local, responsible food.
With a natural talent for creating connections with experts in various fields, Mo has worked to build Lufa Farms from the ground up and actively oversees the day-to-day operations of the distribution centre, logistics, and expansion projects. He’s out to innovate and automate by leading the charge to build a self-sufficient and highly scalable local food engine, with custom software and logistics tools for everything from auto-ordering and inventory management to basket assembly and customer service. We've partnered with local businesses throughout Quebec, from community centres to coffee shops, to create a network of over 350 pick-up points so that Lufavores can get their baskets of fresh, local, responsible food delivered just steps from their door. “In March 2020, we saw a doubling of demand from existing and new Lufavores who couldn’t have been more supportive and understanding. It wasn’t easy, but our team worked incredibly hard and rose up to this challenge.
Timeline
This is your go to start customizing your basket with rooftop-grown, picked-to-order veggies and thousands of products from our hundreds of partners, like eggs, dairy, pasta, bread, meats, vegan alternatives, and more. You’ve got three full days to do so, until midnight the eve of your delivery day. And, everything on our Marketplace is fresh, local, and responsibly produced. With a biochemistry degree from McGill University, Lauren serves as Greenhouse Director, where she oversees all farming and plant science activities for the company's rooftop greenhouses. She took on the challenge of developing Lufa Farms’ sustainable farming practices, growing food commercially in a polyculture setting using no synthetic pesticides. She’s also responsible for the Communications Department and safekeeping of the Lufa Farms vision, mission, and voice.
Shopper Catherine Bonin tells AFP she loves the freshness of the produce but laments that some items are always out of stock. The chief investment officer at the world’s biggest hedge fund says we’re headed for a recession that’s ‘double the... Bringing high-yield crop production into cities is a smart answer to many modern challenges in environmental and human health. Those technologies were tested on that fateful Friday the 13th last March, when Quebec and Canada each announced their first waves of COVID-19 lockdowns. People panicked, rushing to the grocery store to stock up on flour and toilet paper.
Vegetables
That’s exactly what they now have—and they feed a portion of Montreal, the second-biggest city in Canada, with it. The company was started by Mohamed Hage, who had observed rooftop gardens in Lebanon. Also involved in the founding were Lauren Rathmell, Kurt Lynn, and Yahya Badran.
The Lufa team today is a hardened one, more ready and committed to our mission than ever.” says Rathmell. Lufa Farms opened its first commercial rooftop greenhouse in the Ahuntsic borough of Montreal. The greenhouse had 31,000 square feet of vegetable production and also served as the company's main office and distribution centre. Currently, it houses the company's herb, micro-greens, cucumber, and pepper production using both horizontal and vertical farming systems. According to the City of Montréal, construction began in September 2019.
The Company is primarily looking for elements deemed critical to the renewable energy and high technology industries. Agritecture is an advisory services and technology firm focused on climate-smart agriculture, particularly urban and controlled environment agriculture. "What's a little crazy," he recalls, is that none of the founders "had grown a tomato in their life" before opening the business. It is currently working on the electrification of its fleet of delivery trucks and is in the process of exporting its model "to different cities around the world," starting with Canada and the United States, Sorret said. Lufa "more than doubled" its sales during the new coronavirus pandemic, a jump attributable "to contactless delivery from our online site," says Sorret. Fully automated, the new greenhouse also has a water system that collects and reuses rainwater, resulting in savings of "up to 90 percent" compared to a traditional farm.
The baskets were delivered steps from customers doors thanks to a network of neighbourhood pick-up points . Altogether, we’re building a healthier, more sustainable local food system. We seek out partners who share our values of transparency and sustainability and work closely with them for our online farmer’s market, the Marketplace, to offer locals a full selection of products.
Since then, competitors picked up and ran with the novel idea, including American Gotham Greens, which constructed eight greenhouses on roofs in New York, Chicago and Denver, and French Urban Nature, which is planning one in Paris in 2022. Winter Farm raises $46M to build vertical farm dedicated to strawberry production. “Our objective at Lufa is to get to the point where we’re feeding everyone in the city,” Hage says. “We see ourselves as a technology company, in the sense that we solve with software,” Rathmell, 32, says. To fulfill that dream they had back in 2009—years before COVID-19 forced most grocery stores to enable online shopping—they had to do it themselves.
The company achieves this by growing more food, closer to where people live, while using less space and resources to minimize environmental impacts, and remaining completely transparent. Lufa Farms is an urban agricultural company located in the Ville Saint-Laurent neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec. The company states its mission on its website is to grow food where people live and grow it more sustainably.
On the ground floor of the new greenhouse, a huge distribution center brings together nearly 2,000 grocery products for offer to "Lufavores," including restaurants. At Lufa, about 100 varieties of vegetables and herbs are grown year-round in hydroponic containers lined with coconut coir and fed liquid nutrients, including lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini, bok choy, celery and sprouts. “You know, every time we talk to someone about it, we feel like it’s the ’80s, and we’re holding a big solar panel trying to convince the room that this is the future,” Hage says.
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