It can take up to a week from the time vegetables are picked until they reaches grocery stores.
Infarm, a vertical farming startup in Germany, wants to eliminate that transportation time altogether with a mini-farm that grows lettuce and herbs right in grocery store aisles.
The company is piloting a mini-farm at a Metro Group grocery store in Berlin, where it hopes to grow greens year round, Fast Company reports. Called Kräutergarten ("herb garden" in German), the farm grows lettuce and herbs inside a glowing box without natural sunlight or pesticides.
The garden grows short-stem leafy greens, including mizuna and wasabi mustard greens, but Infarm says it could easily grow eggplants, tomatoes, and chili peppers too. The farm also connects to an app that lets customers order greens before they arrive at the store.
Infarm is part of a new movement to bring ultra-fresh green to supermarkets. BrightFarms, a New York-based startup, builds vertical farms on grocery store roofs. In 2013, Whole Foods partnered with Gotham Greens to put a 20,000-square-foot rooftop greenhouse on top of one of its Brooklyn locations.
Some vertical farm companies, like AeroFarms, promise to produce massive amounts of greens and distribute them to grocery stores within a 30-mile radius. AeroFarms' CEO David Rosenberg previously told Tech Insider that the company may eventually grow its greens in the back rooms of supermarkets.