STARTUP LAB – Ep.13: Brooklyn Grange
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STARTUP LAB- Ep.12: Little Growers
The Brooklyn Grange (brooklyngrangefarm.com) is a commercial organic farm located on New York City rooftops and, currently, is the biggest rooftop farm in the world. They grow vegetables in the city and sell them to local people and businesses. Their goal is to improve access to good food, to connect city people more closely to farms and food production, and to make urban farming a viable enterprise and livelihood. We spoke with Chase Emmons, Chief Bee Keeper and Director of Business Development, about their one acre plot and its plans for the future.
What exactly is Brooklyn Grange?
Brooklyn Grange is currently the world’s largest rooftop farm. While there are many green roofs larger than ours, we are unique in that we are a productive business, growing as much food as possible in our space. We utilize all 40,000 available square feet of rooftop at our flagship location to harvest upwards of 15,000 pounds of produce per season. Along with our commercial growing operations, we maintain close ties to the New York City community, hosting regular tours, school groups, open houses, and private events.
What is your role in the farm, Chase?
I wear two titled hats, and a myriad of others since we all basically do whatever we can to get our many tasks and projects complete. My two are Director of Business Development and Chief Beekeeper. As Business Dev, I seek out new sources of revenue as well as totally new revenue streams. It’s a somewhat broad spectrum, including such disparate things as negotiating with large real estate holders/city agencies, creating New York City’s first commercial scale apiary and local bee genetics program, and creating NYC’s first Annual Honey and Tomato festivals.
What are the main products you sell?
Vegetables and produce are our primary business, and we also have our own line of sauces, pickled items, honey, and even some eggs from our small chicken flock. At any given time during the 2011 season we had over 100 different crops growing in rotation, and 5 beehives. As we have just completed our second season, we continue to refine which crops we grow based on the local demand and the specific profitability of each crop.
We generate sales from farm events like dinners and corporate retreats, as well as location fees for various media and entertainment productions. We also recently began offering consulting and design services to private and public institutions and residences across the globe.
Brooklyn Grange is a central part of the outstanding food-based community which has given birth to solid, positive and forward thinking small businesses in Brooklyn and Queens.
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