Whole Foods Market locations in Pittsburgh are now selling salad products made by local AI- and robotics-equipped indoor vertical farming startup Fifth Season. While it's the latest deal with a grocer, the startup also teased it has plans to begin offering its products at an additional 270 locations later this month with other partners.
Meanwhile, the rollout of its products at local Whole Foods for Fifth Season comes a few months after the South Side-based company made a deal to sell its products in about 200 Kroger stores across Ohio and Michigan.
Fifth Season said its salad products, of which it grows the various lettuce varieties for out of its Braddock indoor farming facility, can now be found in about 750 grocery and retail locations throughout the Northeast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions of the country. The selling partners it counts among this group include the aforementioned The Kroger Co. and Whole Foods Market, which is owned by Amazon.com Inc., as well as Lidl, Fresh Direct, Giant Eagle and ShopRite. It also counts universities and corporate campuses as being among this figure.
"We couldn't be more excited to add Whole Foods – one of the most successful and beloved national grocery store chains – to our growing list of retail customers," CEO and Co-Founder Austin Webb said in an email statement. "Whole Foods has always valued local farmers and homegrown produce, so forging this partnership with them in Pittsburgh feels like a natural step for us. It also reaffirms that our clean label products are of the highest quality, and that they're positively impacting our mission to make eating nutritious, healthy food easier and more convenient, even on the go."
Webb added and said the products have already been a hit across the three Pittsburgh Whole Foods Market locations where they're now being sold, which includes the recently-opened flagship store for the region at the Liberty East development. Fifth Season is also selling its salad kits out of the Whole Foods Market locations in Upper St. Clair and Wexford.
"We were excited to learn that Fifth Season's Pittsburgh fan base has really shown up, and that we're already a popular item at all three locations," Webb said. "We are so grateful for that local enthusiasm."
By the end of the month, Fifth Season plans to announce that it will be further expanding its distribution reach as part of an upcoming partnership with the Acme Fresh Market and Safeway divisions of Albertsons Companies Inc. That agreement will take the startup's product offering to over 1,000 locations throughout the country.
Fifth Season is expecting to scale up to more than 100 full-time employees by early 2023. In addition to its South Side headquarters in The Highline building and its farm in Braddock, the company is planning on expanding its physical footprint into Columbus, Ohio, with another indoor farm, this one set to be 180,000 square feet when it comes online in 2023.
Brac Webb, also a co-founder and brother to the CEO, serves as the chief operating officer and chief technology officer. Austin Lawrence completes the trio of the Carnegie Mellon University spinout company's co-founders who launched Fifth Season in 2016.
