Several top U.S. indoor farms say they are boosting production to a level where they can now supply hundreds of grocery stores.

Plenty, Bowery, Aerofarms and 80 Acres Farms are among young companies that see a future in salad greens and other produce grown in what are called vertical farms that rely on robotics and artificial intelligence, along with LED lights.

While the first versions of modern vertical farms sprouted about a decade ago, in recent years the introduction of automation and the tracking of data to regulate light and water has allowed them to get out of lab mode and into stores. Now they are trying to scale up.

Plenty and others say their customized, controlled lighting — some more blue light here, some more red light there — makes for tastier plants compared to sun-grown leaves and that they use 95 per cent less water than conventional farms, require very little land, and use no pesticides, making them competitive with organic farms.

And because vertical farms exist in windowless buildings that can be located in the heart of urban areas, produce does not have to travel far by fossil fuel-guzzling trucks to reach stores.

The companies’ expansion comes as plant-based burger makers Beyond Meat Inc. and Impossible Foods captivate investors and make inroads in high-end restaurants and fast-food chains.

But whether the sunless farms can compete financially with their field-grown brethren, given big upfront investments and electric bills, remains a question.

“We’re competitive with organic today and we’re working very hard to continue to make more and more crops grocery store competitive,” said Matt Barnard, chief executive and co-founder of Plenty, which is based in Silicon Valley.

Plenty’s salads sell on organic grocery delivery site Good Eggs for 99 cents an ounce, while a leading brand, Organic Girl, on grocery chain Safeway’s online site was priced at 80 cents an ounce.

Plenty said its new farm, dubbed “Tigris,” can produce enough leafy greens to supply over 100 stores, compared with its previous farm that could only supply three stores and some restaurants.

Bowery said its third farm coming online soon will help it supply hundreds of stores from dozens today, and Aerofarms, in New Jersey, said it is doubling its space to meet demand.

None of the three companies would give details about costs.

Former Vertical Farm CEO Matt Matros is skeptical that sunless farms can make economic sense. He invested in and ran Chicago-based FarmedHere in 2015, but changed its business into food processing.

“The issue with indoor farming was that you could really only grow a couple of things efficiently — namely basil and microgreens” Matros said. “But the problem is the world just doesn’t need that much basil and microgreens.”

80 Acres Farms in Cincinnati says it already grows and sells tomatoes and cucumbers, and Plenty is testing cherry tomatoes and strawberries in the lab.

Agriculture technology investor Michael Rose says vertical sunless farms are more expensive to run than modern greenhouses that rely on sunlight, supplemented by LED lights. He sees limited areas where it makes sense, such as the Middle East, where much of the food is imported, or China’s mega-cities where pollution and urban sprawl limit the availability of premium fresh food.

At Plenty’s new farm, robots put seedlings in tall, vertically hung planters. The planters move along a wall of LED lights for 10 days, and are then put through a harvesting machine that shaves off the leafy greens.

The machines minimize labour needs, and Plenty says the speed of production also helps control pests.

“We use no pesticides,” said Nate Storey, co-founder and chief scientist at Plenty. “We don’t even have to use things like ladybugs, because we go so fast in our production that we out-race the pests themselves.”

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To mark the launch on April Fool’s Day, the burger giant released a hidden-camera-style promo video showing the serving of plant-based Whoppers instead of meat to customers who marvel that they cannot tell the difference.

“We wanted to make sure we had something that lived up to the expectations of the Whopper,” said Burger King’s North America president, Christopher Finazzo. “We’ve done sort of a blind taste test with our franchisees, with people in the office, with my partners on the executive team, and virtually nobody can tell the difference.”

The Impossible Whopper comes at an extra cost — about US$1 more than the beef patty Whopper. But Finazzo said research shows consumers are willing to pay more for the plant-based burger.

Plant-based meat substitutes have been gaining popularity as more attention is focused on the environmental hazards of industrial ranching. Finazzo said his research shows customers mainly like it for the health benefits. The Impossible Burger patty has zero cholesterol.

Impossible Foods, based in Redwood City, California, launched its first faux meat patty over two years ago. A genetically modified yeast creates the key ingredient, called heme, which makes the patties appear to bleed and taste like real meat.

Burger King is not the first to serve up a no-meat burger. Smaller U.S. chains including White Castle, Red Robin and Fatburger have already included Impossible burgers on their menus.

Also, Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat launched a plant-based Beyond Meat Burger last July at Canadian burger chain A+W, and in early January announced a similar burger at U.S. fast-food chain Carl’s Jr.

A+W sold out of the burger at many of its Canadian restaurants that summer, but by October pledged a consistent supply. Earlier this month the chain — Canada’s second-biggest burger chain by number of stores — also launched a Beyond Meat breakfast sandwich featuring plant-based breakfast sausage.

Beyond Meat counts actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Microsoft founder Bill Gates as investors. It filed for an initial public offering in November.

Finazzo said Burger King also researched Beyond Meat, but decided that Impossible Foods’, which also counts Gates as an investor, offering was a better fit. “Around the taste, around the brand recognition, around the price, all those things were important factors in choosing Impossible,” he said.

Impossible Foods tailored a patty specifically for the Whopper, CEO Pat Brown said.

“We’re now in well over 6,000 restaurants. If the Burger King launch is as successful as I expect it to be, and we go nationwide, that will add more than 7,000 restaurants that serve the Impossible Burger,” Brown said.

Impossible also counts Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Horizons Ventures and Singapore-based investment firm Temasek as investors. Impossible has been making inroads in Asia as well.

Last year total U.S. retail sales of plant-based meat substitutes grew over 23 percent to exceed $760 million, according to Nielsen sales data analyzed by The Good Food Institute, a non-profit promoting plant-based alternatives to animal products.

Burger King rivals, food conglomerates and meat packers are cooking up more plant-based burgers. McDonald’s, the world’s biggest fast-food chain, sells soy-based burgers in Finland and Sweden. Tyson Foods has a stake in Beyond Meat.

Nestle is planning to debut its “Incredible Burger” soon in Europe. Unilever late last year announced its acquisition of The Vegetarian Butcher to build out its plant-based portfolio.

— Jane Lanhee Lee is a writer and producer for Reuters in San Francisco. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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