Square Roots Urban Growers

Square Roots Urban Growers (widely known as Square Roots) was co-founded by Kimbal Musk (brother of Tesla’s founder, Elon Musk). The company operates hydroponic vertical farms in shipping containers and sells its produce—mint, basil, other herbs, and leafy greens—to nearby stores. A QR code on the packaging includes a “transparency timeline,” that provides details about the food to customers, such as the identity of the farmers who grew it and when it was harvested and delivered to the store. 

In December 2021, the company changed its brand image in partnership with COLLIN (an independent strategy, decisions, and communications company) to a new product logo, packaging, and visual tone. The new branding is the company's response to accelerated demand in the year 2021 as it launched new salad mixes (September 2021) and developed new herb varieties to address the USD 36 billion fresh packaged produce market in the US. In March 2022 , Square Roots partnered with URB-E, a Los-Angeles-based last-mile delivery startup, for the delivery of the former’s produce to retail stores in New York. Square Roots has been using URB-E’s delivery fleet at its Brooklyn farm since December 2021. The company operates ten shipping container farms (320 sq ft each) located on its partner's facility (Gordon Food Services/GFS—the largest foodservice distributor in North America) in Wyoming, and another ten farms on a parking lot in Brooklyn, New York to supply to nearby grocery stores. It has plans to add capacity when it expands into other GFS’ facilities across the country and aims to work with partners that use renewable energy as much as possible to power their modular farms. In November 2022 , Square Roots signed an agreement with United Natural Foods Inc (UNFI) to co-locate vertical farms at select UNFI distribution facilities. The company had agreed to set up a 20,000 sq ft vertical farm at a UNFI’s Prescott Wisconsin facility, planning to open by 2023.

As of December 2022, Square Roots operates six vertical farms: Two in Michigan and one each in New York, Wisconsin, Ohio and Kentucky. Except for the farm in New York, the other five were built in partnership with GFS, with the latest opening in Shepherdsville in December 2022 . The farm built in Wisconsin can reportedly produce 2.4 million packages of produce (herbs, greens and salad) mixes per year, and the new farm in Ohio is stated to have similar characteristics, with the first harvest expected by June 2022.

The company raised the majority of the funding in December 2019, at USD 19.1 million (unknown series).