80 Acres Farms adds strawberries to lineup of always ‘in-season’ products

These strawberries are grown on an indoor farm without pesticides, which makes them always in-season strawberries, and will be joining the company’s popular salad blends, microgreens, herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers on the shelf.

Consumers will also be able to try the berries at select restaurants, including Salazar, Mita’s, and Goose and Elder in Cincinnati.

“For years, strawberries have topped the ‘Dirty Dozen’—a ranking of the fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide content,” said 80 Acres Farms co-founder and CEO Mike Zelkind. “We’re excited to be introducing consumers to a clean, locally grown strawberry that they can confidently share with their families, in a revolutionary paperboard package that is fully recyclable.”

Calvin Mayne, president of Dorothy Lane Market, said the strawberries taste as good in the fall and winter as they do in the summertime.

“We want to make our customers happy by giving them a wonderful food shopping experience,” Mayne said. “We have been merchants of fruits and vegetables for decades. The first time we met the fine people at 80 Acres Farms and saw how they use advanced indoor farming to grow nutritious and flavorful produce locally, we were very impressed.”

The company announced in May 2021 the strawberries would be available for market sometime this year, and told the Journal-News they would not compete with local farmers when their products are in season.

Tisha Livingston, co-founder of 80 Acres Farms and CEO of Infinite Acres, said the company showed retails and consumers what they could do with fruiting crops when it released Fireworks Tomatoes in 2017.

“We set the bar high with our tomatoes, which have been selling out for five years,” she said. “Now, we’re using our proprietary growing system to produce the freshest, most flavorful strawberries possible.”

There are a variety of pesticide-free fresh foods 80 Acres Farms grows, which the company states last longer and exceeds the highest of food safety standards. The company produces salad blends, microgreens, herbs, tomatoes, and cucumbers that are available from retailers including Kroger, Whole Foods, The Fresh Market, Jungle Jim’s Markets, and Dorothy Lane Market, as well as food service distributors including Sysco and US Foods.

Actually, the company touts that more than 500 retailers and restaurants are supplied by 80 Acres Farms products as the company has eight facilities in the U.S. built by 80 Acres’ Dutch-American technology group, Infinite Acres.

The company is also expanding, as officials recently announced two new farms — one in Kentucky, which will begin production this year, and one in Georgia, which will open in 2023. When fully operational, the farms will increase production by more than 700%.