Square Roots, a leader in urban indoor farming, and Gordon Food Service, one of the country’s leading food service providers with distribution operations spanning North America as well as 175 retail locations across the United States, have officially joined forces to bring the latest advancements in locally-grown, real food to customers across North America, all year-round. The strategic partnership will ultimately see new campuses of Square Roots’ indoor farms built on or near Gordon Food Service distribution centers and retail stores across the continent, enabling year-round growing of premium quality herbs, greens, and more, and made available to Gordon Food Services customers.

This partnership enables Gordon Food Service to bring a modern, unique offering to meet growing customer demand for local food across North America. It also signifies the first, significant expansion to new locations for Square Roots and its unparalleled farmer training program, enabled by the company’s scalable “farmer first” technology platform. The Square Roots and Gordon Food Service partnership comes at a time when customer tastes and palates are seeing an increasing demand for fresh, high-quality, local food.

“Customers want an assortment of fresh, locally grown food all year round. We are on a path to do that at scale with Square Roots and are excited to be the first in the industry to offer this unique solution to our customers,” said Rich Wolowski, chief executive officer of Gordon Food Services.

Square Roots’ mission is to bring local, real food to people in cities by empowering the next generation of leaders in urban agriculture. The company combines a high-tech farming platform with a unique “Next-Gen Farmer Training Program” to train young people to become future leaders in the food industry. Meanwhile, Square Roots’ Transparency Timeline enables customers to trace exactly how their food was grown and who grew it, simply by scanning a QR code on its packaging. Now, having partnered with Gordon Food Service, this unique ability to bring technology-driven local food will soon become a reality for millions of food-conscious consumers across North America. And the Next-Gen Farmer Training Program will soon open up doors for even more driven young people, arming them with the skills to take part in building a better food system for our future.

Tobias Peggs, co-founder and chief executive officer of Square Roots, continued, “This partnership means we will grow delicious, local real food at huge scale. We’re so happy to be working with a mission-aligned partner in Gordon Food Service — leveraging technology to bring real food to a huge number of people across the country, while delivering real social impact by empowering thousands of young people to become our country’s future farmers.”