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Transcript

Josh (00:04.78)

I'm your host Joshua Miller and we have another five or so questions in 20 something minutes today. And today we have a great guest. It's Sue Malesa from Fork Farms. She is a former food service director and today she is the associate VP of Culinary and Food Service for Fork Farms. And you're asking right now, Josh, what is Fork Farms? And I'm gonna tell you, I'm not gonna tell you because number one, the name is awesome in itself. And if you're listening to this already have you hooked. So now I'm gonna reel you in, make sure you stay tuned for this episode and learn what it's all about.

Sue, thank you for taking the time to tune in with us and speak with the audience here about Fork Farms, which is a mission first architectural tech company, and wow, I'll say that five times fast, based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. And before we get to know more about that and it could get to know more about you. Let's first start off with our icebreaker question, which is, what is your guilty pleasure snack?

Sue Malesa (02:01.626)

That’s an easy one. Chocolate without it in any way shape or form. I mean, it's just the truth. If I'm getting up from this chair, chocolate's going to be the result. 

Josh (02:01.626)

All right. And are you, so do you get like, are you like a snob? Like it has to be like the high end chocolate, like you, or is it like, just a regular Hershey's bar is good, whatever.

Sue Malesa (02:01.678)

Hershey bar is clutch. If there happens to be one in my s'mores basket, forget the s'mores, the Hershey bar is getting eaten. Yeah, for sure. 

Josh (02:04.678)

Okay. You had me at s'mores for sure. That's one of my favorite sweet combinations is bringing all that together. Awesome. Well, so why don't you go ahead and start off by just telling us a little bit about yourself.

Sue Malesa (02:30.842)

Sure. My name is Sue Malesa and I am the Associate VP for Culinary and Food Service for Fork Farms.

And my career has taken me a lot of different directions, spent the most of that time in school nutrition, 26 plus years as a school nutrition director in the state of Wisconsin in both a private school setting and a public school setting and also self -op and contracted service. And during that time, I was introduced to this amazing thing called the Flex Farm and it changed the trajectory of my program. And so I'm here today talking about. Well, we are a hydroponic technology company based out of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and we build the Flex Farm. So we manufacture the entire Flex Farm in the state of Wisconsin. So it's all American made. Go, go us. And also,

Josh (03:02.214)

Well, that's a great lead way into what is Fork Farms all about. What is the company? What is it that you do?

Sue Malesa (03:25.978)

It's made right here in the state of Wisconsin. So it is deployable in a lot of different ways. K -12 is a primary vertical for us, but we also have placements in restaurants and healthcare and classrooms, of course, a lot of classroom and food service collaboration.

Josh (03:31.014)

Love it, love it. And so...

You have different systems with Fork Farms, but let's talk about what I perceive as the biggest competitor. So there's hydroponic cabinets that are out there. They look beautiful. They have the glass front, LED lights on inside, shining down and everything. How is Fork Farms different from that? Because the Flex Farms is not exactly the same design at all. So how is it different?

Sue Malesa (03:56.25)

Correct. It grows plants at an exponential rate. So there's multiple ways that it's different from the traditional cabinet hydroponics.

For one, it's the most efficient and sustainable hydroponic growing technology on the market. And we're not just saying that, there's seven patents on the Flexfarm that are unique to itself. One of them is when you have like a shelving system or a shelf hydroponics, the light gets dispersed out into the room. The way the Flexfarm is designed, it's designed to capture the light around the light tower, which is in the center.

Sue Malesa (04:50.906)

 result in that 20 to 25 pounds of edible portion greens in 28 days. So that's what sets us apart. Also, it's very flexible. It's on casters. It can be shared in an academic setting. It can reside in the cafeteria and then go down to Mr. Smith's classroom for harvest rotation. So it's very flexible that way, and it's also very scalable. So one of the great things about the Flex Farm

and as a school nutrition director was one of the things that really drew me in. One thing, easy to manage. Second thing, it's absolutely the most bang for your buck as far as yield. And the third thing, it's scalable. So you can connect the flex farms for efficacy and ease of use.

Josh (05:33.702)

Hence the name Flex. There's a lot of flexible options in there. So I think that's huge. There's definitely not a lot of flexibility I can imagine with the cabinet model hydroponic systems. Once you set that in place.

Sue Malesa (05:53.37)

You know, everything has its place. And so, you know, we're happy to reside right next to those. And they, you know, everything's great as far as helping out with the academics and teaching.

Josh (06:05.19)

I love that idea because you know, especially college campuses, I feel like they've done a lot of those cabinets, but speaking with directors, the yield is not necessarily what they want. So adding those, supplementing with that, that's a great idea and option for people. So let's talk about the why. Why is the work of fork farms important?

Sue Malesa (06:21.018)

Mm -hmm.

It's particularly important in school nutrition and in K -12 settings and all settings, higher ed as well. It is an amazing tool to connect people with their food, for one. And second, to put food where food may not be readily accessible. That's a huge part of our mission is to offset food insecurity and address needs in food deserts. And believe it or not, that can be a second grade classroom in a community.

The kids that are going to school there. So it has a tremendous K -12 application for school nutrition because it's a high yielding, very efficient machine. The second part is that you can collaborate with so many different departments in a K -12 setting or a higher ed setting, special education, STEM, sustainability clubs, environmental clubs, advanced placement, STEM and science and chemistry

So what we're finding is that classroom placements of the Flex Farm working in collaboration with the school nutrition program. So they're growing and the school nutrition program is getting that on the plate. It's an amazing nexus right there to connect kids with their food in a food system that's having a hard time connecting kids with their food. So it's hyper local.

Josh (07:51.846)

Yes, yes, absolutely. And I think that the capability of where that can go into the classrooms we can talk about that a little bit later, but in terms of the food that it's growing out of it, what are the options? What kind of vegetables are we talking that can be grown?

Sue Malesa (08:04.986)

my gosh. This is the fun part, right? So our partners across the country and all over the world do some amazing things with the Flex Farm. And every time we see it, we're just, we're super proud, right? Like, holy cow, you just grew purple, yellow and green beans in this farm. And they continue to throw fruit and throw beans for months and months and months in this nine square feet. So tomato, strawberries, all different kinds of leafy greens in Salanova from rainbow chard, Swiss chard, kale, tatsoi, bok choy, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins, sweet peas, sugar snap peas, any kind of herb. Herbs can grow right in the same farm as greens and they are extremely prolific and an herb plant can stay in that Flex Farm for months and continue to throw basil and oregano and cilantro over the course of months on a single seed. So that's just.

Josh (09:11.366)

I never would have guessed that many options ever, ever, ever would have guessed that many options. So I'm gonna throw you for a loop here with another question I'm gonna throw in. So I've seen a lot of the pods, like the outdoor pods that are, they're built with hydroponic systems. Is there, if someone wanted to get crazy and they said, we don't have as much species as we want for four farms, let's get a pod, let's have it be.

temperature maintained and I mean technically they could put a load up of Fork Farms into a pod as well right?

Sue Malesa (09:47.738)

Well, it's controlled environment agriculture. So Flex Farm operates best at ambient temperature, right? And so if you're talking about like the container farm, is that what you're referring to? Something that sits outside of a school building, right? So.

Primary difference, if you're looking to integrate student engagement in one vein, is that those particular systems have a limitation as to how many students can be in that space at one time. The Flex Farm, even like four flex farms in a cafeteria with 288 plant spaces in a single Flex Farm and nine square feet. Okay.

Josh (10:33.318)

That's a lot.

Sue Malesa (10:34.042)

So that's about the size of your residential refrigerator is nine square feet. There's 288 plant spaces in there. And the individual panels pull out. And you can lay that on a table, a science table under a microscope, or for kids to examine the root structure or get up close and personal with those plants. That's something that's very, very difficult to do in traditional hydroponics where they're flat and it's horizontal and you've got water spraying.

The other part is it does not require a tool to assemble a Flex Farm.

Josh (11:10.63)

Not one.

Sue Malesa (11:11.322)

Not one. Not one tool. And that farm can be assembled by second grade students. I've seen it happen. And so it's an immersive experience from the time the boxes arrive, wherever they are. So as a school nutrition program, in some of the large farm partnerships I have, where they're installing maybe 30 flex farms in different configurations,

Josh (11:13.286)

Interesting.

That's amazing.

Sue Malesa (11:38.554)

The first part of that whole experience for the students is when the boxes arrive and they come down and they help put the farms together. That's how you create that connection, right? So at a high school recently, we had a lot of farms to assemble. Their sustainability club was coming down after school. I showed them how to assemble one farm, myself and the food service director standing next to me. And we just stepped away. And within 40 minutes, all the farms were assembled because...

You know, kids are like, right, snap, do this and I'm like, okay, make sure this and they're like, we have it fantastic. Before you know it, they're rolling them into the into the farms. So deploy the ease of deployment and the and how the ease of operation. This requires one 110 outlet one farm requires one 110 outlet doesn't have to be armed with water. It doesn't have to have a special electrical outlet.

So to get farming, you need nine square feet and one 110 outlet and about $15 a month to run it on electricity. And I need compared to that container farm, I mean, and even when you're putting it and you need one 15 amp circuit, even if you're stringing 12 of them together for like this crazy amount of production, the amperage, all the things for sustainability and efficiency, there really isn't any comparison.

Josh (12:45.51)

That's amazing. Yeah and that example of where you just demoed one, putting one together and the students just diving right into it, you will not have that same effect with a traditional garden outside.

Sue Malesa (13:21.338)

True, because I've done both, right? I've done raised beds in Wisconsin and all the things right outside the kitchen door. I mean, they're right outside the kitchen door. Darn it all, it's still hard to maintain those things, you know? It just is. But when that farm is sitting in front of your line at your high school and it's growing cilantro and basil and all the things right there, it's very, very visible for the kids to see us coming out and snipping those herbs and they're eating them 20 minutes later.

Josh (13:54.406)

Yeah, for sure. And not to mention when you're talking about outside that you have the right clothes on and then how hot is it out there? Or is it raining? And you don't have to worry about all of that when everything is in a controlled environment. Unfortunately, I've seen too many raised beds outside of the kitchen, like you said, where it's right outside the window and it got not maintained. Yes.

Sue Malesa (14:15.802)

yeah. Disastrous. And the satisfaction of growing incredible greens when it's 40 below and the snow is going sideways in West Houston. And I'm like, our farm is just firing on all pistons right now. We're growing lettuce right now today while it's 40 below. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Josh (14:30.662)

Yes love it.

So it's not a lot of work in maintaining it, sounds like, from what you're talking about. So let's say in that example that you gave where there's over 200, close to 300 different vegetables growing out at the same time, right? So how much work do you have to give to that, let's say every week?

Sue Malesa (14:58.554)

Okay, so the maintenance, let's say you're growing lettuce, all greens, right? So there's 288 plant spaces. For lettuce, we use 144. And I'm going to tell you why the engineering is, and this goes back to your question about our competitors. The way the farm is designed, and I can show you a picture of that, the light, the farm wraps around the light and the, the way it's designed with the exact distance, that light bounces off the back of the farm and onto the backs of the heads of those lettuce. So if you're looking at other things where the light is coming strictly down or it's being fused out into the room, we're capturing all that light. That's where that efficiency comes in. Okay, so we're capturing a lot of the light. So you have 144 heads of greens that are growing and that's four weeks and you can no longer see the farm. All you can see is greens.

Josh (15:33.83)

Yes.

Sue Malesa (15:50.714)

To harvest those 144 heads will take you about an hour. That's when after you become proficient at it. So you're pulling it out, you're pulling the root ball out, you're turning it upside down, taking maybe one or two little yellow leaves off, twisting the root ball off and you're putting the edible portion to be stored somewhere else. And then in our operation, we would come behind on that same day and plant it the day that we, and equally about an hour, maybe a little bit over an hour to that planting. The weekly maintenance when it's growing in those four weeks is about 20 minutes a week to take care of a single farm. So you're checking your nutrients, you're checking your total dissolved solids and adjusting that with your nutrients. You're checking the pH in your water. You want to hold it around five and a half for some really great powerful secret sauce in the bottom of there. And you're checking your water levels. So your water level, your pH in your total dissolved solids. Doing a little maintenance with your drip lines, you can easily get that in in about 20 minutes.

Josh (16:54.918)

That sounds easy enough and like you said, the aspect of getting students involved doesn't mean that the dining, food service crew has to take all of that on themselves. They can have students coming in and helping them with that, which is even better, which helps build that engagement and that relationship between them because as you know, that's huge. Developing that relationship with the students goes a long way. So this is just an added bonus for that. So it doesn't, go for it.

Sue Malesa (17:07.45)

Right, right. I mean fast when you put a Flex Farm in a cafeteria and as a food service person, you're maintaining it, running it. It usually takes one harvest before a teacher comes out and says, how can I get one of those in my classroom?

or can I take care of that for you? Without even being asked, that is not anecdotal, that happens all the time. So then that's how you get to expand your growing footprint. I have a teacher that's really interested in doing this for me. Rock on, right? Bring your kids down here and do that, or pick the peppers before lunch, or yeah, it's like a moth to the flame, kind of.

Josh (17:54.022)

love

Great, so and it doesn't take a lot of utilities as you mentioned early on very minimal electrical power Very little space it takes on so, you know Are there any concerns that anyone should have with you know? The Department of Health coming in and saying did you get this vegetable from classroom 101? I need to go see it and like is there any cautionaly tales that anyone should have with regard to the Department of Health with this

Sue Malesa (18:09.242)

Right.

Sure, it's probably the number one question that we get other than how much space, how much time, what, you know, food safety. And that's our paramount concern, right? We're feeding other people's children. So the Flex Farm is made of all FDA approved materials. Okay, so that's one.

Josh (18:37.03)

Yes.

Sue Malesa (18:47.258)

The produce that you're growing in your farm is treated like any other produce that you would be bringing into your program. So your HACCP plan begins when it breaks the barrier of your door or crosses the threshold of your kitchen. I would highly recommend, like when we built our production, had four and then we expanded, I engaged my city sanitarian, I engaged our health inspector to come and learn all that they could about how I was doing this. And...

just open to our doors like you do all the time, right? I mean, want them to be engaged in what you're doing. So every time you add a piece of equipment, a slicer, an oven that has to go in your HACCP plan and then your SOPs and you list the Flex Farm like any other piece of food producing equipment, which is what it is. It's a piece of food producing equipment.

Josh (19:17.158)

Yes.

Sue Malesa (19:34.49)

and those products are treated like any other vegetable or fruit that has to be processed or handled in some way in your program. We had a letter, I asked for a letter from our city sanitary and a health inspector that, you know, stated that he had.

completely vetted the process for us and that he was well aware that these products were going to be served on our National School lunch program and in our meals or in our snack wherever they would be. So it's always great to be proactive. And are there any cautionary tales? I'm happy to absolutely say with a resounding absolute no, there are no cautionary tales. We've never had anyone in any of our partners have a problem with anyone saying you cannot serve this.

Josh (20:12.006)

Wow.

Sue Malesa (20:20.858)

You know, there's with the farm to school as it is all, you know, the emphasis on local. I mean, this is as local as it gets about 10 feet from your service line or across town in your school district as it may be, whatever. So they're always very supportive and food safety issues are really not a concern if you're doing your thing as you should be every day.

Josh (20:44.038)

Yes, that sounds great. And I love that being proactive aspect of it. So I'm a certified professional food safety. So I'm not the sanitarian level, but that is definitely always a concern for me, which is why I wanted to throw that in. And that's good to hear that there are no problems with the local health departments saying you can't do this, or we need a 100 -page plan of what you're going to do to keep it safe. So yeah.

Sue Malesa (21:10.234)

We have those resources on our digital platform also, Farmative. So we've done like what all you have to do is insert that into your HACCP plan. We have our best practices and SOPs for handling greens. So that's really helpful to operators as well. So we try, we try, right?

Josh (21:26.438)

Turn key, turn key for responding to them. Yes, great. So the curriculum, so you said the students can get involved, they can learn. How extensive is it? And is there a concern of, let's say that a school has multiple locations and for some strange reason they're like, we can't put it in all of our schools.

Josh (21:51.814)

You know, some of our students are going to be missing on it. Like how extensive is the curriculum? Is it like more of like after school thing? Is it part of the actual class? Some of the classes, a mix of both? What are we talking about here?

Sue Malesa (22:03.098)

We are talking both. So we have a K -12 next generation science curriculum that is a partner piece with a Flex Farm. So when you purchase a Flex Farm, you get this K -12 curriculum and it's in grade bands. you know, K3, 4, 5, and middle school, high school. And it's 44 lessons. It's extremely robust. And it's made to slide into any next generation science curriculum in a public school or private school setting. So in Wisconsin, hydroponics lands in fifth grade. So in fifth grade, every science class in has a six week hydroponic unit in it that's built into the curriculum and the science curriculum. Our teachers were able to just slide the FlexFarm curriculum into their hydroponics curriculum because it's approved next generation science and deploy that curriculum. It comes with things to put up on your smart board, activities, all the research, additional links for further exploration if kids really wanna get into it.

or and it's very easy to deploy for our for teachers. The other thing that we have is a badging program and that's more geared for boys and girls clubs after school programs, which we have a lot of placements there as well. And students or any kids engaged at any level can earn certificates in the proficiencies that is that are operating hydroponics. So when you master the nutrients and figuring out the nutrients, there's a certificate that you can print off.

put the student's name in there. And that is that's teachers love that after school programs love that also where it's like all I have to do is click this button it's going to print this yes deploy this lesson it's very robust and and we have these resources for you. I think that having that kind of in your back pocket as a food service director.

helps with that moth to the flame. As soon as you've got that teacher inquiring, you can say, I have this curriculum that goes along with this. Would you like to see this? And here's the really cool thing.

Once you own one Flex Farm, the access to our back of the house digital platform is available to everyone in the school district. So to build support for your program, I shared that I made everyone an account holder and they could go in and look at all the little videos, the educational and the grow videos, and then take our flex farming 101 course right on there. We've got a little flex farming 101 and they can download the curriculum.

and look at it. So it's available to everyone.

Josh (24:45.478)

That's amazing. It's a six -week course, so you could just shift from one class to another if need be where you're using the same hydroponic and taking turns. So that's really cool to know that that is so easy and you guys are so prepared for all of this. Every question I'm throwing at you, I can't ruffle your feathers at all here.

Sue Malesa (25:05.242)

Just try it. You can try it. I've actually done this. I mean having my own farm from start to finish building it and then deploying it in a district and building support around that for expanding that. We built our, we started using the farms and our greens consumption went up 30 percent. So.

we're like, okay, we need more farms. So that's not a bad problem to have when you're really impacting that. And when kids, you know, when parents are saying to you, we never used to stop in the produce department. Like now my kids are telling me which kind of lettuce they want me to bring home and they want to stop in the produce department. That's, that's pretty impactful.

Josh (25:49.382)

Yes, it absolutely is. And that's one of the reasons I want to help in any way I can because at such a young age, you can have such an impact, the dining programs on the students' relationship with food and that is going to impact them through adulthood. It did for me. And so that's great, great impact that you guys are bringing to the table here. So.

Sue Malesa (26:11.962)

Yeah, it's fun to watch.

Josh (26:15.142)

How can people connect to learn more about Fork Farms and get started growing if they're interested?

Sue Malesa (26:21.722)

www.forkfarms.com. That's our website. You can tool around on there and see the different things we do and meet our team. And from there, you can reach out if you'd like. And I'm Sue at Fork Farms. So you can reach out to me directly and I will put you in touch with the person that is working in your part of the country or your part of the state, wherever you might be. And we can go from there.

and share some information with you and help you start dreaming about growing.

Josh (26:55.078)

Let's do it everyone. Don't hesitate to reach out, learn more. Even if you're not ready today, start learning about planning for the future, planning for next school year. Absolutely, this is a great opportunity to learn more on. And Sue, you and everyone at Fork Farms are all remarkable academic food ambassadors. You're helping progress school food service for everyone and you're spreading the word also by coming on this episode. So thank you for everything that you do. Thank you, Fork Farms for everything.

Everything that everyone there is doing. So absolutely you earned that and everyone until next time for me signing off.

Sue Malesa (27:25.466)

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Josh.