Salad has come a long way in the past couple of decades. What used to be a hunk of iceberg lettuce and a few cherry tomatoes, usually served as an afterthought to the main dish, has become a staple of the American diet.

Instead of lettuce and tomatoes (and maybe a few cucumbers if you got lucky) salads are now a meal of their own. And people are eating more and more of them in an effort to live healthier lives. That’s nothing but good news for the produce industry, which is innovating with new varieties and options for shoppers.

And the results are fantastic. A few years ago, kale salad was nowhere to be found, but now it’s a staple in restaurants and grocery stores. I remember the first time I tried living lettuce and realized I had no idea it could be so fresh and flavorful. I had been missing out on it for years!

More than anything, consumers want fresh, quality produce they can trust. Restaurants want to put “locally grown” on their menus and grocery stores are starting to use grower names and locations in their marketing as the local food gains momentum.

And when outbreaks of E. coli hit their lettuce supplies, consumers want to be sure that what they’re feeding their families is safe. That’s where greenhouse growers can really shine.

People like the team behind Great Lakes Growers, which you can read about on page 12, are on the cutting edge of this trend. By cutting down delivery times and offering options like living lettuce or herbs that were harvested just days earlier, they’re trying to improve the quality, shelf life and general taste of leafy greens for the average consumer. So far, they've succeeded and the innovations are really taking off.

Just as American tastes are changing, so are their shopping habits. With the advent of online services like Amazon and a plethora of meal kit delivery services like Sun Basket, Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, shoppers want delivery to their doorstep with the click of a button.

Great Lakes Growers is taking advantage of that trend too by shipping fresh herbs, living lettuce and other leafy greens straight to customers’ doorsteps. Combining the ease of online ordering with the freshness of quick delivery, they’re changing the salad game for the better yet again.

When it comes to the definition of “fresh,” it’s easy to get a wide variety of answers if you ask consumers. Some consumers consider prepared refrigerated foods as fresh, while others reserve the idea of freshness for the bulk produce aisle. For some, only organic produce qualifies as fresh, while others are happy to qualify anything green added to their diet as such — even if it’s conventional frozen produce. Varying definitions aside, there’s no denying the freshness of living herbs, greens and microgreens with roots still attached.

It used to be that fresh herb producers sought to garner market share from consumers purchasing dry packaged herbs. Now, there is new business to be captured in the fresh produce aisle. When it comes to positive sales trends, living herbs and lettuces offer many producers a way to grow.

Small steps to fresh

Today’s culinary consumer is looking for small, easy ways to add fresh, healthy ingredients to their daily lifestyle. That might mean a sprinkle of fresh basil on their pasta or a sprig of fresh thyme in their evening cocktail. These may seem like tiny steps for those of us who grow a lot of fresh produce, but they represent meaningful solutions for many consumers. There are just as many definitions of “cooking” as there are of “fresh” for that matter.

Fresh flavors

Why roots? Fresh herbs and greens packaged with roots attached last two to three times longer than packaged fresh-cut herbs — sometimes even longer in my experience, depending on how quickly you harvest all the foliage. This is a big benefit to both the retailers and the consumer.

For fresh herbs, recipe-ready varieties such as basil, rosemary, thyme and mint generally lead the pack. There isn’t much prep work needed to use these common herbs and most consumers are at least faintly familiar with how to use them. But as home cooks become more adventurous in their cooking styles, they’re open to more pungent and spicy flavors found in herbs such as cilantro and tarragon.

Well-rooted

Looking for a great example of how to make a go of packaged living herbs and greens? No need to look further than North Shore Greenhouses (northshore.farm). Under their trademarked North Shore Living brands, this southern California-based company hydroponically produces a wide array of living herbs and greens packed with roots attached. Using certified sustainable methods, North Shore has developed some seriously savvy packaging options for consumers, including self-watering mini-greenhouse packaging as well as “potted” options, which are essentially hydroponic baskets to support the plant roots. The potted options can be suspended in a jar or other water-holding containers, which make for a nice temporary windowsill herb garden.

North Shore has also done a great job on their website of providing instructions for how to store their living herbs and greens, as well as a bevy of tasty recipes to keep the end-user engaged. Their basil ice cream recipe is to die for. Yes, basil ice cream. Personally, I like to add a bit of lemongrass to brighten the flavor.

Not convinced?

A common knee-jerk concern with selling living fresh herbs and greens — roots attached — is that the consumer will just plant it up and not buy more. While you may have a few motivated gardeners who’ll take up the DIY task, most culinary customers will be very happy to maintain their living herbs or greens in the refrigerator, or in a glass jar on the countertop (or refrigerator) for a week or two — until it’s fully harvested. That’s more green than they usually get to have in their kitchen. When they’ve harvested it all, they’ll buy it again. Many apartment or small home dwellers may not have the option of permanently planting up their living herbs and greens, but are happy to have a fresh living specimen even temporarily.

Also, herbs and greens grown hydroponically, without soil, don’t always transition to containers or the garden successfully. So, your less-experienced or brown-thumb customers won’t always be successful with planting living greens and herbs. They really are better off keeping them in the fridge or on the countertop or windowsill.

More basil please!

I think packaged living basil is the ideal way for most culinary consumers to buy and use fresh basil from the grocery store, specifically since it’s damaged at temperatures below 40° F. That means most home refrigerators are a death zone for fresh basil (roots or no roots). I’m sure many customers have given up on fresh-packed cut basil after sticking it in the refrigerator, only to find that it has blackened and wilted the next day. Rooted plants on the countertop are the way to go.

If you already grow fresh-cut produce or herbs, or you’re a hydroponic grower who’s looking to expand your offerings, now is a great time to survey your local or regional market for opportunities. Living herbs and greens could be the perfect way to freshen up your produce profits.

Leslie (CPH) owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural consulting, business and marketing strategy, product development and branding, and content creation for green industry companies. lesliehalleck.com

Great Lakes Growers wants to change the way people buy and think about salad. The hydroponic greens and herbs operation is capitalizing on changing consumer tastes and sending its products straight to customers’ doorsteps with a new initiative called Great Lakes Growers Express.

Located in Burton, Ohio — a village with a total population of less than 1,500 — the operation was founded in 2011. But through relationships with restaurants and regional grocery store chains such as Buehler’s, Giant Eagle and Heinen’s, the business can reach a customer base in Ohio and neighboring states that would make up several dozen Burtons. And if its home delivery service goes according to plan, the company’s reach will extend even further.

“There’s about 80 million people we can reach,” says John Bonner, owner and founder.

“There are home delivery services out there for food, but we’ve always heard the complaints about, well it’s the produce that is really bad,” says Tim Ward, who does marketing for Great Lakes Growers and helped develop the Great Lakes Growers Express concept. “The other food is fine; the produce doesn’t hold up because they’re really packaging it and shipping it in traditional methods, the way you might find in a traditional grocery store. They’re getting it from out West. Everything’s being shipped directly from the source here.”

Through Great Lakes Growers Express, which officially launched in March, consumers can order combinations of living lettuce, fresh-cut herbs and other leafy greens from the grower online, and have them shipped directly to their home via UPS. Currently, there are four different combinations to pick from and each is available for delivery weekly or every other week for $29.99 per delivery.

According to Bonner, the logic behind the delivery service is two-fold. First, it opens new markets in urban and rural communities that don’t have grocery stores nearby — like inner-city Cleveland or a small town in Pennsylvania.

Second, Bonner believes that by shipping fresh greens directly to the consumer, he can tap into a younger customer base that seeks out instant gratification and is already ordering other goods like pet food, razors and toothbrushes online with pre-determined shipping (and payment) dates. It’s also a customer base, Bonner says, that wants fresh produce and worries about the quality of food they are consuming.

“Even if you’re getting it from a local guy like me, it’s still three or four days old at the store, which there’s probably not much difference in freshness,” Bonner says. “So it had to be fresh, had to be good, and the cost had to be no more money than they’re going to pay when they go the grocery store.”

Bonner’s beginnings

Bonner grew up in Burton, where his entire family is connected to the horticulture industry. On his father’s side, the main family profession has been traditional field farming. On his mother’s side, his grandfather founded BFG Supply, a greenhouse supply company based in Burton. Additionally, his father founded Dillen Products (later renamed HC Companies), a manufacturer of injected molded pots whose clients included many members of the Van Wingerden family, several of whom own large-scale ornamental operations.

“That’s how I got into farming,” Bonner says.

Additionally, his sister owns Eagle Creek Nursery, a wholesale ornamental producer. Originally, though, horticulture was not the path Bonner pursued. After graduating high school, Bonner attended Capital University in Columbus and earned a bachelor’s degree in finance. From there, he took a job at Merrill Lynch. But according to Bonner, it wasn’t work that fit him.

Bonner worked at Eagle Creek Nursery for a time after leaving Merrill Lynch, gaining notoriety in the industry for implementing sustainable business practices. In 2011, he left the family business and founded Great Lakes Growers.

The business started out small. He tested out his concept with 300 square feet of poly greenhouses and a basic hydroponic system constructed from supplies at Home Depot — but expansion came quick. From there, he was able to get his greens into local restaurants and eventually local grocery chains.

Today, Great Lakes Growers has 80,000 square feet of production space and is currently in the middle of an expansion that will double its size. Down the line, Bonner sees a need to hire growers. (Currently, he’s hands-on with the plants seven days a week.) But he can’t envision a future where he doesn’t spend at least some time in the greenhouse working directly with the crops.

“I cannot see myself not coming in here at least one day a week and watering everything and taking care of everything,” he says. “I can call everybody up in an hour and find out, ‘Hey, where do we want to do this, do that?’ But it’s just got to have more structure as we get bigger. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re expanding as an organization; we’re broadening out. So it’s fun. It’s challenging.”

Fresh deliveries

Bonner and Ward, another Burton native and someone Bonner has known for years, started working on the delivery service about a year ago. According to Bonner, Great Lakes Growers Express and has been rolled out slowly on purpose in order to solve any potential logistical issues. The idea appealed to Bonner as a way to diversify outside of traditional retail methods.

“We told our retail partners we were doing it and they said, ‘Spot on man.’ Because they’re seeing it, too,” he says. “We’re doing meal kits and things for them, but their product development, this whole convenience thing, is what I was seeing when I started. This whole feeling of instant gratification — well it’s getting on steroids now. And I think we see it in all these subscription services and things like that. It’s not going to stop.”

To start, the company sent out greens and herbs via UPS and FedEx to friends and family. When the packages arrived, those friends and family sent back pictures of the greens to see how they held up. Bonner says that they sent out packages in a variety of weather conditions from extreme heat to extreme cold to make sure the greens would remain fresher than what they could buy at the store.

“We were testing so many things and looking at the variables,” Ward says. “I think we got it down to where anything within basically 24 hours is doable. So in any place that UPS can ship within a day is perfect.”

A key to the service is that Great Lakes Growers offers living lettuce with the roots still attached — allowing the lettuce to last longer once its in the customer’s fridge. Each order is also checked by hand in Burton to ensure that the greens are fresh and the order is correct. According to Ward, word-of-mouth and rave reviews from customers on social media are the driving factor as the business continues to grow organically and expand into new areas.

“We want to make sure that we can check every single box and we’ve had zero complaints so far of anything that we’ve shipped out to consumers,” Ward says. “And frankly I expect that to continue.”

Offering fresher products than the local grocery store is the main selling point for Great Lakes Growers Express. Say a customer orders greens on a Sunday. On Tuesday of that week, the greens are harvested, packaged and shipped out. The next day, the greens arrive at the customer’s doorstep via UPS. That’s even faster than the same greens, harvested the same day, would arrive at the local grocery store.

“It’s more units than you might find on a trip on a Monday to a grocery store, but it’s also got a shelf life that’s two weeks plus,” Bonner says. “So that whole process of training people that say, ‘Hey wow, got five heads of lettuce or six heads of lettuce, whatever it is, I can’t eat all that.’ But then if you leave it in your fridge for a week, two weeks, and you look at it, you’re going to go, ‘Damn, that still looks better than anything I’ve put in there.’”

Growing into the future

Right next door to the greenhouses filled with greens and herbs in Burton, Great Lakes Growers is in the process of expanding. Walk through one door and instead of greens, you’ll find construction crews building glass greenhouses and setting up the space for a concrete floor to be poured. Each greenhouse will be outfitted with LED lighting, environmental control systems, boom irrigation and other technologies since Bonner believes embracing technology and its possible benefits is key to keeping the business moving forward.

“I’m a big believer that ultimately, we have to get the cost inside the greenhouse down in the space or an area where we’re competitive with the field-grown stuff,” he says.

The plan, Bonner says, is to have enough growing space that products shipped via Great Lakes Growers Express have their own production area. He adds that the additional space is already “sold out” — meaning he already knows what will be grown there. And another expansion in the near future isn’t out of the question either.

There are also plans to continue diversifying the business. In addition to the delivery service — which Bonner and Ward hope to expand to new areas in the coming months — Great Lakes Growers products are now sold at Giant Eagle under the grocery store’s Market District branding. And other retailers are selling the product with the Great Lakes Growers logo on the package.

Outside of that, Bonner says selling greens to the food service sector is the business’ largest growing market share.

The key for whatever comes next, however, is still freshness. Regardless of what is next for Great Lakes Growers, and for Bonner, he says that must remain the core principle of the business.

“I look at it as we need to have stuff there that tastes better, looks better, grows better,” he says. “We need to give our customers the best price, so they can compete with their competitors. But ultimately, we’ve got to give the consumer the best price and the best quality.”

To learn about Great Lakes Growers' Amish workforce, search 'Amish' at producegrower.com

Adelante Mujeres, based in Forest Grove, Oregon, provides various educational opportunities to low-income Latina women and their families. By partnering with the VeggieRx program, a state-wide initiative through which doctors and nurses can offer vouchers for purhcases of fresh fruits and veggies, they’re aiming to encourage good eating habits and improve the overall health of the community. The area Adelante Mujeres serves is home to many migrant farm workers, as well full-time agricultural workers.

“For a long time, we have just been thinking about our community, and the Latinx community in general in Oregon, and how we are plagued with diabetes and obesity and a lot of diet-related diseases,” says Nutrition and Farmers Market Manager Kaely Summers. “The families we are working with are Spanish speakers dealing with food insecurity and are at risk with diet-related diseases.”

Produce Grower: In trying to serve this community, how do you discuss VeggieRx and its benefits?

Kaely Summers: We come to it with a positive messaging strategy. We don’t want to tell people, “You can’t eat this.” We really talk about eating more fruits and vegetables, and really vegetables specifically. People don’t need to be convinced to eat fruit. With vegetables, we talk about it in an engaging way, like how the recipes and dishes you’re making day-to-day can have more vegetables by substituting a few things. So, if people are used to eating tomatoes and iceberg lettuce, how do we swap out the iceberg lettuce for something more nutrient-dense?

PG: How does Adelante Mujeres specifically tailor the program for the Latinx community it serves?

KS: All of our cooking classes and coaching and other services are offered in Spanish. Our staff is about 85% Latino and native Spanish speakers. I’m fluent in Spanish as well and the majority of our staff is bilingual as well. We started it in 2015 and we’ve been working on a small scale — about 25 families a year. But what we’ve been talking about with them is the challenges that it faces, how it can be scaled up and what they need. For us, that includes the Forest Grove Farmers Market, which we give families vouchers to. Historically, these markets have been catered to middle-to-upper class white families, so there is that perceived barrier for some. But what we are really trying to do is open up that market so we’ve got a cross-section of who is actually in our community and that all people feel comfortable.

PG: Out of the produce items you have worked to introduce, what has the community embraced?

KS: Folks [in our community] are fairly accustomed to eating tomatoes, cucumbers, chiles, corn and beans. Squash is another one. Herbs like cilantro are popular too. So in our cooking classes, we are trying to introduce folks to vegetables that they’ve maybe never heard of before. Wild mushrooms are one thing that are harvested here that are also harvested in places like Mexico and Guatemala, and families will say, “Oh yeah, that brings back a memory when I was a kid.” That’s how we try to introduce different things but recognizing that it’s hard to change your diet completely.