S9 Ep46: Your Kitchen, Your Garden: The Indoor Farming Game Changer with Conner Tidd
“How can we make growing your own food possible in environments where it normally wasn’t? Or can we drastically lower the impact of water use, fertilizer use, or resources used to drive to the grocery store? That’s a big impact that we can have if we can allow you to grow your own food right at home.” —Conner Tidd
Episode Description:
“How can we make growing your own food possible in environments where it normally wasn’t? Or can we drastically lower the impact of water use, fertilizer use, or resources used to drive to the grocery store? That’s a big impact that we can have if we can allow you to grow your own food right at home.” —Conner Tidd
What if you could grow fresh, pesticide-free produce just steps from your refrigerator, regardless of where you live? Indoor vertical farming isn't just a trend— it's a revolutionary approach to sustainable, accessible food production.
Conner Tidd is a sustainability expert and the co-founder of Just Vertical, a pioneering company reimagining how urban dwellers grow food. With a Master's in Sustainability and a passion for solving global food challenges, Conner has developed innovative indoor gardening solutions that make fresh, local produce possible for everyone.
Tune in as Justine and Connor reveal how indoor vertical farming can slash water usage, eliminate pesticides, reduce food miles, and empower individuals to become home producers—transforming our relationship with food, one garden at a time.
Connect with Conner:
Conner Tidd is the co-founder of Just Vertical, an innovative indoor farming company that designs indoor gardens and vertical farming solutions. With a Master's degree in Sustainability, he aims to make fresh, locally grown food accessible to people in urban environments and remote locations. Conner's entrepreneurial journey focuses on addressing food security, reducing environmental impact, and providing sustainable solutions for growing produce in challenging climates. Through Just Vertical, he helps individuals grow pesticide-free, fresh vegetables and herbs in their own homes, with a mission to create resilient and affordable food systems.
Episode Highlights:
03:25 Historical Context and Current Trends in Food Production
05:09 Water and Resource Efficiency in Vertical Farming
21:14 Pesticide-Free Produce
23:23 A Journey Into Entrepreneurship: Mistakes and Lessons Learned
33:37 How to Set up a Vertical Garden
Tweets:
Ever wondered how to grow fresh herbs in your tiny apartment? Tune in to discover how vertical farming is revolutionizing urban food production and making local eating easier than ever with @justine.reichman and @just.vertical co-founder, Conner Tidd. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season9 #IndoorFarming #HomeGardening #SustainableFood #FoodTech #IndoorGardening #SustainableLiving #UrbanFarming #FoodSecurity
Inspirational Quotes:
03:19 “We're no longer focused on eating locally and what's in season, we're now making everything available.” —Justine Reichman
08:05 “How can we make growing your own food possible in environments where it normally wasn’t? Or can we drastically lower the impact of water use, fertilizer use, or resources used to drive to the grocery store? That’s a big impact that we can have if we can allow you to grow your own food right at home.” —Conner Tidd
10:08 “The fresher the food, the better it is for you. Grow what you're going to eat, and have some fun with it.” —Conner Tidd
11:43 “The world's got enough food. It's just, how do we get it to people in a way that's not going to kill the environment?” —Conner Tidd
18:49 “Everybody can pitch something that's not theirs better than people that pitch themselves.” —Justine Reichman
27:15 “Real impact comes from a lot of people doing small things right every single day.” —Conner Tidd
27:44 “If we people can make small changes, then we have a greater opportunity to feel success for ourselves and make an impact without feeling failure.” —Justine Reichman
28:36 “If you can do one thing well, that is far more valuable than trying to do 10 things half right.” —Conner Tidd
29:02 “If you can be the one who believes in yourself and in what you're doing, then it's going to run off.” —Conner Tidd
30:10 “It's the small wins that get you to the big wins.” —Justine Reichman
31:50 “Mistakes are part of the journey. They can be frustrating, they can be expensive, they can be a time delay, but they can also end up leading you somewhere you might not have otherwise been or gone to.” —Justine Reichman
Transcription:
Justine Reichman: Hello and welcome to Essential Ingredients. This is Justine Reichman. I'm so excited to be here today with you. I want to welcome our guests that tune in each week, but also welcome those new listeners, those new viewers that are tuning in for the first time. It's so great to have you here. I feel privileged to have you here to be joining this conversation, and this conversation today is with Conner. You're not going to want to miss this. It opened my eyes to the opportunities around vertical farming, both in an urban environment, as well as in the countryside or in the suburbs. And I think that for me, growing up in New York, it never even entered my mind that I would be able to do some of these things, and it was so exciting to see this. Because as I moved to California and was able to have that vegetable garden for me, I still couldn't envision what that would look like in New York City in a high rise, so I invite you to stay tuned. You're not going to want to miss this, his story, both is inspiring and educational whether you're listening because you want to learn more about vertical farming, and how to integrate that into your life. Or if you're building a business and you want to hear from somebody that did it successfully, what inspired him and how he grew it, so you're not going to want to miss this. So again, stay tuned. And we'll hear from Conner shortly.
Conner, if you would, I'm so excited to have you here. We have guests each week that tune in. They tune in so that they can make better decisions. They tune in because they want to hear from you and what your story is, be inspired and equally better understand how we can make those more informed choices. So for those guests and listeners who we are so grateful to have each week, would you please just give us a quick intro to you and Just Vertical.
Conner Tidd: I'm Conner Tidd, I'm one of the two co-founders here at Just Vertical. And not Just Vertical, we build indoor gardens for your home, all the way up to full scale indoor vertical farms that we put in around the world so that you can grow food locally no matter what the climate is, what the weather is, and what the conditions are outside. So whether you're in a desert or you're above the frost line, you can have access to your own fresh food.
“We're no longer focused on eating locally and what's in season, we're now making everything available.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: That's great. For me, growing up in New York City, it didn't seem quite as accessible to have that garden to understand how to grow it, to eat locally. Aside from going to the Union Square Farmers Market, we were not necessarily eating locally. And it could also be, in all fairness, the timing, right? We're here in 2025, this is a much bigger conversation now than it was in the 1970s. I feel like for me, I don't know that we were talking about eating locally and eating organic, although my mom was very advanced on that. So I think this is a really interesting conversation on a personal level. Because when I look at my garden in the back, I have an edible garden. To me, it seems like, okay, we can do that. That's easy. But I think about it in terms of an apartment or a condo in the middle of an urban city like New York, Toronto, Montreal or wherever where you're living in a large building wondering, how do we get to do that too, and what does that mean? Because we're growing here. The things that they tell us thrive in this climate at this time. So I'm thinking about what you're saying, and you're saying we can grow everything anytime, and we can make that happen. That poses some questions for me out of curiosity, we're no longer focused on eating locally and what's in season. Seasonally, we're now making everything available. So can you walk me through that a little?
Conner Tidd: I think it's very interesting. You kind of said that historically, I think people were very concerned about local food, and where it came from. You look back to World War II, everybody was growing a victory garden. It was almost like a point of pride for the board effort. And then you read a cookbook from the 50s and 60s, and we all got obsessed with jello and cheap accessible food. And there's all these weird recipes like jello and Cool Whip, because those were the new things, which is gross now in the 2025 context. But you really saw that that kind of fall off, and it was all about globalization, and how do we get food as cheap as possible. And I think there's been a big resurgence in people wanting to know where their food's coming from, what's going into it? And that's where we see people thinking about their seasonal diets, what's the impact of it? And that was kind of part of the genesis for us was, all right, you lived in New York City. I live in downtown Toronto. You're in a concrete jungle. How do you grow your own food? It's not an option, right?
My balcony faces north. There's tall buildings all around me. I barely get anything. The community gardens got a three year wait list because people are obsessed with it. So it was like, okay, what if we could take a lot of the cool cutting edge science around vertical farming and put it into a piece of furniture? We can't quite grow everything. We don't do root vegetables, so potatoes and carrots. If you do grow them, they come out tiny, like smaller than a golf ball. But the freshness really matters. Your lettuces, your leafy greens, your herbs are a huge one. Cherry tomatoes, most people bite into a fresh cherry tomato in the middle of winter, and it's like a night and day difference compared to what's at the grocery store.
Justine Reichman: It's true. As I was learning a little bit about your indoor farming and the technology, and this is a big conversation here in California that it uses a lot less water, and that's it. That's a big conversation in California with the drought and everything, so I'd love to learn a little bit more about that. Because from my understanding, I thought it was like 95% less. Is that right?
“How can we make growing your own food possible in environments where it normally wasn’t? Or can we drastically lower the impact of water use, fertilizer use, or resources used to drive to the grocery store? That’s a big impact that we can have if we can allow you to grow your own food right at home.” —Conner Tidd
Conner Tidd: Yeah. So it's really cool. So the way the systems work, and this is one thing we're proud of, but it's not unique to us. It's necessarily just our system, but it's a closed loop. So the water that goes into it gets pumped up to the plants, runs along the roots. And then whatever the plants don't want to drink at that time goes right back into a water reservoir, so a holding tank, and it constantly recirculates. So what that means is you don't have any ground water runoff. You don't have any loss that way. And the tanks closed up, so you don't even have evaporation out of it. And it also leads to not only way less water use, but way less fertilizer use. You use about a tablespoon of fertilizer every two weeks, which, if anyone's ever used fertilizer in your garden, that's (inaudible). I say to imagine adding liquid to a garden and how much it just soaks in, and it's gone. With hydroponics with a recirculating closed loop system, you don't run into any of that.
Justine Reichman: So with that being said, that's like a real win, right? Especially in these environments where they don't want us to have grass, they want us to have things that are drought friendly, and so that would really facilitate people being able to grow and make fruits and vegetables, aside from root, more accessible. So that's a really big win. How do you find that people are receiving that in areas like California with drought? What's the conversation around it? huge.
Conner Tidd: It's huge. Our family who lived in California and during the water rationing, I don't know if it's still going on, and I remember how controversial it was that some people's lawns mysteriously kept surviving, and other people were letting theirs brown. So definitely, it's part of the conversation. I view it as an extension of concern of where your food's coming from, and what's going into it. Concern for the environment like, are we going to be able to live in California in 50 years? You look at the Colorado River that's fed California, the water levels that have gone down, and you look at the reservoir levels. They talk every summer like, how much water is going to be in there? It's interesting. The deserts of the far north, like the tundra where you don't have access to a lot of fresh water because it's all frozen, it's the same thing as like, how do we grow? How can we grow our own food possible in environments where it normally wasn't? Or can we drastically lower the impact on whether that's on water use, fertilizer use, or, even for people who are out in the country where you gotta drive an hour to the grocery store. That's a big impact that we can take away if we can allow you to grow your own food at home, whether that's in the kitchen, or container farm out back, or shed.
Justine Reichman: All of that makes it tangible. You can imagine that. You can see it growing in your house. You can see the possibilities. And so I just want to go back because as we think about eating locally, and now we're growing anything, and the idea of eating what is grown that is seasonal, they say, is healthier for us. So while you can grow everything you're not, are you advocating that people just grow whatever they want or is part of the ethos to maintain things that are so seasonal? Or do you not think it matters?
“The fresher the food, the better it is for you. Grow what you're going to eat, and have some fun with it.” —Conner Tidd
Conner Tidd: The seasonality and what you're growing, it's very regional dependent. We have this conversation a lot in the States because when we're dealing with somebody, customers in Missouri, in Louisiana, they've got a very different idea of what's seasonal. We're talking a lot like collard green, Swiss chard, kind of like Hardy fiber stuff versus not to stereotype California, but like kale. The kale trend never dies, right? And then we have the conversation with somebody in Alaska, and they're like, what is seasonal produce? Like, nothing seasonal here. So there's all these different approaches to it on where it grows and what you're going to eat. And when we talk about the health impacts, one of the biggest things is actually having it fresh. Because the fresher the food, the more density the vitamins and the micronutrients are. You gotta think that as soon as you pick a plant, you're killing it, and you start to have that micronutrient break down right away. So the fresher the food, the better it is for you. And then grow what you're gonna grow, what you're gonna eat, and kind of have some fun with it. Because the other big thing is you can grow a lot of stuff you can't get at the grocery store. There's 200 different kinds of basil out in the world, but you're only going to find probably one or two on the grocery store shelves.
Justine Reichman: I agree. We grow Thai basil, regular basil and different herbs. I can't tell you how many different thymes we have. It allows you to be creative and be fun, have all these different smells and create new kinds of recipes. I'm enthusiastic about this as I come from an urban jungle, and the idea that you could do that. But I also really appreciate the impact you're having on the environment, whether it's about travel and going to get food, whether it's about the machines that people are using. I'd love to just dig a little further into that, understand how does this impact the farmer? How does this impact all the fruits and vegetables that we get from Mexico and everywhere else? And what is your overarching goal?
Conner Tidd: For us, living myself and my co-founder Kevin, we really started this through a sustainability lens. We met when we were doing our Masters of Science and Sustainability together. Kevin was working in the far north in an indigenous community where a head of lettuce was $20, and it was already raw. These are like places you can only fly in to get it. So you're shipping stuff through the air. It's crazy. We're sitting there saying like, okay, it's 2017 when we're starting this company. The world's got enough food. It's just, how do we get it to people? And how do we get it to people in a way that's not going to kill the environment?
“The world's got enough food. It's just, how do we get it to people in a way that's not going to kill the environment?” —Conner Tidd
So for us, it's really that food impacts sustainability. And when you look at the impact of your food, people are often surprised where the impact is because we hear about food miles, a lot about food getting transported to grocery stores, which is true. But when you actually boil it down to the numbers, often, there's actually more impact of you driving to the grocery store than the food getting there. When you think about it, that truck is bringing in 100,000 heads of lettuce, right? Your box of spinach went bad because you told yourself again, I'll get through the box this week. And then you don't, because we've all been there, and you got to run to the store to get that spinach in that one trip to have a big impact. And the other big thing is the packaging on the food. You go and buy like, I'm making tacos tonight, I went and bought peppers. And like, I don't put them in a little plastic bag, but the person at the checkout did. The single use bag, and I'm like, that might have more impact than the pepper itself. So by being able to, if we can save you a trip to the grocery store because your herbs are growing fresh and you're only picking what you need, and then there's no plastic packaging around it, on top of your water savings and your fertilizer savings, you can make a real dent in your food impact on that part of your life. And not only do you get to eat better food, but you feel good about it too.
Justine Reichman: I couldn't agree more. And these conversations keep popping up in so many ways around sustainability, around waste. Because the truth is, I never know what I'm going to want to eat tomorrow, right? I don't like to go out of the store and buy five days worth of food. Because if I don't eat it, then I'm going to waste it, or then I gotta freeze it. And how long can you freeze it? All these different things that go on in your head. But equally, if you grow what you like, that stuff would go bad if you cut it prematurely, or you pick it prematurely. But if you leave it there, and you can do that same thing without making that drive to the grocery store, and you can eat as you wish daily, and go there periodically. Maybe buy your meats from wherever you're going to do them and stick those in the freezer, as opposed to all the different trips and all the different places. You want cucumbers and they're really from Mexico, but had I grown them, I could have had them at that time of year, or just a little prematurely. So I think that's really interesting. I think the other thing that's really interesting that you bring up is that it's a way for us to make an impact. And so often, I feel like people are trying to do so many different things, but this is something that is easy to understand, and you can certainly see the immediacy of it. Doesn't mean that on a larger scale or from a 40 foot viewpoint. We don't want better solutions. But I think this is one that people can feel good about, get involved with, create new recipes, do all sorts of things and share with friends. And even if they have excess, share.
Conner Tidd: Absolutely. If there's all these big challenges the world's got to take on, it can seem intimidating. It can seem hard to be like, okay, where am I making an impact? What's real? We got to acknowledge human nature. You might feel good about choosing the green laundry detergent, but it really doesn't do much for you in the long run. So what can we do to put up solutions that are fun, tangible, they're immediate and it's easy to adopt? And our thought behind it is like, let's make people feel good about their gardening, feel good about their food and build that connection, because it's something you want to talk about, something you want to share with friends.
Justine Reichman: I know you mentioned that you and your co-founder were in school getting a sustainability degree. So what in particular generated this idea? Sustainability, we could talk about so many things. It's vast, but you really focused on something around growing your own gardens and your own stuff. So if we want to circle back and talk about when you first kick this off with your co-founder, and you're in school and you're studying sustainability, why was this so meaningful to you?
Conner Tidd: When I was in school, younger and more naive, put me in one of the biggest, baddest polluters, and I'll get this solved in four months. So I went to one of the largest agricultural companies in the world. And when they bought another one of the largest agricultural companies in the world, that is also the most hated, whose name I'll leave out, but it's pretty easily deducible for anyone in this space. And I saw firsthand how upset people were with the way they view food, whether it was factually correct or not. People are saying things like, I wish I could grow my own food. I wish I had known what was going on. I wish I had some control over it. And then Kevin, at the same time, like I said, he was in that far north community working there on, how can we grow food in remote communities? He said, the technology exists to do this. It's not anything revolutionary. It was just in our view, nobody had dressed it up properly to make it palatable to your people in Toronto, New York, Montreal, LA. And that was the original thesis for the idea of like, can we build this into a cool piece of furniture where it's functional, cool and easy to use? Because when you say hydroponics, most people think like light tubes, like a grow up in your house. So how can we make this palatable for folks?
Justine Reichman: And when you first kick this off, what was the response from buyers, from community members.
Conner Tidd: When we kicked it off, people were really enthusiastic, but they had not heard of vertical farming. It's kind of something you saw in the news once or twice. They didn't realize that it was something that could be done inside your home. So there's a lot of education with folks, but a lot of excitement. One thing I will say is the younger generations always got it, and they were completely on board. I think there always has been a little bit of skepticism with some older folks around, it's still like growing lights. It's like you're putting stuff in the water. We got to educate people. Is it nutritionally valuable? Is it safe? And of course, it is. But you've got to talk people through it and get them on board with it.
Justine Reichman: So what role did education play for you in kicking this off, and getting people committed to using this in their homes?
Conner Tidd: There's a lot of workshops we've done around planting seeds. Here's how a plant grows, here's what it looks like, here's the differences. And as many workshops as I like to have done, what we found was that the best people to teach are the people who took that initial dive, got a garden, and then you'll see their friends come over for dinner and like, oh, what is that like? Is that in here? And they've become our customers. Have become our biggest advocates. We like to make sure they're equipped with the knowledge. We do a lot of work with universities and colleges to validate what we say, because we don't want to just be making things up, or saying things. We want somebody else to validate it. But our customers, they've been our biggest advocates for getting things done.
“Everybody can pitch something that's not theirs better than people that pitch themselves.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I know it's like a third party pitch, right? Everybody can pitch something else that's not themselves better than people that pitch themselves. Oh, absolutely genuine. Because people are really advocating and explaining why this idea, concept, product, person is the answer.
Conner Tidd: Obviously, I've got a bias to sell it to somebody in the company. But when it's your friend, your mom, your grandma, your uncle, or your cousin telling you about this, it's like, okay, I trust what they're saying. This is one of the fun parts about us being a food and a hardware product is the proof is right there. Take a bite. It tastes good.
Justine Reichman: And the other thing that I read that I thought was super interesting was the amount of water that you've saved by getting these products in people's homes. I read it was like 2.3 million liters or something?
Conner Tidd: Yeah, yeah. That itself is actually a little out of date, where we're well above the 10 million liters to age now. One of those things I joke like, that's the one thing I can live guilt free on here. It's like, I don't do this, don't advocate for it. But it's like, if I forget to turn off the tap while I'm brushing my teeth, okay, on balance, I think I've saved enough to take care of that.
Justine Reichman: I think so. And I think equally, I read the number of miles that you saved in people commuting, or working on this. And I'm sure that this number may be out of date too. But I think at that point when I did the research, or when it was brought to my attention, it was like 112 million food miles. Is that right?
Conner Tidd: That's a little out of date. We're about five times that now. Not the billion miles mark yet, but we're well on our way. We do have some of the larger farms that contribute to this like everybody makes it an impact. We've got some farms that are growing 3,000, 10,000, 100,000 plants in city centers, which can make a huge, huge impact for those communities.
Justine Reichman: And so on these farms that we're doing, that you would be doing inside people's homes or even in their gardens, my understanding is they're pesticide free, right? And so if that's the case, I'd love to hear the statistics around the number of produce that you're producing, or that are being produced by this that are pesticide free.
Conner Tidd: Yes. This is one of the really cool things about growing indoors, is there's no pests. The worst thing we like to say for your indoor garden at home are dogs and kids, because they both like to go outside, roll around in the grass and bring stuff back in. But because there's no soil in it, it's just water fed that takes away the main environment for pests to reproduce so you don't have that. Then the other thing is, because you got anywhere from 12 to 88 plants, which is what most people are growing inside, it's pretty controllable. And if you see something, spray it. Get some eco-friendly dish soap, hot water, and spray it on there, wipe it off, and you're good, because you might get aphids on there. But we don't use pesticides in 99.9% of situations here. Another big impact there, both on human health works, not necessarily you at the grocery store because it's all certified and cleaned off by then. But if you've ever worked on a farm applying a pesticide, often, you're out there with a backpack sprayer, you're spraying, and you got your mask on. But sometimes, that's leaking. Sometimes, your mask isn't great, and it is a real danger to human health, on the operator's side.
Justine Reichman: And I was gonna say, in all fairness, if I have to wear a mask to spray something, give me pause to see what the spray is that I'm spraying on the vegetables to eat the vegetables. The whole thing just gives me a little bit of pause when I think about this intellectually.
Conner Tidd: It gives you a second thought. I will say it is mostly safe for human consumption by the time it gets to you.
Justine Reichman: You put a mask on someone that spray, you're like, well, why can I eat this, but they can't? They have to have a mask on to spray it so it just makes you think. It makes you curious, and it makes you wonder, how is that okay? So I just want to go back, you and your partner, your co-founder, found this company after getting your masters. And was this your first foray into a startup?
Conner Tidd: I never viewed myself as the entrepreneurial type. I love the catered corporate lunches, the easy 9:00 to 5:00, and toss that all to the side into this.
Justine Reichman: What inspired you to make that change since you're so comfortable with that, and it seemed like something you liked? Being an entrepreneur, many times they say it's in your DNA, or you gotta have the bug or something. So it gave you the bug.
Conner Tidd: I hear that a lot. It's one of those pieces of advice. I don't know if that really resonates with me, but it grips the side of it. I always say when people ask me, should I get into entrepreneurship? I'm like, you gotta be really ready to go through the ups and downs, and there's a lot of highs and lows. And it's a battle. And for me, I think what pushed it was the passion. The drive to make a difference in the food system, to feed people. We're incredibly proud of some of the food security projects we've done with food banks across Canada and the US, to feed refugees on the Ukrainian border. For me, seeing that impact and seeing those changes has been the drive. For sure.
Justine Reichman: I can imagine, and you have control over it to some extent. You can drive where you're going to focus your energies, your efforts, and who you're going to help, which is so meaningful because you're choosing what is dear to you. So I'm curious, and I'm thinking about this. Many of the guests that tune in are either first time entrepreneurs, they're researchers. There's a whole list of people in health and wellness. But a lot of times, we have founders that are tuning in and similar to you. Maybe they got an idea from business school or something inspired them, but it's scary. It's scary to take that leap to go start a company. I'd love you to just sort of walk us through that. Because all of a sudden, you're going from getting a paycheck to now being responsible to be taking care of people at some point. In the early stages, it's really just very scrappy and gritty, and you're trying to make all things work, and you don't have that life vest that you do when you're at a company. So how did you come to resolve that for yourself? People that want to be founders, but maybe don't have that experience.
Conner Tidd: Absolutely. I was fortunate that coming out of grad school, I was used to living on student salary. It was like two years in grad school, you get back into the student mindset. But the biggest thing we always say is, you got to just get out there and do it. You're not going to know until you've done it and you've tried it. So we immediately started prototyping as fast as we could. And the first units, looking back, were kind of embarrassing. But you got to get out there and test the concept, test the idea, and start selling. Because of the amount of prospective entrepreneurs I talk to, I've got an idea, but I really want to refine it. I want to make it perfect. I want to make it. It's never going to be perfect. Even today, we say that our products aren't perfect. So get out there, start talking to people right away, and really start trying to sell your solution. And for a lot of people, they've got commitments where it's a family, a mortgage, can you start it on the side? Can you try and ramp it up slowly? And then the other big thing I say, we've taken venture capital money, we've done the fundraising, but that's not necessary for every single business out there. It's completely okay to have a small side hustle or a lifestyle business like, not everything needs to be millions or billions of dollars in value. I think real impact comes from a lot of people doing small things every single day.
“If we people can make small change, then we have a greater opportunity to feel success for ourselves and make an impact without feeling failure.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I couldn't agree more. Because I feel like when you try to do everything, you don't feel successful. You don't feel like you're doing anything well or good, or that's going to support our health, our wellness or the environment. But if you can focus on one thing, like for me, if I could focus on providing a platform so people like yourselves can showcase what they're working on, the impact of it, and how people can make change, small change, then we have a greater opportunity to feel success for ourselves, and also an impact without feeling failure to feel like you're failing. It's so easy to feel like there's so many things that we have to do, but it's daunting. Because if we recycle, this thing doesn't actually get recycled because it's too small or because there's food on it. So your statement really resonates with me. It resonates with me because I feel like my impact is this podcast and the ability to provide people with the information from people like yourselves that are changing the future of food, creating greater accessibility, and making healthy food available to people regardless of where they are.
Conner Tidd: Absolutely. You gotta kind of die there. If you can do one thing well, that is far more valuable than trying to do 10 things half right. Get your one thing. Do it well, and be proud of it. Be enthusiastic about it, and people are going to notice. They're going to notice, because there's a lot of stuff. I'm sure we all experience a day to day where there's certain things you're buying or you're seeing, and the people don't really believe and don't want to sell it. If you can be the one who believes in yourself, believes in what you're doing, then it's going to run off.
“If you can do one thing well, that is far more valuable than trying to do 10 things half right.” —Conner Tidd
Justine Reichman: So if you wanted to share with people how easy this is for them to implement, could you give us three things they need to know so that they're like, I can do this too.
Conner Tidd: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In terms of being an entrepreneur, in terms of growing their own food. What do you think?
Justine Reichman: Let's start with an entrepreneur. Then let's go with growing your own food.
Conner Tidd: In terms of starting to be an entrepreneur, it's as easy as, take the idea out of your head, put it on people, and put it out in the world. Talk to somebody about it. See what they have to say, and gauge the reaction. Readjust, get in and keep going. You got to get out there, take that first small risk. I find most things are a lot scarier. The idea of it is scarier than actually doing it. So take it a little bite-sized chunks. You don't need to do everything all at once, just do it little by little. And before you know it, you'll have that momentum rolling, and you'll have something started up.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, I think that that's great. For me, I think it's also celebrating the small wins. The small wins are equally as important as the big wins. It's the small wins that get you to the big wins.
Conner Tidd: Sometimes, it's hard to recognize those small wins, because you always feel like there's more coming or more to do. But you definitely gotta reflect on those wins and take them where and when they come.
Justine Reichman: I don't know your experience on this, but everybody makes mistakes. Are there any mistakes you've made that maybe, ultimately were a good thing. Because if you didn't make that mistake, you wouldn't have found the right answer.
Conner Tidd: 100%. We make mistakes all the time. Whether it's something simple like, you forget me to send a follow up email. Like, we made some pretty drastic mistakes like hardware selection, nothing dangerous, but things that have cost real dollars that have slowed us down. The mistake is valuable if you can accept that you've made it, know how to fix it, and reflect like, okay, what came out of this? Because a lot of the time, you get happy mistakes. Sometimes, like you said, I got the wrong part. I put it in here, but actually, that's given me an idea, and we kind of stumbled on something else. And that's how our commercial arm of the business was born. We were ripping apart some consumer units, and somebody looked at it and said, if I could have those parts and put 10 of them together, I would love that. I could have a whole ball that produces 10 times as much. I was like, man, why don't we do it? You do find those happy mistakes. I say I was ripping this apart because there was a malfunction in that machine that we sold them. So you get happy mistakes all the time.
“Mistakes are part of the journey. They can be frustrating, they can be expensive, they can be a time delay, but they can also end up leading you somewhere you might not have otherwise been or gone to.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: And I think the mistakes are really part of the journey. They can be frustrating, they can be expensive, they can be a time delay, but they can also end up leading you somewhere you might not have otherwise been or gone to.
Conner Tidd: Absolutely. I will say like, it's almost like a muscle. The more you work getting those mistakes, the easier they do become to deal with.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, I would agree, and they're not so scary anymore. So we're looking forward, and we're looking at your company, the industry, agriculture, all of it, accessibility to food. Can you maybe give or share with us what impact you hope to have on the future of food?
Conner Tidd: We want to make sure that everybody, no matter where you live, has access to their own source of fresh food, and that it's affordable. Like we said, we live through a time where the price of food came down for about 50 years straight. Then the last 10 years, it started going the other way really quickly. We're not a silver bullet solution to everything, but it's okay. How can we help stabilize the food system? And give it some resiliency where we want to make sure if there's a drought in California or hurricanes hit the East Coast, all of a sudden, that we're not able to eat lettuce. How can we add that resiliency? How can we make that food affordable for folks again, especially in those communities where it typically might not be available? Whether that's your urban jungle in downtown New York, or Kodiak, Alaska where there is no such thing as seasonal vegetables.
Justine Reichman: So Conner, as you built this company, you're growing it, it's super exciting. People listening to this episode, I can imagine them saying, okay, so how do I get this? What should I do next? Can you maybe talk to that person that's asking that, that's curious about how to get this going in their kitchen?
Conner Tidd: Yeah. So it's super easy. The gardens in your kitchen, they're about nine inches deep, so less than a foot deep. All you need is a single electrical outlet to plug them in, and then the water is self contained so you just fill it up with a jug or bring it to your tap. And we'd like to say, we've got people who used to kill cactus who are now successful growers. So it is built to be as easy as possible. And we ship directly to people's doors. It's fully assembled. You're up and running in under 15 minutes.
Justine Reichman: What's the price point for this?
Conner Tidd: Our gardens range from 499 up to, if you're building a full scale vertical farm, they can go into the millions of dollars for the commercial builds, but they start at 499. The really cool thing we do with all our consumer gardens is we give you all the supplies you need in the box when you buy it to grow the value of the garden back. So you'll grow at least that much value back in produce before you need to spend another dollar reordering.
Justine Reichman: You answered my next question. I said, Wow. I think I need one of these for my kitchen, so that I can perk, try it out, and then maybe, I think it would be really, really cool to be able to show people how they're doing this inside versus outside, and what it looks like. It seems like we can have an abundant amount of food in our kitchens that we can eat off of. And I'm super excited. So for those listeners that tuned in today that listened to the whole episode, whether they're watching it on the video cast or on YouTube, or when they're listening to it on Spotify, if they've tuned in and listened to the whole episode, is there any special discounts we can give to our loyal Essential Ingredients listeners?
Conner Tidd: Go to the website, www.justvertical.com, and at checkout, you can put in the code essential, and that will give you 10% off the entire order, no matter how big it is.
Justine Reichman: Great. Thank you so much for joining me today. I know that it was an education for me, an ability to learn how to bring that garden inside and make those vegetables accessible even when living in an urban jungle because mine is right outside my back door. But growing up in New York, I don't see how easy it is there. And now, with this solution, with Just Vertical, it seems like everyone gets to be a gardener. Everyone can eat locally sourced, healthy, pesticide free, organic fruits and vegetables.
Conner Tidd: Great to be here. We love telling the story and just getting the word out that people do have a way to grow their own food.
Justine Reichman: I want to thank our listeners and our viewers for tuning in today. It's always great to be surrounded by my friends and my community to hear what our founders are sharing with us so that we can make more informed choices. If you have additional questions or you want to learn more, Conner, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Conner Tidd: Check out all our info at www.justvertical.com. If you want to see a commercial solution, it's at commercial.justvertical.com. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Shoot me an email at (inaudible)@justvertical.com. We're always happy to chat, connect with like minded folks and work our way to a better world together.
Justine Reichman: And you know what I want to hear? I want to hear from those folks that tuned in today that go and get the vertical farm. And I want to hear how it's working for you. I want to hear, is it easy? Is it easy to set up? How long does it take for everything to grow? And we want to hear from you so that we can share those stories here, so people can better understand the vertical garden wherever you live. Thanks again. Conner.
