As you may have read in our previous post, we are launching a Barnraiser Campaign! Some folks are wondering why an established business is looking for crowfunding, so here's a little bit about our business and how we are growing:
The Seattle Urban Farm Company’s design/installation/maintenance branch has been operating for over 7 years! We are very proud to say it has been profitable and seen over 20% growth each year for the past 4 years!
This past year we decided to expand our vision of urban agriculture to include a 4-acre production farm called Urban Fringe Farm located just 13 miles from downtown Seattle. This farm provides produce for four Seattle restaurants and one local organic dog-food company.
The Urban Fringe Farm has just completed its first season of operation. During this first season we hired 5 new employees and grew enough produce that the restaurants were even able to donate over 350lbs of produce to local food banks! Although it was a successful year, it is still in its startup phase, and has very significant infrastructure needs. Thus far, we’ve funded the start up costs for the Fringe Farm through profits from the design/installation/maintenance portion of the business.
For the Fringe Farm to be the best that it can be, we’re looking for additional funds to expand propagation and production greenhouse space and bring our wash and pack operation to the standards required by the soon to be enacted FSMA law (Food Safety Modernization Act). We believe that the Fringe Farm is an important and unique component to our mission to expand sustainable food production in urban areas, and has the potential to be a guiding business model for many small-scale produce farmers.
