Fork Farms founder and CEO Alex Tyink built his Green Bay, Wisconsin-based company on a deceptively simple idea: that growing your own food changes your relationship with it — and that everyone, from a third-grader in Milwaukee to a food pantry volunteer in rural Wisconsin, deserves the chance to experience that. In this month’s Indoor Ag-Conversations Q&A, Tyink talks about where hydroponic growing is gaining real traction in schools, healthcare systems, and hunger relief organizations; what the landmark Clock Tower Farms project signals about the future of food-as-infrastructure; and what it really takes to scale a mission-driven company without losing the thread.
Fork Farms has installed Flex Farms in schools, food banks, healthcare systems, and commercial operations — a pretty wide footprint. When you look across all those use cases, where are you seeing the most momentum right now, and what’s driving it?
We are seeing momentum across all of those areas, but the common thread is clear: institutions are starting to understand that fresh food access is infrastructure.
Fork Farms has partnered with more than 5,000 institutions across 50 states and 22 countries. Together, those partners can grow nearly 2 million pounds of fresh food annually, and many are growing food for under $1 per pound. This matters because it means local food production can be practical, measurable, and economically competitive.
Schools have been especially powerful because they bring education, nutrition, and community impact together in one place. When students plant, grow, harvest, and taste food themselves, fresh greens become less abstract. They understand where food comes from. They take ownership in the process. Eating becomes exciting, because they fostered every step of growing their meal. From planting to care, to harvesting and plating the food for their families and friends, they got to be part of the process, which is different in how today’s food systems operate.
That matters because many children receive some of their most nutritious meals at school. When a school can grow fresh food on-site, use it in the cafeteria, connect it to curriculum, and sometimes even send food home with families, the impact becomes very real.
Milwaukee Public Schools is a strong example. The district has 86 Flex Farms from Fork Farms, more than any other district in the world. Teachers use them as hands-on learning labs, and the farms also support fresh food access for students during meal times. In early 2026, MPS commissioned a 60-day indoor air quality study authored by a Certified Industrial Hygienist. Classrooms with hydroponic farms outperformed plant-free classrooms on key measures, including lower CO₂, lower formaldehyde, and healthier winter humidity. In that case, the farms are supporting learning, nutrition, and the classroom environment.
At the same time, the momentum is bigger than schools. Food banks are looking for more reliable ways to provide fresh, nutrient-dense food. Healthcare systems are connecting food to wellness and illness prevention. Corporate and commercial partners are asking how their buildings, teams, and resources can create measurable community value.
The Wisconsin PureGrow Project is a good example of that intersection. Fork Farms partnered with the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point at Marshfield and Sanford Health Marshfield Clinic Health System to create a model that supports students, patients, and staff at the same time. The facility operates six Flex Acre™ systems and two Flex Micros™ systems, and grows more than 100 pounds of fresh food weekly. Independent lab analysis found that the romaine grown there exceeded benchmarks for nutrient density and purity, including 83 percent more magnesium and 65 percent more calcium than conventionally grown lettuce.
The momentum is not coming from one vertical alone. It is coming from a broader shift in how institutions think about food. Organizations are no longer just asking, “Can we grow food indoors?” They are asking, “How can we use this technology to solve a real problem in our community?” That is exactly the kind of future we built Fork Farms to help create.
The recently announced Clock Tower Farms project with Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin and Rockwell Automation is a big deal: 72 Flex Acre systems, 200,000 pounds of projected annual production, automation technology layered on top of your growing systems. What does a partnership like that teach you about what’s possible when hydroponic growing gets paired with industrial-scale automation?
Clock Tower Farms shows what becomes possible when fresh food production is treated as infrastructure and as a serious solution to hunger relief.
The farm is located on the fourth floor of Rockwell Automation’s Milwaukee headquarters. It takes unused office space and turns it into a year-round indoor farm serving the local community. Inside that space, 72 Flex Acre™ systems from Fork Farms will operate in a fully controlled growing environment with the capacity to produce up to 200,000 pounds of fresh produce annually. That is enough for a side salad for more than 38,500 people every week.
What makes the project so important is the combination of strengths. Fork Farms brings the hydroponic growing systems. Rockwell brings industrial-scale automation. Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin brings the distribution network to get fresh food to the people who need it most. Together, that creates a model where food can be grown reliably, locally, and at a meaningful scale inside an existing building.
It also shows that the impact goes well beyond production volume. Clock Tower Farms saves 5.9 million gallons of water compared to traditional farming, and conserves the equivalent of 5.5 acres of conventional farmland.
What it teaches me is that the future of hydroponic growing is not just about better farms. It is about better systems. When growing technology, automation, and community partners are aligned, we can make fresh food production more predictable, efficient, and resilient. That is how we move from small demonstrations of what is possible to scalable food infrastructure that can serve communities in a lasting way.
A lot of your installations are in the hands of people who aren’t professional growers — teachers, food pantry volunteers, hospital dining staff. How did Fork Farms design the Flex Farm experience to work for that audience, and what does “ease of use” actually look like in practice?
We designed the Flex Farm experience around a simple belief: everyone can be a farmer.
You do not need to be a professional farmer, horticulturist, or controlled-environment agriculture expert to participate in the food system. At Fork Farms, we exist to democratize access to fresh food by making local food production practical at scale. We do that by growing farmers. By farmers, I mean teachers, food service teams, pantry volunteers, healthcare staff, students, residents, community members and more.
That belief shaped the design from the beginning. The system had to fit into real buildings, work with existing teams, and become part of a simple daily or weekly rhythm. Ease of use looks like clear setup, straightforward planting and harvesting, simple maintenance, and ongoing support so people feel confident instead of overwhelmed.
It also had to be modular. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Some partners start with a single Flex Farm in a classroom, cafeteria, or dining space. Others build larger programs across a district, healthcare system, corporate campus, or community food network. And then you have projects like Clock Tower Farms with Rockwell Automation and Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, where the same core idea scales into a much larger food production model.
That range matters because one of the barriers to entry in this space has always been the belief that indoor agriculture is either too technical, too expensive, or too difficult to operate. We are trying to teach the market that local food production can start small, grow over time, and scale in a way that fits the space, budget, and goals of each partner.
Food access is not only about putting fresh food in more places. It is about making the growing process workable for the people already serving their communities. That is why the farm itself is only one part of what we provide.
Fork Farms supports partners well beyond installation. We help with launch support, early crop success checks, programming, K-12 and higher education curriculum, environmental impact data, communications tools, and ongoing farm management support. We also help partners build practical programs around the farm, from local food integration and plant-forward menu planning to community giving models, STEM education, wellness programming, marketing, storytelling, and impact reporting.
The goal is to give people the tools, systems, and confidence to grow fresh food right where it is needed. Instead of food traveling 1,500 miles by truck, it can move from seed to plate just steps from where it is grown, served, and shared. That is what makes the experience powerful. It invites more people into the solution.
Fork Farms leads with a strong mission around food access and community impact — but you’re also a technology company growing a commercial business. How do those two sides of the organization reinforce each other, and how does mission shape the decisions you make on the business side?
At Fork Farms, we believe everyone deserves access to fresh, nutritious food, no matter their zip code. We believe food should be grown more locally, sustainably, and equitably. We believe food can be a powerful part of health and wellness. And we believe nutrition security means more than calories. It means access to healthy, nutrient-rich food that supports long-term well-being.
For us, the mission and the business are not separate. They have to reinforce each other.
Fork Farms exists to make fresh food more accessible, and technology is how we make that practical at scale. The mission gives us the reason to build. The business gives us the structure, discipline, and reach to make the impact bigger than any one installation, pilot, or grant-funded program.
That shapes how we make decisions. We are always asking: Does this make growing food easier? Does it make fresh food more affordable? Can it work in real institutions with real people, real budgets, and real operational constraints? Can it create measurable value for the community and for the organization investing in it?
Being mission-driven does not mean ignoring business fundamentals. It means being clear about which fundamentals matter. We care about cost per pound, labor efficiency, reliability, training, customer success, and long-term program sustainability because those are the things that allow the mission to last. If a school, hospital, food bank, or corporate partner cannot operate the program successfully over time, then we have not truly solved the problem.
The technology side of the company helps us make fresh food production easier, more consistent, and more scalable. The commercial side helps us reach more partners, improve the product, support customers better, and build models that can be repeated across communities. And the mission keeps us focused on the outcome that matters most: more people having access to fresh, nutritious food close to where they live, learn, work, heal, and gather.
The strongest impact happens when the model works for everyone: the school, the hospital, the food bank, the corporate partner, the food service team, and the people eating the food. That is the balance we are trying to build every day.
Fork Farms has been named to the Inc. 5000 list three consecutive years, ranking #1 in Agriculture and Natural Resources. Growth at that pace usually comes with hard lessons. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about scaling a mission-driven company without losing what made it work in the first place?
The biggest lesson is that you have to scale the system without diluting the purpose.
Fast growth is exciting, but it also tests what is real. It forces you to get clearer about what you believe, who you serve, and what you are willing to say no to. For us, the center has always been food access. The company can grow, the technology can evolve, and the partnerships can get larger, but the reason we exist has to stay clear.
As we scale, we have had to build more discipline into the business: stronger teams, better processes, clearer data, more reliable support, and more repeatable customer models. That structure matters because it allows the mission to move beyond passion and become something that can last.
The hard part is making sure scale does not turn the work into a transaction. A Flex Farm in a classroom, food pantry, hospital, or corporate campus still has to feel connected to people. It still has to create ownership, confidence, and real access to fresh food.
The most important thing I have learned is that mission-driven growth requires both heart and rigor. You need the purpose that brought people to the table in the first place, and you need the operational discipline to keep delivering on that purpose at scale. That balance is what protects what made Fork Farms work in the first place.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
Fork Farms is a food access technology company helping build the future of fresh food infrastructure. Headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Fork Farms develops indoor hydroponic farming technology and digital tools that enable schools, healthcare systems, businesses, and communities to grow fresh, nutritious food year-round in almost any environment. Its solutions help organizations expand food access, support wellness, and strengthen local food resilience by bringing food production closer to where people live, learn, work, and heal. For the third consecutive year, Fork Farms was named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies and ranked #1 in the Agriculture and Natural Resources sector. To learn more, visit ForkFarms.com.
