Scaling with Purpose: How Local Bounti Is Building a More Durable CEA Business
As Chief Commercial Officer of Local Bounti, Dane Almassy brings more than two decades of experience across consumer packaged goods, fresh food, and agriculture to one of the most closely watched companies in controlled environment agriculture. In this month’s Indoor Ag-Conversations Q&A, Almassy shares why he joined Local Bounti at a pivotal moment for the industry, how the company is approaching responsible, demand-driven growth, and what it takes to build a durable CEA business in today’s evolving market. Almassy will expand on these themes as a panelist on the opening morning keynote, CEA Alliance Insights on the State of the Industry, and in the breakout session Lettuce Without Limits: Scaling Responsibly in a Saturated Market at Indoor Ag-Con this February.
You joined Local Bounti at a pivotal moment for the company and the industry. What attracted you to this role, and what about Local Bounti’s approach made you feel this was the right time to step in?
I joined Local Bounti because I saw rare alignment between a bold mission—delivering the freshest, locally grown produce while drastically reducing food waste—and the proprietary technology to achieve our strategic vision of becoming the #1 player in CEA. Our Stack & Flow® technology is a true differentiator, allowing us to triple production in Georgia with higher yields, deliver superior quality, and extended shelf life that the market demands. What really excited me was the breadth of our portfolio—from Living Heads to Family Salad Kits—and our ability to pivot packaging to meet specific consumer needs. Backed by a strong investor base that understands responsible, sustainable scaling, the foundation is incredibly solid. But ultimately, the people sealed the deal. After meeting CEO Kathleen Valiasek and her team, I was blown away by the depth of talent and the ‘family’ culture they’ve built. What’s unique here at Local Bounti is the importance of our facility staff – we like to say we have an inverted organizational chart, where those folks on the front-lines are the most important employees of Local Bounti. It is this empowerment at the facility level that has allowed us to make such great strides in productivity improvement. That blend of intelligence and camaraderie fuels my passion every day and gives me confidence in our long-term success.
You’ve spent much of your career in consumer packaged goods and fresh food. Looking at indoor agriculture today, what feels familiar—and what feels fundamentally different—from the industries you’ve worked in before?
The fundamentals haven’t changed. Whether you’re selling a beverage or a salad kit, consumers still expect quality, consistency, and a brand they can trust. The same goes for our retail partners—on-time, in-full delivery with the highest quality remains the gold standard. We see a long-term opportunity to reshape consumers’ perception of value in the produce aisle – we think we are delivering exceptional value in terms of product quality and as consumers come to better appreciate how this exceeds the status quo within conventionally-grown greens, we can drive greater volumes at attractive prices that will make this new era of CEA accessible to everyone.
But the ‘how’ is fundamentally different. In traditional CPG, you’re managing stable, predictable inventory. With indoor ag, we’re dealing with a living product where yield and shelf life are the ultimate differentiators. That’s the daily challenge. For me, the real shift is the ‘why.’ I’m grateful for my foundational training in the soft drink industry, but my perspective changed after having children—you can’t feed a growing population with soda, but you can make a life-changing impact through sustainable agriculture.
There’s a tangible passion in this category that’s different. From our growers to the families picking our products up at the grocery store, there’s a deep, personal relationship with the food we put on the table. We aren’t just moving units—we’re nourishing people. That sense of purpose creates a culture of care and intensity you don’t find in traditional CPG.
Local Bounti has taken a measured approach to scaling, even as demand for indoor-grown leafy greens continues to evolve. From your seat, what does “responsible growth” look like at Local Bounti, and how do you decide when—and where—to grow next?
Responsible growth means expansion should be demand-driven, not capacity-driven. In response to growing demand, we identified an opportunity to enhance our facility in Georgia to create additional capacity. We added our “Stack” phase to what was a traditional greenhouse facility, which resulted in a tripling of our run-rate production as compared to steady-state in the prior year period. This experience was a scaled case study in what’s possible with our Stack & Flow® Technology and put us in position to complete two fully integrated state-of-the-art facilities in Texas and Washington over the past 18 months. This is the power of the technology at Local Bounti – it provides us with the flexibility to scale in direct response to a retail environment that now views CEA as essential infrastructure. By aligning production ramps with long-term customer needs, we strive to ensure every square foot we add contributes to our path toward achieving positive adjusted EBITDA in 2026. It’s about being disciplined with our capital while being aggressive where the market wants us to be.
Retailers today are looking for more than just supply—they want consistency, flexibility, and long-term partners. How has Local Bounti’s hybrid growing model and product mix shaped the kinds of retail conversations you’re having now compared to a few years ago?
A few years ago, retail conversations were about ‘if’ CEA could work. Today, the attitude has shifted to an absolute ‘need’ for what we provide – in fact, we are hearing directly from retailers that they have tripled their allocation to the category for this upcoming year. Our hybrid Stack & Flow® technology has fundamentally changed those discussions as it is designed to solve the three biggest pain points for retailers: supply reliability, consistency and shrink. By combining the best of vertical and greenhouse growing, we’re delivering significantly higher quality plants with shelf life often double or triple that of our field grown competition. Retailers realize they need a partner with a durable and stable platform who can offer the flexibility of a broad product mix—from living heads to salad kits—with a reliable, local supply chain. When we show them our technology translates directly into less waste on their shelves and a better experience for their customers at home, the partnership moves from trial to long-term strategic necessity.
As Local Bounti works toward sustainable profitability, what lessons from the company’s recent operational and commercial progress would you share with other CEA operators trying to build durable, resilient businesses?
The biggest lesson: you have to go slow to go fast. Building a durable business requires getting the foundation right before you try to scale. That starts with the right people in the right seats at the right time, ensuring your team’s expertise matches your current stage of growth. It’s also critical to build specifically for current and future customer needs without over-engineering your systems. I think this is something that our co-founders and CEO Kathleen Valiasek saw early and have instilled into our culture. We are constantly making trade-offs to maximize the opportunities in front of us while preparing for the future, and that means being thoughtful with how we are deploying resources. While this industry often feels like a ‘tech’ business in trade conversations, we have to remember that at our core, we’re still farmers. Success comes when you treat technology as a tool to support the biology, rather than letting tech dictate the farm. If we can keep that perspective intact and match it with prudent financial planning, the future will look extremely bright for Local Bounti.
Learn more about Local Bounti here and make plans now to join us at Indoor Ag-Con, February 11-12, 2026 at the Westgate Las Vegas!
Innovation and sustainability are the cornerstones of UP Vertical Farms. We design, build, and operate our plant factories in a turnkey fashion, which enables us to customize and build exactly what is needed for a fraction of the cost. Our touchless technology in CEA is a game-changer in the farming industry — it automates key parameters for irrigation, seeding, growing, harvesting, and packaging, in turn minimizing human intervention and reducing labor costs while also maintaining hygiene. This ecosystem technology helps us optimize resource use, reduce waste, and achieve consistent, high-quality yields all year round with 99% less water, nutrient fertilizers, and land compared to traditional farming.
This not only makes our operations more sustainable in our 12-level industrial growing racks, but also more resilient to climate change, inflation, and supply chain disruptions. As a result, it allows us to significantly contribute to food security especially since our enclosed warehouse structures are closer to the regions we want to feed. Furthermore, deploying just -in-time production across our racks allows us to provide fresh, nutritious produce with longer shelf life to the market daily while reducing waste from overproduction. Therefore, our model is not just about sustainability; it’s also designed for profitability. Focusing on high density production, and by reducing overhead costs and waste, and ensuring a constant, predictable output, we’re able to offer competitive prices to consumers, and the market can’t seem to get enough of our crunchy tasty lettuce varieties and salad kits.
Partnerships have been crucial to our success, both in terms of scaling and understanding market needs. Oppy, in the early stages, provided us with invaluable insights into the retail and distribution world, helping us refine our products and processes. Their experience in logistics and relationships with retailers allowed us to hit the ground running and reach a wider audience. Oppy understood our vision and the market opportunity from the very beginning, and they have been a great partner to align with to capture the increasing indoor grown leafy greens market in North America.
Working with major retailers like Costco has also been a game changer. It’s given us the ability to scale our operations and ensure that we can meet consumer demand for fresh, sustainable produce at a competitive price. These partnerships push us to continuously improve our production systems and ensure quality control at every level, from farm to store shelf. Meeting and surpassing their stringent quality and value requirements has allowed us to grow our programs and become a trusted supplier all year round – not all vertical farms can currently fulfill both.
Expanding into provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba has been an exciting milestone. Our strategy for scaling is rooted in replicating our core operational model but adapting it to the unique needs and taste profiles of each region. Our company has recently rolled out 12 tasty salad kit offerings which pair perfectly with our crunchy baby leafy greens. Providing this many unique and market classic salad kits by a Canadian company to retail stores is another market first which we are proud of. Canadians want to eat more locally grown, fresh, long-lasting, and pesticide-free vegetables, naturally making our products highly successful and in demand. We’ve built a strong understanding of consumer preferences, which allows us to tailor our salad kit offerings to retail partners across each province.
As for entering the U.S. market, our vision and strategy is quite long term as the American consumers are also searching for the high quality and value propositions which our products offer. We also plan to leverage the scalability of our touchless technology and our proven track record in Canada to demonstrate the viability of vertical farming as a solution to food security challenges in the U.S. We are in the process of establishing strategic partnerships with American retailers with the intention to eventually have local production facilities across certain states. This expansion will in part be fueled and accelerated by the capital raise that we are currently completing.
Freight Farms has seen incredible growth in the adoption of their technology in the Caribbean islands, many of which face challenges similar to the Cayman Islands’. From Turks and Caicos to the Bahamas, islanders are discovering the power of controlled environment agriculture to revolutionize food quality and access for themselves and their communities.
We differentiate ourselves from Shipping Container Farm businesses (
This process has inspired our vision to build a large scale production farm with groups of grow rooms that work together to grow a variety of crops under one roof – this might mean a warehouse farm with grow rooms built out and/or continuing to utilize shipping containers for this purpose (indoor or outdoors – or a combo of both). We are in the early stages of raising a Series A to build 15-20 grow rooms under one room with the addition of automation to begin to fulfill the demand in South Florida. 
Cheryl and I started in one shipping container farm that we built ourselves (with the designer) – and did it all ourselves for the first 2 years – we acquired hands-on experience growing as well as all the different aspects involved with growing and distributing food; integrated technology, tested different crops, sales, marketing, distribution, accounting, packaging, food safety, etc. Most importantly, we were able to test the market which is the framework for building the business. 
When we started Imagine Farms we appreciated the positive attributes that come with growing in a controlled environment; significant decrease in water usage when compared to field farming, growing without pesticides, and the positive aspects of ‘farm to table’ as a service. Now, it is evident that natural resources are scarce – specifically water, arable farmland and access to minerals for fertilizer. 
We are facing a grain shortage that will drive up the cost of basic food and other commodities because of the war in Ukraine, while our physical resilience and mental health depend on access to fresh, healthy food. The more intelligent, motivated and passionate individuals exposed to the industry, the better. Shipping container farms placed in schools, universities, public programs and start-ups might be the greatest vehicle to accelerate this industry.