Urban Farm DB
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Building interiorInactiveSince 2017

Smallhold

Brooklyn, United States · Operator: Smallhold Inc.

Overview

A Brooklyn indoor-mushroom startup; filed Chapter 11 in February 2024, closed several company farms and pivoted to a partner-farm model.

Citizen participation

Company-run mushroom cultivation; no public participation.

Operating model

B2B commercial model cultivating specialty mushrooms in controlled indoor environments for retail and foodservice.

Impact

A drought in venture funding and a stagnant fresh-mushroom market made fundraising hard and sustaining all farms unfeasible; it closed its Texas, New York and California farms. Lesson: indoor farming's high operating costs collapse quickly when a stagnant market meets a funding drought.

Crops

  • mushrooms

Scale

Filed Chapter 11 in February 2024; closed its Texas, New York and California farms before emerging as a partner-farm network

Sources(2)

Related cases

Smallhold — Urban Farm DB