Some businesses are born of sheer entrepreneurial grit, determination and competitive drive. Others are driven by innovation, sometimes of the accidental kind.
In the case of the Young Urban Farmers, sowing the seeds of success has involved all of those elements – not to mention a healthy collection of actual vegetable seeds as founder Christopher Wong and his two partners seek to change the way urbanites eat, one backyard garden at a time.
The Toronto-based start-up was founded last year with a mission to not only turn a healthy profit, but to also encourage sustainable practices in households across the city.
“The three of us all had an entrepreneurial passion, we knew we wanted to run our own business and we were brainstorming different ideas,” Mr. Wong, 24, recalls.
“We saw there was a real trend towards growing food locally and reducing the local environmental footprint. We thought there was an underserved market in terms of people looking to set up vegetable gardens but not knowing where to start.”
Mr. Wong and his fellow Queen’s University commerce graduates, Nancy Huynh and Jing Loh, invested about $5,000 of their own money and launched Young Urban Farmers in early 2009.
Young Urban Farmers co-founders Chris Wong and Nancy Huynh with pre-fabricated 1.2-metre square wooden garden boxes.
After engaging in door-to-door direct marketing and leveraging social networking tools such as Facebook to garner attention, the company began installing its pre-fabricated 1.2-metre square wooden garden boxes in clients’ backyards across downtown Toronto. Using their own blend of soil, the company plants and manages the growth of whatever combination of fruits and vegetables a client desires – everything from tomatoes and strawberries, to carrots and lettuce.
Full-service packages start at about $695 per growing season; $295 for customers who prefer to manage and harvest their backyard garden themselves after the initial installation. Young Urban Farmers’ cost to set up each garden box runs between $100 and $150 in materials.
The firm’s greatest obstacle is to success comes with situating the raised garden boxes in key backyard locations that enjoy enough sunlight for consistent growth. It’s the reason why the company also offers a free consultation to ensure every backyard microclimate is suitable for one of its gardens.
So how, exactly, do three commerce grads acquire the knowledge necessary to master outdoor gardening and ensure solid backyard harvests?
“Jing, Nancy and myself had all tended to our parents’ gardens as children and we were able to draw on those skills,” Mr. Wong explains. “We also went to local public libraries and garden centres to speak to experts and consult books on vegetable gardening and learn about the technical side of things like microclimates in Toronto, as well as plant-specific care.”
Perhaps the most important resource, both as mentor and supplier, was Mr. Wong’s aunt who operates a greenhouse in Newmarket, Ont., a source of many of Young Urban Farmers’ seeds and transplants.
Mr. Wong says that in its first year, the company managed to break even and the founders are hoping to turn a profit this season – they managed to double their client list to more than 50 households for this year’s growing season, stretching from May to October.
They’ve also expanded their product offering, selling ‘Earth boxes’ to clients hoping to grow fruits and vegetables on rooftops or balconies, a worm composter, as well as a shitake mushroom log that promises to yield several fungus harvests per summer.
Mr. Wong currently has granted one franchise in the Greater Toronto Area – he chose to forego a franchise fee for a 17-per-cent annual royalty to offer greater accessibility to other sustainability-minded entrepreneurs – and is actively seeking to add to that roster.
Franchisee Valentin Li says that it was Young Urban Farmers’ sustainability model that was the biggest factor in his choice to sign on with the firm.
