Who We Are

Local Grown Salads is a grower and packager of leafy green salads. We have designed and patented the technologies we use to grow and package our products, making us the only fully integrated indoor/vertical growing company in the world.

Growing, harvesting, and packaging in the same facility means our salads maximize Taste, Nutrition, Food Safety, and are environmentally sustainable. Our facilities will be located within 20 minutes of the dinner plate.

Our humble beginnings: A look at our original growing units, made of wood and plastic.
Zale, with a prototype Growing Unit.

Feeding the World, Safely and Sustainably

Our goal is to feed the world, and put a salad on your dinner plate that was harvested that very morning. Our Growing Centre Technology is how we make it happen. Each Growing Centre consists of Growing Rooms surrounding an Integrated Packaging Room. This layout enables a vegetable to be harvested and packaged within 15 minutes and delivered locally within the hour.

Isolating Growing Centres provides a new level of food safety, significantly reducing the volume of vegetables that can be cross contaminated. Within the Growing Centre, the Growing Rooms and Growing Units further increase the food safety.

The technological magic of our Growing Centres are the Growing Units in each Growing Room.

A Growing Unit is tuned to the specific needs of the specific vegetable variety being grown in it. Kales in one Unit receive what they need, while lettuces, basils and strawberries in other Units get what they need. The Growing Unit provides the exact amount of light, water, and air temperature and humidity needed. The nutrition is timed to where the plant is in its growth cycle, ensuring that the Growing Units provide the maximum nutrition that can be achieved by that cultivar.

Best of all, our Growing Units completely recycle all the water and nutrients put into them, creating a nearly closed-loop system and making them environmentally sustainable.

Vegetable farming is shifting to local, indoor and vertical over the next 10 years, and Local Grown Salads is a leader in that shift.

President - Zale Tabakman

Local Grown Salads is led by Zale Tabakman, an entrepreneur, public speaker and business educator. After years of promoting the pairing of healthy lifestyles and a strong work ethic, Zale decided that it was a time to make a larger impact, by creating a business that provides people with the opportunity to live and eat healthier. To that end, he started Local Grown Salads, to reduce the carbon footprint of agricultural industries, make it easier to produce and purchase locally, and grow healthier, more nutritious vegetables. Zale also designed both the business model and the Patent Pending growing technology for Local Grown Salads.

For Zale, Local Grown Salads is a personal quest. He wants to feed the world delicious healthy food. This desire comes from being an active father of five children, and grandfather of four, who takes his commitment to healthy living so seriously, his preferred mode of transportation is his bicycle.

Zale developed his skills as an entrepreneur, teacher and consultant. He has been teaching Cash Flow and Sales to new Canadians for several years in a government sponsored entrepreneurial program. He taught young people for five years at YMCA Youth Entrepreneurial Program. In 1997, he won the North York Entrepreneur of the Year award. Zale maintains a boutique SR & ED consulting practice that helps his clients receive tax credits from the CRA to fund their Research and Development work. His clients include a unique printing house, a goat equipment manufacturer, a major food manufacturer, and engineering and software companies. Zale has a degree in Computer Science from the University of Western Ontario.

Find Zale on LinkedIn

Zale Tabakman with Kale

Science

Our self-contained vertical farming units run grow vegetables through a process call Oxyfertigation. Learn more about it here!

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Contact Us

Have a comment or question for us? Want to visit our development facility? Then click here!

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