Trace the Story of Your Greens With Square Roots’ Transparency Timeline

Setting the Standard for Transparency in Food

Consumers around the world are demanding greater transparency into where and how their food is grown—and for good reason. As stories of e.coli outbreaks, breakdowns in the supply chain and mistreated farm workers continue to mount, so does our distrust in the food industry.

In a recent study by Response Media, 99% of people said they want transparency in their fresh food products. In an additional study by Label Insights, 67% said they believe it’s the brand’s responsibility to provide this information. We agree—consumers deserve to know more.

We installed floor-to-ceiling windows in our very first farms—so that everyone could see the way we grow food—to demonstrate that transparency was embedded into the core of Square Roots farming practices. And we’ve also developed a digital way for consumers everywhere to see exactly where and how their food is grown—right on their mobile phone.

The Square Roots’ Transparency Timeline traces the path of our produce from seed to store, and provides information such as where we sourced the seeds, who did the farming, and what date it was harvested. By simply scanning a QR code or typing in the lot number found on every package of Square Roots fresh produce, you are able to see the complete story of your food.

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Transparency, Technology, and Trust

Unfortunately, many of us are at the mercy of industrial food—a system optimized for transportation, not for taste, nutrition, or customer transparency. Products are often shipped in from thousands of miles away, taking weeks or even months to get to the store. There is little information on where exactly the food comes from, how it was grown, or who grew it. There is very little transparency, and it’s hard for consumers to trust that food.

Tech-enabled indoor farming, as a data-driven industry, has many advantages when it comes to tracking and tracing the supply of your food. Square Roots takes it even further by putting that data in your hands. Our customers can enjoy our fresh products not just because they taste great and are grown locally, but also because the Transparency Timeline provides the comfort and confidence of seeing all the data about how the food was grown and who grew it.

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Surfacing Data From Inside Our Farms

The data on the Transparency Timeline comes from The Square Roots Farmer Toolbelt—our proprietary software Operating System, which works in harmony with our farmers as it monitors and controls every aspect of the growing process. The Farmer Toolbelt captures data from seed to shelf, and surrounds our farmers with real time insights and analytical tools to help them grow the best food possible using the fewest resources possible.

As our cloud-connected network of indoor farms expands, and we collect exponentially more data points, our system learns faster and helps our farmers even more. And all the time, we’re able to provide complete transparency and traceability of our produce.

In future versions, based on customer feedback and team-wide collaboration, we can add many more elements to the story of your food. This could include data about the specific climate that your food was grown in, all the way to recycling information relevant to the packaging on the product you just bought. If you would like to see any other information added to the timeline, let us know!