How the Mayo Clinic is bringing new meaning to ‘locally grown’

It’s nearly impossible to find produce that’s more “locally grown” than the lettuces, microgreens, herbs and more being cultivated at the Mayo Clinic’s Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center Café in Rochester, Minnesota. 

The center launched a “hydroponic micro-farm” onsite earlier this year and has since harvested about 100 pounds of ultra-fresh vegetables for use in the café. 

“It’s hard to say even if ‘locally grown’ is the right word for it,” said David Bredesen, Morrison Healthcare’s foodservice manager at Mayo. “It’s right on the other side of my wall right now.”

Not only is the on-site mini farm able to grow fresh, delicious food, it appears to be boosting traffic to the café, Bredesen said. 

The farm is located right behind the café’s entrée station, with its bright, eye-catching grow lights. Produce from the grow station is showing up on sandwiches, salads and bowls. 

“Foot traffic’s been growing at a steady rate,” he said. “This really is a nice, bright addition to the café. It kind of brings a little bit of a conversational piece, too.”

The hydroponic operation (in which plants grow in a water-based nutrient solution, rather than soil) dovetails with the mission of the Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center, which features a fitness center, pools, steam rooms and more. The café serves about 150 guests each day. 

“We pride ourselves on offering some fresh and healthy-for-you offerings,” he said. “It just kind of fits what we do. It’s always fresh. We try to not bring in any frozen or pre-cooked product. We do a lot of our own production here.”

Seedlings sprout in the hydroponic micro-farm at the Mayo Clinic. | Photo courtesy: Morrison Healthcare

Unlike traditional gardens, the micro-farm benefits from some high-tech upgrades, making it fairly easy for Mayo’s “farmers” to tend to their crops. Seeds can be selected from a catalogue, with the packets scanned into an app. The app explains how long until each can be harvested, and it regulates how much water is needed to grow each variety, while monitoring the pH.

“It’s a very nice way of growing something where it’s not a lot of burden on the person doing it,” he said. “The farm will prompt me, ‘Hey, it’s time to do a deep clean.” So I go through the process, and the app will tell me what steps should be followed in what particular order.”

With hydroponic growing, safety and sanitation are particularly important, to avoid introducing any contaminants into the growing solution. The farm is connected to a water filter. 

It’s likely Mayo will expand the micro-farms to other parts of its sprawling Rochester campus, as well as to other Mayo campuses around the country, said L.J. Gearhart, Morrison’s Robotics, Automation, & Innovation Integration manager.

“What we really wanted to see was the proof of concept,” Gearhart said. “And this is it. We’ve seen that return on investment. It’s not necessarily about the dollars and cents for us. It’s really the experience and the quality, and promoting local, and the ability to share that through culinary innovation.”