FarmShelf: A Groundbreaking Technology for Indoor Farming

This episode discusses the innovative indoor farming technology developed by FarmShelf, designed to grow leafy greens and herbs efficiently within homes or restaurant kitchens.

1. FarmShelf uses hydroponics to grow produce without soil, which simplifies the cultivation process and reduces pest and soil management issues.
2. The system is equipped with LED lighting, sensors, and cameras to monitor and optimize plant growth, ensuring high-quality produce.
3. FarmShelf is beneficial for those looking to have fresh, safe, and nutritious food readily available, supporting both chefs in professional kitchens and individuals in home settings.
4. The system can significantly speed up the growth process, producing crops two to three times faster than traditional outdoor methods.
5. The discussion also highlights the educational value of FarmShelf, helping users, especially children, understand and appreciate the origins and quality of their food.

1. Introduction to FarmShelf

Jean-Paul Kyrillos discusses the inspiration behind FarmShelf, focusing on providing fresh, local produce directly in the kitchen. Jean-Paul Kyrillos: "It's all about freshness and reducing the food miles that our produce has to travel."

2. Technical Insights

A deep dive into the technical workings of the FarmShelf system, including hydroponics, nutrient delivery, and environmental controls. Jean-Paul Kyrillos: "Our system uses advanced hydroponics with sensors and cameras to ensure optimal growth conditions."

3. Benefits of Indoor Farming

Exploration of the benefits FarmShelf offers to various users, from professional chefs to home cooks. Jean-Paul Kyrillos: "You get fresh herbs and greens year-round, right in your kitchen, enhancing both flavor and nutrition."

4. Future of Food Production

Discussion on the future implications of indoor farming technologies like FarmShelf on food production and culinary practices. Jean-Paul Kyrillos: "This technology is transforming how we think about growing food and what it means for future culinary trends."

1. Explore Hydroponics: Consider integrating hydroponic systems like FarmShelf in your kitchen for fresh produce.
2. Monitor Growth Conditions: Regularly check the environmental parameters to ensure your plants are growing optimally.
3. Engage in Continuous Learning: Stay updated on advancements in indoor farming technologies to enhance your system's efficiency.
4. Educate Others: Use systems like FarmShelf to teach children about food origins and healthy eating.
5. Experiment with Crops: Try growing different herbs and greens to discover which ones thrive best in your environment and cater to your culinary needs.

In this episode of the Private Chef Podcast, we're joined by Jean-Paul Kyrillos, co-founder and CEO of FarmShelf. JP delves into the story behind FarmShelf, a smart indoor farming system enabling people to grow leafy greens and herbs in their homes or restaurant kitchens. He describes how this technology lets users cultivate their own food indoors, ensuring year-round access to fresh produce while minimizing the need for long-distance shipping.

Listen as JP shares his passion for nutritious food, the game-changing potential of indoor farming, and how FarmShelf is making a unique impact on sustainable, locally-grown food production.

People

Jean-Paul Kyrillos

Companies

FarmShelf

Books

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Guest Name(s):

Jean-Paul Kyrillos

Content Warnings:

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Jean-Paul Kyrillos
What I always say to people is like, you get something from a commercial sort of organic farm versus if you plant it yourself from a seed that we've sent you in a sealed container that goes into a system that only you have access to and you grow it from seed. And like, I guarantee you, that's going to be better for you and safer. If you're a chef and you're thinking. About how to venture into the private chef space, how to set yourself up for success from resume to first interactions with your clients, as well as succeeding at the job. Our one on one coaching got you covered.

Go to www dot www. Privatechef dot CC and connect with me. Decades of experience can be your support to seize the next private chef opportunity. Welcome to the private chef podcast serving the 1%. I'm your host, Hannes Henji.

And on our show, we speak to the best chefs, how they honed in. On their skills to excel in the. Industry, and what it takes to work as a private chef for some of. The most exclusive clients in the world.

Hannes Henshi
Welcome back to the private chef podcast. I'm your host, Hannes Henshi. And today our guest is S. Paul Kyroles, the co founder and CEO of Farm Shelf. Farm Shelf is a smart indoor farming system designed to grow leafy greens and herbs in the comfort of your home or restaurant kitchen.

In this episode, JP will discuss his passion for nutritious food, the inspiration behind this innovation, indoor farm, and the unique features and benefits it offers to chefs and communities alike. Thank you for joining us, JP. Thank you for having me, Hannes. So what was your initial idea behind launching Farm Shelf? You know, we looked around and so much of our produce is being shipped across the country.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
You know, you and I live in New York, and most of it's coming from California most of the year. And this is our most perishable food, right? And it's on a truck for a week at least before it gets to our table, right? And the technology was there to grow it. You know, where you were, where you're actually cooking, where you're enjoying a meal.

We saw the technology in various spaces and said, let's put this together, right? And let's make it easy for people to grow their own food inside, in their restaurant, in their home, and bring the flavors that you get when you go to the farmer's market in the middle of the summer in the northeast, right? And that arugula is really spicy in those flavors are just popping, right? And we said, we can do this all year round, right? And the technology is there and the price of the technology had come down, specifically the led lighting, so that it was possible to do because, you know, 15 years ago, it would just be too expensive.

It just wouldn't be worth it for anybody. So you've seen this proliferation of vertical farming and in the last 510 years, because of the cost has come way down. So, yeah, so, you know, make it easy to grow your own food and enable people to enjoy produce. That is, you know, there's a joy factor, right? So many people love to garden, right?

But you can only garden a few months out of the year, again, depending on your climate. Unless you live in Florida. Unless you live in. Unless you live in Florida. But then, you know, listen, growing food is hard, right?

If anybody's ever done it, you know, you got to deal with pests, you got to deal with soil, you got to deal with climate. Even if you're in Florida, certain things that, you know, are going to take well to the intense heat all the time. So there's a lot of factors and a lot of people, I certainly failed so many times trying to grow things, you know, outside, and there's just so many factors. So we control all those factors and make it so your chances are pretty close to perfect of growing what you want to grow. Funny that you said, I literally just bought an outdoor plan that I put on my balcony and I almost killed it within the first month till I figured how to deal with it.

Hannes Henshi
There's truth in everything you just said. Yeah, it's not easy. So that's what we try to do. We try to try to take. We like to say we're the green thumb in the cloud where they're monitoring the unit.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
It's a smart system, sensors and cameras, and we can help guide you. And hopefully the system itself is just running smoothly on its own. We could talk more about how it works. So. Yeah, why don't you explain a little bit how it works?

Hannes Henshi
You did mention their sensors. There's cameras. There's cameras inside cameras just looking at the plants. So, you know, take a step back. Right.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
It's a hot. It's hydroponics. Hydroponics means there's no soil. Okay. So it is a continuous water that's running from the tank up through the shelves.

And so if you were to lift up the shelves of the farm shelf, you would just see. Oh, yeah, there you go. You would just see the roots and the water. And we have dosed that water with exactly the right amount of nutrients. And when I say nutrients, you could say plant food, you could say fertilizer, people think, you know, but those are your nutrient cartridges.

And so the system is going to automatically do that. And all the science here. And we're going to accommodate for. If you have. If you live in Texas and your water is a certain harder softness, if you live in New York, live in California, and we're going to put in, you know, exactly the right of ph buffers up and down, and the nutrients.

What we're trying to do is make sure your plants have exactly what they need. We're trying to mimic what's happening outside. The led lighting is the sun. Right. The nutrients are the fertilizer and the proper soil airflow, climate control.

And what you should get is delicious produce tastes the way it's supposed to taste in the peak of summer. So what happens is you have your farm shelf, we have a subscription, and you can choose from 660 different types of leafy greens and herbs until you choose what you want to grow. We send you these seed pods, and they are pre seeded, and they just have a little bit of a peat moss media. Again, it's not soil, but there's something that carries the seed and it goes into a hidden nursery that's at the base. I don't know if you want to pull up a.

Yeah, I think I can. On the very top of the website, you can see a photo of the system itself. Right. So those are your three upper growing shelves. There's a nursery that's hidden below that you don't see there.

Yeah, it's. Well, it's next to that. And the nursery is where you put those plant pods right in the beginning. And they have their own climate control, they have their own water source and their own lighting. And it's a different phrase of the plant.

Right. It's sprouting and then it's coming to maturity. And so you're growing in that enclosed nursery that's hidden while you're growing in these upper shelves. And we're going to coach you through all this. After a couple weeks in that nursery, the plan is established and it can be moved up, and it's physically moved up by the customer.

And it's. Think of an espresso. It's like the economist called as an espresso for lettuce. You pull it out, you pop it in the upper shelf. Once it's in there, that's your.

It's glass. We think it's beautiful. Right? Everybody. Plants are beautiful.

They bring joy. And watching your food grow in front of you, whether you're a chef or a student or. I think we think anybody is an incredible thing to witness. And by the way, it happens even faster in our system and, like, two or three times faster than outside. And then, like, so right now, you see basil on the top, we have shiso.

I know your audience knows what it is, but, you know, otherwise known as, like, a japanese mint or perilla, I think we did have head lettuce on the bottom shelf. Now, by the way, you could grow ten different things at once. But for this particular system, in that, in this photo shoot, it was one per shelf. The shiso and the basil will just keep regrowing, right? So you'll go in there, and if you're a home chef, you're going to harvest what you need.

You're going to use it for that meal, or maybe you're going to put it, put it in the fridge for later on. But essentially, you are harvesting on demand, so you're getting, like, the freshest, best tasting produce with all the nutrients. And I'm not talking, you know, I'm talking about the nutritional content. And, you know, one thing we didn't talk about, Hannes, like, why we started this is, like, we want people to have a connection to their food again. Right?

Yeah. You go to Whole Foods or fairway or wherever your supermarket is, and you grab a head of lettuce. You don't know where it came from. Chances are, you know, it came from California or Arizona and sat on a truck and got handled by, you know, ten different people. But you don't even know if you're a kid.

Like, where does that come from? Right? So this gets us closer. Gets us closer to our food. And just to finish the thought, you know, these.

This produce, because everybody wants to know, like, how fast does it grow? How long does it last? Those crops in there, that shit, that cheese or that basil, you'll have it in there for six to eight weeks, maybe even longer if you want to. And you're just going to keep regrowing. Now, the lettuce is a little bit differently.

That's more of a head. You're going to cut it off, and it's kind of one and done, as we say. But you're going to have backups in the nursery that are ready to take its place, and they'll be ready within a week. Sometimes in the garden, we just cut the head of the lettuce and it regrows, like, a little bit smaller, maybe two more times. And before it's actually done, yes.

The answer is you can do that in a farm shelf. Our plant team gets pretty particular about flavor. That second regrowth on the head lettuce, you take a butter lettuce, for instance, it's going to be a little bit bitter on the. On the regrowth, if you don't mind that. Sure.

Yeah, it'll work. We've just found, again, we're preaching about, and I think that you and your clients are looking for, like, if you want it to be that, the best possible flavors. We don't recommend the second growth, but it's there. But, you know, kale, arugula, mustard greens, you know, the list goes on and on. There's so many greens that you put in your salad that'll just.

They just keep. They just keep growing. So I tend to go down and the head lettuce is sort of like the base, but then I just. I've got five or six different greens. And you can't really do that unless you have a garden, whether it's outside or inside, because chances are you're not going to get that many, you know, unless you're really into it, you're probably not going to have five or six different greens in your fridge at all times.

So this kind of expands, I like to. It expands my cooking. Right. And because I'm using things that I didn't usually use, and just because I. Have access to them, and it probably gives you a variety that you can really not have.

Hannes Henshi
Like, if I think about the hamptons, okay, we have gardens, but then still with the garden, I need to speak with the gardener. And we don't, obviously, there are seasons. And especially with micro greens, it can get a little bit tricky because the gardener, then again, is also not there all the time. So the conditions are not favorable for all the micro greens. But if I think about this, you know, you can probably run eight different microcrenes in there in smaller batches.

And this way you, at all times, you can have, like, Michelin star level greenery around your entire dishes. Yeah, we have some people that grow, love growing microgreens and sprouts with our system. It's not something that we technically support. The system is made for plants, whereas it's a different media. So it would be like a mat that you would put down, but it's doable.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
And certainly we can talk later, but you're a vip clientele, and we'll certainly make that work if it's something that they want. But back to the 60 things that we do grow, and some of the ones that we reference shiso or zaatar. My background is lebanese. I grew up eating Za'atar. And when we started farm shelf, the Middle Eastern grocer in Brooklyn, Sahadis came to me and said, hey, could we grow Zaer?

You know, and people think of the spice mixture. They don't know that it's a, is a, you know, as a plant too, sort of. I would say a cousin to thyme and oregano. And it basically grows wild in the fields of Lebanon. But so we grow zaar.

It's wonderful. It's hard to find fresh zaatar anywhere. Yeah, yeah, there you go. You got the shisa there. Yeah.

Hannes Henshi
Just gives some visual to what you're talking about. Absolutely. I mean, some of this you can get and some of it you're gonna have a hard time, you know, finding flowering viola. There's a section on there on flowering greens and. Right.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
So this is either hard to find or, you know, incredibly expensive, which. Yeah. Less of a concern for your. Yeah. Even if you find it like you like, for example, if we go to Citarella in Southampton or something, we might be able to find it again, what you just said, the price is a different matter.

Hannes Henshi
It's prohibitive almost, but then at the same time, it's not always as fresh as you want it. Like, actually down here, the viola flowers, those. Sometimes I got those in, in the garden, and it's just of a different quality when you just pick them compared when they've been traveling. Scroll up. I always love to talk about Hyssop, the anis.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
Hyssop. And I don't know, you know, again, hard to find. Not at your average store. And this has that, you know, just when you fresh pick an incredible licorice anise flavor, which. This is one of these things, whether you're making a cocktail out of it or, you know, whatever you're using it for.

It's one of these things that I found when we started Farm chef. It was a wonderful sort of surprised, because I didn't even know. I don't know. Have you ever? I'm sure you have.

But, like, do you, do you see Hyssop much in your shopping or have you grown it? Shopping? Sometimes they have individual flowers in the mix, but you don't get it individually where you have like a batch of it by itself. Right. So, yeah, but you hit the nail on the head.

Like, if, if you can find it, you're probably not going to find it as fresh. And then these are the, these are the, these are the greens that I, you know, I like to grow because they, they're going to come back week after week and, and they just keep giving and they're just absolutely delicious. Right. You know, everybody who's on audio right now, we're looking at swiss chard and black magic kale and french sorrel and portuguese kale and arugula. Yeah.

I think that, like, if you go to this, if you go and get arugula in the winter time and it comes in that clamshell, even if it's at a grapes, even if it's at Citarella or whole foods, it doesn't have that flavor that you get when you get it at the farmer's market in the summer. Right. Actually, I feel like food has been, in a way, degenerated over the decades, that we don't even know what the original was like, like what we're eating now. And take it basically like a carrot. Like when you're biting into a carrot, even if it's at whole foods, it has nothing to do with the kind of carrot that my grandma used to pick out of the soil and give me as a child.

Hannes Henshi
The flavors are just not there. It's in a way, the products that we got used to are so much pushed into a direction where they're more shelf stabilized and it's optimized for commerce more than flavor. Sorry for the interruption. We will be right back. And if youre a chef thinking about venturing into the private chef space, this is for you.

We coach you on how to set yourself up for success from resume to first interactions with your clients as well as succeeding at the job. Our one on one coaching got you covered. Go to www. Dot Privatechef, dot CC and connect with me. Decades of experience can be your support to seize the next private chef opportunity.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
Yes. Yes. And again, that's why I said, like, we want to bring people closer to their food. And also, like, you shouldn't have to worry about your food. Right.

You shouldn't have to worry about, like, where you probably don't know where it came from, but who handled it and what, how it was genetically modified. Right. Like, to get to that carrot that you're getting now, which, yeah, I find that with, like, I don't know what happened to bananas, right? Like, they're just, they go from green to, like, they're ripe for a day and then they're, they're brown. Right.

It's like, I don't know what happened to the bananas we used to eat when we were kids. But, um, I find it really interesting when you see the real og banana, you know, where there's a lot less, more seed inside. And the whole banana is completely different than what we eat as a commercial banana today. So one of the things that you. We were looking up for was amaranth, and that is, do you, have you ever.

Do you get that much? Yeah, we use it occasionally. More. More, like mixed again, it's nothing that you use straight up so much. Yeah, but that's one we did.

We did a. We did some work with the crop trust, and the crop trust is responsible for, you know, they have, you know, saved in vaults. I think there's seven of them around the world. You're nodding your head. You know about it, right?

It's. It's like a Noah's ark of seeds. Every seed that ever has, has been, is saved. And they give us access. They cloned some of them.

They gave us access, and that's where our amaranth comes from. And that is like an, you know, an ancient green that got a little bit lost. And we're bringing it back. You see it here and there, but it's beautiful. It's red and green and it's.

We lost the plot a little bit with food. I mean, it's hard to feed, you know, 8 billion people. Right. And so big food has to exist. But it's nice for those of us, and certainly you and, you know, your clientele that, you know, can get the best produce and can get the best of everything, and so.

Hannes Henshi
Well, I think the interesting thing is the trend that I see with our clients is there's a lot of awareness where they even are like, hey, we don't want you to go to whole foods. Like, yes, it's already better, like, than what maybe the majority of the regular supply chain, what comes through. But we really want you to go to the local farms. We want you to get the freshest and the most nutritious, and they care for the health of the family in that regard. And I think that's.

That's exactly the kind of people we like to work with. Yeah. I mean, we. Not to open up a can of. Can of worms on this, but, you know, everybody always wants to know, is it organic?

Right? And the answer is, organic is about soil. Right? Organic is about your soil. And we don't have soil, so we can't be called organic.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
Our seeds are organic, by the way. They come from a great supplier called Johnny's in Maine. But my point is, what I always say to people is like you get something from a commercial sort of organic farm versus if you plant it yourself from a seed that we've sent you in a sealed container that goes into a system that only you have access to and you grow it from seed and, like, I guarantee you that's going to be better for you and safer than something that might have been grown organically again in California and sat on a truck, you know, for a week. But there is something special about knowing, and of course, you lose half the nutrients, right, when you have it on a truck for a week. So, yeah, we have the nutrition thing covered for you.

And also just this, like, you don't have to worry about it. You don't, you know, you know, you know where it came from because in theory, you're the only person who's ever touched it. Right. You don't have to wash. We always joke that we're going to do an ad campaign one day about like, you know, it's bad news for salad spinners because for the salad spinner industry, because you don't need to wash our produce.

Right. There's no pesticides, there's nobody touching it. There's no soil. Right. You know, I love it when I can bring someone in front of one of our units and I just harvested and they can put it in their mouth and eat it.

Hannes Henshi
So, yeah, the only question is, have you washed your hands before eating salad? Well, I would be. I would be wearing, I would be wearing gloves if I was feeding it to you. But yes, that is right. I can only do so much on the food safety.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
At the end of the day, it's going to be, did the person do his job? Yeah. So how does the cycle look like? How long does it take to actually have a meaningful amount of burritos that you can harvest? So it's going to take a couple of weeks from seed pod to that established plant, and that is underneath.

Right. And then you're going to move it up and it's going to be a couple more weeks, maybe a week to ten days till it gets to its harvestable state. But there's something that you have to take into account, which is once we get to that state where you can harvest it, as I mentioned, you've now got about three or four pounds of produce that's coming out of the system every week for the average family, quite frankly, it's probably more than you need, maybe different for you and what you're cooking. And then when that crop rotation is over, right, when it's. And we'll tell you when it says, like, okay.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
And you as a, as a chef will know the basil. Most people probably say, like, basil tastes fine, it looks fine. Let's keep going. We'll say after six to eight weeks, the stems are starting to get Woody. The flavor might start getting just a touch off.

Right. It's time to fully harvest that. But remember, you've got the seedlings right underneath, and they're already, they've already been growing. Right. So then you put those up, and you're a week from harvest on that shelf.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
So the answer is, you're never running out of produce. There will be a week or ten days when you're in that, in between the cycle when you went from the nursery plants to harvestable. So my farm shelf in my house always has a steady stream of greens. It never, literally never runs out. The interesting thing is, so you have the subscription basically for like $22 a week.

Hannes Henshi
You have all that produce, amazing variety. Different flowers, different salads. Correct. And I think variety is the answer. Right?

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
I mean, again, you're putting, you know, you know, I want to speak to your, to your audience, right? They are. But you got to cook something different every night, and you got to impress your principal. Right. Every night.

And I think to have that variety at your fingertips. You know, I know, again, for myself, like, I go to, you know, there's, there's a great japanese restaurant in the west Village, and they have a garlic shiso rice, which, you know, we kind of fell in love with. Like, we can make that because we have shiso. You know, because I always have. I love shiso.

I always have it. You know, if we get some fresh, you know, you get some fresh tuna in the hamptons and you want to do sashimi and you got the shiso. It's right there. Right? And so I think it's.

It enables you not to have to, to necessarily, like, yeah, you shop you at the farmers market, you see, you're inspired, right? And you get inspired from, like, okay, I've got the fish. Oh, I'm growing this at home, you know, so it's just, it kind of alters your. How you plan a meal a bit in the best possible way. Right?

It's just, it's just fun. And listen, you and your colleagues, you're going to be the one who's operating it and harvesting it. I think that's the greatest part of it, right? To go and harvest the greens and people do it because it's meditative and it is, is. It's a wonderful thing.

And to be, like, close to your food in that way. So one of the homes I used to work in, like, on the way into the kitchen, I would always go through the garden, and that was so cool. Like, that's how I started my day. You know, there's sun, there's, like, fresh produce. I just take the scissors and I start harvesting for whatever I'm using for lunch and go inside and, like, prepared right from there.

Yeah, there's. Listen, this is something that I always have a hard time sort of getting across. Listen, if you see a farm shelf out in the wild, you see at a restaurant, you know, and by the way, when we started this, you know, we got. We got some great chefs like Jose Andres and Marcus Samuelson, Klaus Meyer to sort of work with us. And believe it or not, there's a recipe, there's a plant recipe that goes into it.

So you do something with leds and you give them a little more reds or a little more blues, you can actually affect the flavor of the produce. So what, you know, what you're going to get with farm shelf is, like, I always like to say, well, if it was good enough for Jose Andres, it's probably good enough for the rest of us. Right? And. But we.

Geez, I lost my train of thought here. I got sidelined on these celebrity chefs. But you were talking about how you can manipulate the flavor. Yeah. Within the blend, if you give a.

Different light, you can manipulate the flavor. Oh, I know what I was, I was going to say, just when you see this out in the wild, right. You sort of get it because it's like, there's a wow factor, right. And the lights are, you know, and the plants are beautiful when you have it in your house or if you have it in a. You know, we have students having their cafeterias in school that the joy you get, like, this is what we were talking about, the garden.

You like to walk through the garden. It's hard to sort of, like, quantify that, right. Just. Just to see it. Like, just like why people like to live on a farm, right?

Or, you know, and. Or have a garden, right? Which not everybody can. They don't have the land. They don't have the weather.

You guys have the land and the weather, because you're probably chasing. You're probably chasing the good weather all the time, right, in the various houses. Yeah, exactly. But for you, who's inside cooking, to be able to see that, and there's just a joy factor. And I think that, like, the other thing is and I think this will be, you know, special for your clientele is.

So I have just where I happen to have it. I have my kitchen upstairs and I have my farm shelf downstairs. And when I have dinner parties, right. Like, much the way somebody might show off their wine cellar. Right.

I bring them downstairs to show off my farm shelf. Right. It's a very exclusive item. Right. We're only gonna make.

We're only gonna build and ship 250 of these this year. Right. Like, virtually nobody has one. Right. So, like, to be able to bring something downstairs.

Hannes Henshi
Limited edition Porsche. Yeah. Right. And, yeah. To bring somebody downstairs and open it up and feed them out of it.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
And, like, that probably will be the interaction that you're, your clients have with it the rest of the time. You'll, you know, this. The chef will tend to it. But there's a cool. There's a wow factor to it that I think that your.

Your principals will. Will enjoy. And then they're. And then the kids, you know, I don't care who it is, right. Whether you have everybody, like, you know, kids, like, they don't know where their food comes from, as we said earlier.

Right. And, like, so my daughter, she's eight, and she helps me know she helps from the seed pods, and then we monitor it and we move them up and she's like. And this is a girl who's like, you know, allergic to vegetables, like a lot of kids are. But she eats the kale that she grew. Right.

And she, you know, she knows that the portuguese kale that we grow is, like, the best kale that you can get, and it's softer and, you know, like. And so I think there is something about a. Doing something with your kids, but also, like, giving them the education and then getting them to, you know, just to have a healthier, you know, a healthier diet and eat. Eat more than happier relationship with. With nature.

Hannes Henshi
It's like, especially in a city like New York, you think everything just comes from the corner store, and people only know the price of things, not the value of things. Like, they don't know what nature had to do or farmers had to do to get it on that shelf. You know, all they see, it's there and it has a price, and that's it. Yeah. I.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
You know, I always feel like if we can do something so that kids will listen. An indoor hydroponic growing system is not exactly like how most produce is grown, but it is the same idea. And if that gets them thinking and talking about, like, wait a second. Where does the rest of my fruit and vegetable come from. Right.

And have a relationship and then go outside of the garden. And then, you know, my plant scientist brought my son some. He's really into spicy peppers, and she brought him some ghost peppers, seeds that, you know, he started in the farm shelf and then he brought them outside. And so there is a little bit of back and forth that you can have and have and fun with the systems bringing certain plants that won't grow in, that will only grow to a certain height because he has a form factor of the farm shell when they get really big, but you can bring them outside. And so that's another way you guys can have some fun with it and get the gardener involved.

Hannes Henshi
Is that, is the light on 24 hours or do they need rest? Lights on it is 16 on and eight off. The lights are dimmable. So if it isn't in a place that is, you know, for instance, when I'm showing off the farm shelf, you know, for a dinner party, I'll often dim the lights just so they're a little bit. But it's behind.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
It's behind a tinted glass, so it's in no way, you know, difficult to. But do the plans need that break of eight hour lights or is it just. Yeah, yeah, they like to like the light. Yeah, they like to sleep. I can show you my farm shelf if you want.

You let me know if you want to take a little tour. We'll go look at it. I know it's harder. You got people listening, so that's not a good thing. Yeah.

Hannes Henshi
In terms of. I find it so interesting. So plants sleep. And does that mean you don't want to water them too at that time when they sleep? No, no.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
I mean, I don't know if it's sleeping, but just think about what we're trying to do is mimic what's happening outside. Right. Okay, so plants have 8 hours of darkness. So, you know, this is about the photosynthesis. And, you know, so you.

There's certain plants that like full light. There's certain plants that like partial light. Right. And so we can adjust our lighting, you know, based on that. But leafy greens and herbs and that's what we're growing right now in this system.

Eventually, we'll do some other things. They, they like a full day of light, which is about 16 hours on and 8 hours off. And so, and again, that's the lighting recipe that we, you know, I was alluding to when you sort of, you know, we sort of. We did a lot of R and D to find out, like, what's the right seed for the right amount of light, you know, and the right nutrients. And that's where that plant recipe comes in.

So yes, we like to give the plants their time to, to rest. Not exactly sleep, but we can call it that. Nice. So when you, when you have that in the shelf and maybe if you want, you can, we can go to your shelf and, and you can explain it at the shelf itself. Let's.

We'll give it a try. We're, we're walking, for those of you listening, I'm just walking out of my home office here and we're going to just show you the farm shelf. You see that? Oh, yeah. So this is the system.

And, you know, you're gonna see. I'm gonna open it up. You see, we dim the lights when you open it and you can see sort of like that is red veined sorrel, got a bunch of head lettuces. I got some kale, some baby kale that's coming up, some chives, basil and. Precisely get it ready for the.

But that is. And then the nursery and nutrients is, are underneath. And this is an older model, quite frankly. So the one that, that your clients are getting is a little bit more advanced, but that is the commercial one. The original one that you.

This is the original. This is the original. This is the original one. Yeah, this is the commercial one. How heavy is the unit?

It's 300 pounds, so. 300 pounds. It is the stack up. So you can, you know, in terms of like the size, it's about a third smaller than this one. So it's 4ft wide, six and a half feet tall and about 2ft deep.

Right. So it's just going to go. And I literally, like, I used to have a bookshelf there and we replaced it with our farm shelf. And is that where the name came from? Well, it was catchy.

I mean, it is a. Replace your bookshelf. Yeah. No, I mean, this was only the last couple of years, but yeah, that's the trip down to the wine cellar. Right.

Or the. Or the farm shelf. Nice. I love it. Yeah.

Hannes Henshi
And it makes like a really good, I mean, depending, especially if I think of the kind of kitchens I've worked in, you know, you can really make that a centerpiece between, like sometimes we have huge stainless steel fridges and you can if you have like an indoor architect or someone and you put that in between some of the designs, the kitchen and the light. So I think that there can be some really badass looks. Yeah, I mean, that's. We've got a handful of customers that have done that. They've built it into their kitchen.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
That's. Listen, that's our dream. Our dream is that you have your farm shelf, you know, built in, like, your refrigerator. Right. And then just, you know, for anybody out there who remembers the show, the Jetsons, you know, it's like they just, like, the food was on demand, right in their kitchen.

Right. And that exists now, right. Just to open up your farm shelf in your kitchen and, like, your herbs are right there. And so that is absolutely possible. Yeah.

Hannes Henshi
Awesome. Well, JP, this has been super interesting. Thank you so much for making time to introduce. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, I mean, this is a.

It's a very cool, unique product. You know that. I think there's definitely a couple. I actually, while we're talking, there's a few clients that I think would really appreciate something like that. I mean, I'm happy to give my name to.

Jean-Paul Kyrillos
I don't know how it works, but if you want me to, like, I'm for your clientele. If they want to just reach out to me directly, I'm happy to help them out. So JPRM shelf.com, it's that easy and awesome. Or they can get you through me, but it's. You guys are an exciting group.

Like, because it's not often you get this. You get the chefs who really get it and the people who, you know, can afford it and want to put it in their homes. Thank you for joining us at the private chef podcast. If you know any highly skilled chefs that want to take their life to the next level, make sure to share this podcast with them. And if you enjoyed this episode, click subscribe and check out our upcoming episodes.

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