HyCube supplies hyperlocal lettuce and leafy greens to the Orlando World Center Marriott

Photo: Patrick Williams

The purple hue that emanates from the HyCube^TM, Eco Convergence Group’s (ECG) 2,000-square-foot vertical farm, illuminates an adjacent terrace at the Orlando World Center Marriott in Orlando, Florida. On this mid-October night, during Produce Marketing Association’s (PMA) Fresh Summit event, Philips Lighting and Dutch vegetable breeder Rijk Zwaan have welcomed their partners and customers to a private event here.

ECG sells lettuce and leafy greens grown in the HyCube’s indoor production system to the hotel’s chefs and restaurants, says ECG CEO Cristian Toma. “HyCube, for the hotel, is a great addition to their PR and marketing message and something that they use to attract corporate customers for events and conventions,” he says. “It's also an educational aspect because these days, consumers feel that they have lost any connection with the food that they eat.” The HyCube sources produce to the hotel year-round.

Headquartered in Orlando, growing operation ECG was formed in 2010, and most of its investors are from Europe, Toma says. ECG opened its HyCube installation in April. While it has focused on lettuce and leafy greens since its inception, growers at the HyCube have recently begun experimenting with dianthus production, and plan to grow geraniums, calendula and violas – mainly for pastry chefs. ECG also produces crops such as tomatoes, mint, oregano and thyme at other Orlando-area growing facilities it owns.

Toma notes that hotel guests and attendees of conferences held at the hotel come to the terrace and take pictures or simply admire the HyCube, an 18-foot-high glass cube. As for those purple lights, they are LEDs sourced from Philips Lighting, and are a major asset to the HyCube and ECG.

“We tried a lot of lights in our lab, and nothing could compare with Philips in terms of predictability of performance,” Toma says. “Also, what we like about Philips is that they have a great technology roadmap, in terms of light output efficiency.”

Another benefit of working with Philips Lighting is that the company partners with major lettuce breeders to select varieties that work best under artificial light, Toma says. One of these breeders is Rijk Zwaan, from which ECG started receiving seeds for trials this past summer. “Pretty much all the samples that we put in front of the chefs at Marriott — they were just instant successes, especially the crystal Lalique [RZ] [lettuce],” Toma says. 

In addition to benefitting from the growing conditions inside the HyCube, Toma says the vertical farm’s location onsite at Orlando World Center Marriott — the largest hotel under Marriott ownership in the world — plays a role in providing locality and freshness to its chefs. “If you want an extreme version of farm to table, we call it 'pick to plate,' because here, when we harvest, we put our produce in crates and we literally walk the produce to the kitchen,” he says. “There's nothing fresher than that, so we can consider it as a high-tech version of your backyard garden, if you want."