By next summer, customers of a local Chicopee supermarket can expect to purchase rooftop-grown fruit and vegetables from the establishment year-round. Fruit Fair Supermarket on Front Street is looking to add three rooftop greenhouses to the business to grow and sell their own strawberries, tomatoes, pickles, cucumbers, lettuce, and other produce.
Sam Newell, co-owner of the supermarket, said on the East Coast, produce is not usually grown in the winter, a problem she’s looking to fix through the greenhouses.
“Instead of cold storage, we’ll just freshly pluck and then sell it,” Newell said. Each greenhouse will be 1,200 square feet, with a heating system and a miniature solar farm, as well as shades to protect the produce throughout each season, Newell said. Staff will use a dumbwaiter and stairs to bring the produce down to customers, she said.
Newell said greenhouses have been an integral part of pushing back against the area’s so-called food desert. There is a lack of access to fresh produce in the area, she said. “We don’t want to go back to that (since this is) a food-insecure zone,” Newell said.
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