In a store visit to interview Toby Tiktinsky from BrightFarms at The Food Emporium in New York's Upper East Side, we are met with both good and bad news. Its salads have already sold out by mid-morning, but fortunately another outlet nearby still has product in stock.

Pushing along his bicycle along as we go, the director of business development embodies the philosophy his company stands for, as well as his own background from the now struggling emissions trading market.

"Our goal is to be competitively priced with the leading organic and local salad brands, so we're providing a superior product that can displace trans-country transportation," he says.

Sure enough, BrightFarms' salads are cheaper than the competition in this particular store, by virtue of a greenhouse location just 75 miles away and a recent upgrade that has increased productivity.

BrightFarms director of business development, Toby Tiktinsky.

"We have our greenhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania delivering to A&P stores, so there are at least 264 of those stores that we’re delivering to. It goes all the way from Philadelphia and Delaware up through New York," Tiktinsky explains.

"We actually recently did a major upgrade of the greenhouse and we changed the growing system, going from a mixed model to a pond raft system, which is specifically designed for herbs and baby greens."

The change may have cost close to US$750,000 and meant BrightFarms had to do away with tomatoes, but on its core crops the yield has risen significantly.

"We're actually growing more per square foot than we did with the prior system, and it’s actually much more uniform and there’s less product going to waste. We're quite happy with it - it's really exceeding our expectations.

"The idea is to get a scalable model, something that we can replicate across the country and to do that you need be as uniform, as consistent as possible; like a franchise model almost.

While the company earned its stripes consulting on smaller urban agriculture projects, it is now coming into its own with commercial-scale greenhouses that require substantial capital outlays but are backed by 10-year supply agreements with local supermarkets to pay them off.

"I think over the next 18 months we expect to break ground on six more greenhouses. July will be Washington D.C., sometime this fall it'll be St Louis, then New York, and shortly thereafter in Chicago," Tiktinsky says.

He cannot reveal exactly where the other two greenhouses will be over this period, but BrightFarms has announced plans for new greenhouses in Indianapolis, Kansas City and St Paul, Minnesota.

And while the Bucks County greenhouse covers 56,000 square feet, the Washington D.C. greenhouse is expected to be 100,000 square feet and will be serving Giant Food stores within a 35 mile radius.

"We're moving to a larger model, because there are important economies of scale in building these greenhouses that we have to take advantage of," he says.

"We’re cutting a week out of the logistics chain - that's thousands of miles.

"We do have a large capital expense upfront in the greenhouse and the whole system. But with the 10-year, long-term purchase model that we have, that allows us to pay back those costs over time and gives investors confidence that we can pay it back."

The New York greenhouse will also involve A&P, the St Louis deal is with Schnucks, and the Chicago deal is with Roundy's to supply Mariano's stores.

Another aspect of the locavore movement is a desire for well-being and economic opportunity in local communities. BrightFarms takes this on board for the labor policies in its greenhouses.

"We are dedicated to providing living wages and that includes providing benefits like health benefits that are often not provided for hourly labor jobs," Tiktinsky says.

"There are different types of jobs we’re looking for – for the head grower, the person who runs the entire greenhouse, that’s someone who needs skills in running hydroponic greenhouses and those can be hard to find in local areas.

"We have to do national searches often to find candidates for that, but the other jobs in the greenhouse, you can source locally and find people that can be trained on the job to do the various tasks."

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