Field to fork in 30 minutes: Sprout & Co launch their very own farm

More and more these days, Ireland’s foodies are becoming concerned with where their meals are coming from. We want to know how our food is made, where it’s grown and how far it’s travelled to get to us.

As we become more environmentally conscious (it is Sustainability Month, after all), factors like how much pollution and production went into making our food has us craving something simpler and closer to home.

As well as trying to be environmentally conscious, we’re also trying to keep our health in check – while microwave meals and fast food is often tempting for lunch, if you’re concerned about your health, it’s not exactly sustainable. A great salad, packed with flavour, is the dream but supermarket offerings often leave us a little cold (much like the lettuce).

Sprout & Co is one of the city’s favourite fresh salad eateries, and with good reason – their whole manifesto is built around fresh, tasty ingredients that are sourced and produced locally. While it’s easy to chow down on one of their mouthwatering lunches (the Paprika Chica is a personal favourite) and forget all about its background, knowing that the ingredients are environmentally friendly makes it taste all the better.

This year, Sprout & Co went one step further to cement their position as a conscious food supplier – they launched their very own farm. Across 40 acres of land in Co. Kildare, the lads at Sprout began learning how to grow and farm veggies, and are now growing all of the leaves organically for their restaurants – 600 kilos of greens every single week.

What’s really amazing about the Sprout farm is how efficient it is at providing organic produce. Tasty leaves (including rocket, baby spinach, pak choi and kale) can be transported from farm to restaurant in just 30 minutes, without ever using any single-use plastic. Major brownie points from Mother Earth.

They’ve kept their budding farm under wraps since May, but now speaking about the launch, Sprout emphasised how excited they were about farming their own key ingredients.

“It’s a natural progression, reflecting our deep commitment to finding better ingredients and revolutionising fast food. Our farm is far more than just a practical supply chain improvement, it’s a powerful reflection of the food positive ethos that marks everything we do. Growing ourselves means our restaurants get fresher, tastier and more interesting ingredients.”

“We’ve been obsessive about local produce since Sprout started, so it’s with great excitement that we can now call ourselves local growers too.”

Sprout & Co are now open in seven locations across Dublin and Meath, with their farm lying just 30km away from Dublin in Rathcoffey, Co. Kildare. For more information, find their website here.