Bee-pollinated and robot-picked, the perfect strawberry is here.
Eight years ago, Hiroki Koga, co-founder of Oishii, had a dream: to grow Japanese strawberries in the U.S. and have them available every day of the year. Dream fulfilled. The solution was to farm them indoors on moving vertical racks in an environment that mimics a perfect growing day in Japan. Oishii’s first facility produced enough berries to conquer the New York market. Now, a second, 237,500-square-foot building in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, is finished. There’s no need for pesticides or genetically modified cultivars. The high-tech operation runs on solar energy and recycled water. Real bees pollinate the plants, and robots pick the individual berries as they reach the exact point of ripeness.
The scale of the enterprise means that Oishii strawberries (both the Koyo variety and the larger, tangier Omakase) are now reaching Toronto — each one fragrant, deliciously sweet and uniformly sized (to the delight of meticulous pastry chefs). Koga is confident that the last hurdle — that of price — will be overcome in the next couple of years. A box of eight berries currently sells for around $13 in the GTA; he predicts that will plummet. Meanwhile, those who crave fresh, ripe produce in winter or share the Japanese reverence for a perfect piece of fruit find that Oishii strawberries are already excellent value.
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Photo Credit: Oishii
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