ST. LOUIS — St. Louis residents have been enjoying freshly cut lettuce in the Grove and are seeing the concept in action as a new vertical farm-to-table, quick-serve salad restaurant opened in March.

What You Need To Know

  • Neon Greens grows its own lettuce in a vertical hydroponic farming facility connected to the restaurant, located at 4176 Manchester Avenue

  • Three types of lettuce are grown in the 400-square-foot vertical farm at Neon Greens, including Green Oakleaf, Red Sweet Crisp and Mizuna. It can grow up to 6,500 pounds of produce annually 

  • A conveyor belt system transports the produce from the farm to the restaurant where guests can watch the process through a window near the ceiling

  • Menu items include signature salads, seasonal salads, build-you-own salads, soups, bread and herb-infused soft serve

Neon Greens grows its own lettuce in a vertical hydroponic farming facility connected to the restaurant, located at 4176 Manchester Avenue.

St. Louis native and owner Josh Smith has a mission to provide customers with the best crafted salads.

Since opening, he said Neon Greens has received community support.

“The response has been pretty overwhelming,” Smith said. “We’ve been a lot busier than I was expecting us to be, which has been really lovely.”

The concept came from Smith’s passion for fresh and flavorful ingredients. While at home during the pandemic, Smith experimented with growing vegetables hydroponically, and realized how much better tasting fresh produce is compared to store-bought.

“Our salads are made with the freshest lettuce you can get, making them better tasting and much more nutritious than what you’d find in most grocery stores,” he said.

“There aren’t many other concepts like this in the country.”

Three types of lettuce are grown in two 400-square-foot vertical farms at Neon Greens, including Green Oakleaf, Red Sweet Crisp and Mizuna. It can grow up to 6,500 pounds of produce annually.

A conveyor belt system transports the produce from the farms to the restaurant where guests can watch the process through a window near the ceiling.

The window also is a starting point for the conveyor belt system to bring lettuce into the restaurant that travels over the heads of diners before it arrives in the kitchen.

“As a radically transparent dining experience, we aim to engage customers in answering the question, ‘Where does my food come from?’” Smith said.

 

Menu items include signature salads, seasonal salads, build-you-own salads, soups, bread and herb-infused soft serve. 

Neon Greens is partnering with local chefs and restaurants to create a salad each season. For this spring, the restaurant partnered with Grace Meat + Three for a Thai barbecue salad for customers to enjoy.

Before opening up his own restaurant, Smith was a set designer for 10 years in New York City. He worked with the architect team from Studio DVLP to make his restaurant vision come to fruition.

“Between all of the technology and all of the storytelling and visual communication within the project, it was a learning curve, but I was uniquely well suited to shift into something like this,” Smith said.

Neon Greens is open for lunch and dinner daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Over the summer, Neon Greens will host pop-up dinners that will take place on the property’s harvest capsule.

In the future, Smith said he plans on hosting classes on hydroponics onsite as well.

For more information about the restaurant, click here.