Ranjot Singh Dhaliwal’s path to founding Sustainabite was built on pure grit. After realizing Canada’s supply chain robbed produce of its flavor, the immigrant entrepreneur faced a daunting hurdle: no credit history and no capital. His solution? The "long road." For three years, Ranjot worked grueling 16-hour days—balancing a 9-to-5 with driving Uber Eats until 1 AM. He saved every penny until he hit a $100,000 goal. Today, those late-night deliveries fuel a quiet vertical farming revolution in British Columbia. In this interview, Ranjot shares how that sacrifice is fixing a "broken" food system, starting with the most fragile crop: basil.

My journey to founding Sustainabite began in a farming family, where agriculture was part of daily life and I developed a deep connection to food systems early on. I hold two Master’s degrees, one in Agricultural Engineering and another in Environmental Engineering, which gave me both the technical foundation and the on-the-ground understanding of farming challenges.

During my first Master’s degree, I identified a real and costly problem in the field: whitefly infestations that were severely damaging cotton crops. I developed a cost-effective sprayer solution, and after graduating I turned that work into my first business. That experience shaped how I think. Take a real agricultural pain point, build something practical, and make it scalable.

After that, I worked in a government role within a crop residue management program, where I educated farmers on climate change and encouraged adoption of new technologies. Seeing firsthand how climate pressure was affecting farming communities and food systems had a lasting impact on me. It made me realize I wanted to work on solutions more directly.

I made the difficult decision to sell my business and move to Canada to pursue my second Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering at Concordia University. While living here, I noticed something that surprised me: fresh vegetables often looked great on the outside, but they lacked the taste, aroma, and freshness I associated with truly fresh produce. When I looked deeper, it became clear how much of the supply chain relies on long-haul transport and cold storage, which can reduce flavor and freshness by the time food reaches consumers.

That’s when I discovered vertical farming as a potential solution. But I also faced a harsh reality. As an immigrant with no credit history, capital was not accessible. So I took the long road. For three years, I worked a 9-to-5 job to cover living expenses, and then drove Uber Eats from 6 PM to 1 AM. Every dollar from Uber went into a separate savings account. After three years, I saved $100,000.

I invested everything into building my first vertical farm, with a clear goal: address food security by producing fresh, local food year-round. That’s how the company was born. From personal sacrifice, immigrant resilience, and a commitment to solving a critical problem in a way that can scale.

Canada’s basil supply is structurally broken. Despite strong year-round demand, most basil sold in Canada is imported because local production consistently fails under the combined pressure of shelf life, disease risk, and climate constraints. Importing isn’t a choice. It’s a structural necessity under the current system.

Basil has one of the shortest shelf lives in the produce category. Long-distance transport and cold storage preserve visual appearance, but they degrade aroma, flavour, and freshness. At the retail level, fresh herbs experience exceptionally high shrink, often exceeding 50 percent. Retailers end up paying for product that never sells, while consumers pay higher prices for food that looks fresh but isn’t.

The problem is compounded by disease risk. Basil is highly susceptible to fusarium and downy mildew, which spread rapidly through shared water systems. A single infection can shut down an entire facility, requiring deep sanitation and months to restart. Because of this, even large greenhouses often avoid growing basil despite consistent demand.

This problem affects everyone in the value chain. Consumers face high prices and poor quality. Grocery retailers deal with chronic waste and margin pressure. Local producers struggle to compete structurally. At a broader level, climate volatility and import dependence make fresh herb supply increasingly fragile. Basil is not just a niche crop problem. It’s a clear example of how perishable food systems break down under today’s supply chain and climate realities.

We address this problem by building a local, herb-focused production system and proving it first on basil, which sits at the extreme end of perishability and retail shrink. Basil is a required SKU for grocery stores and demand is consistently strong, yet it is rarely profitable under conventional supply chains. We chose basil deliberately as the starting point because if a system can handle basil’s shelf-life and operational constraints, it can be extended across the broader fresh herb category.

Our approach is operational rather than theoretical. By producing close to where the food is sold, we eliminate long-distance transport and extended cold storage, which are the main drivers of quality loss and waste. Local production allows us to remove multiple intermediaries from the supply chain. Instead of relying on brokers, distributors, and consolidation centers, we supply grocery retailers directly. That shortens the time from harvest to shelf, reduces shrink, and enables healthier margins across the value chain.

Our primary customers are grocery retailers. We already serve dozens of supermarkets. They benefit from consistent year-round supply, longer shelf life, and lower waste in one of the most challenging produce categories. Consumers benefit from better flavour and freshness, while cities benefit from more resilient local food supply for highly perishable crops.

The innovation is not vertical farming itself. It is a herb-focused system designed around shelf-life constraints and retail realities, combined with a disciplined operating model that prioritizes unit-level economics before scale. Basil serves as the strategic wedge. Demand for basil alone exceeds our current capacity, and proving reliability there creates a repeatable, city-by-city model that can expand naturally across fresh herbs.

Our technology is a crop-specific production system rather than a generic vertical farming setup. At the core is a hybrid aeroponic–hydroponic tower design that combines the stability of hydroponics with the root-zone oxygenation benefits of aeroponics. This allows us to maintain consistent plant health while increasing yield velocity, enabling weekly harvests rather than the bi-weekly cycles that are common in the industry.

A major reason basil is imported year-round is that it is extremely difficult to grow at scale without catastrophic losses. Even million-dollar greenhouses often avoid basil because a single diseased plant can spread rapidly through shared systems and wipe out an entire facility. This risk makes basil one of the highest-value herbs on the shelf, but one of the hardest to produce reliably.

We have developed proprietary biological operating protocols that fundamentally change this risk profile. These protocols are maintained as trade secrets rather than disclosed methods. In practice, they allow us to isolate and manage stress events without cascading failure, and prevent affected plants from dying at all. As proof of stability, we currently have basil plants in active production that are over two years old, which is highly unusual in commercial basil systems.

Energy efficiency is another key differentiator. The system is designed around crop-specific light geometry and utilization, minimizing wasted photons and unnecessary energy load. As a result, energy use is structurally lower than in typical vertical farms, with energy costs capped at roughly 10% of revenue at the unit level. This makes local production economically viable without relying on subsidies or speculative scale.

From an IP perspective, protection is in progress across hardware configuration, energy architecture, and biological operating protocols. As a bootstrapped company, I had to make a deliberate decision on capital allocation. A few months ago, I chose to reinvest profits into building a second production unit rather than pursuing patents immediately. That decision allowed us to double capacity and meet existing demand. Formal IP protection will follow as we continue scaling from a position of operational strength.

If we are able to scale in a meaningful way, the biggest impact will be on climate change. Highly perishable crops like basil are currently moved long distances through energy-intensive cold chains, and a large portion of that food is ultimately wasted. By producing locally near consumption, we reduce emissions from long-haul transportation and cold storage, and we also reduce the embedded emissions associated with food that is grown but never eaten.

Food waste is a major and often overlooked climate issue. When basil is discarded at retail due to short shelf life, all of the energy, water, fertilizer, and transport emissions tied to that product are lost. Scaling a local, reliable production system for these fragile crops directly reduces that waste and its associated carbon footprint.

A second major impact is on food quality and public health. Local production allows herbs to be harvested closer to the point of sale, resulting in produce that is fresher, more aromatic, more nutritious, and pesticide-free. This improves consumer access to higher-quality food rather than produce optimized primarily for transport durability.

At a system level, I believe the broader impact is proof that when vertical farming is designed and operated as an agricultural business rather than a speculative technology experiment, it can be both profitable and scalable. That matters because food security risks are increasing under climate pressure, and solutions need to be economically viable to endure. If done right, vertical farming can play a meaningful role in reducing emissions while strengthening the resilience of the global food system, starting with the most fragile and waste-prone crops.

We grow fresh herbs locally and supply grocery retailers directly on a recurring basis. We do not sell through distributors or brokers, and we do not rely on one-off project revenue. The model is built around consistent weekly supply of a required grocery SKU.

Our customers are grocery stores. These include independent retailers as well as regional grocery chains. Basil is a staple item for them, but also one of the most difficult categories to manage due to shrink and inconsistent quality. Because of that, the buying decision is driven less by marketing and more by reliability, shelf life, and waste reduction.

Customer response has been strong. Once stores onboard, orders are typically recurring and weekly, rather than transactional. Demand has consistently exceeded our production capacity, and we sell out nearly all harvested product each week. The relationship tends to deepen over time as retailers see lower waste and more predictable inventory performance.

Revenue is therefore recurring by design. Stores reorder weekly as part of their normal produce replenishment cycles, which creates predictable demand rather than one-off sales. This allows us to operate the farm based on real purchase orders, align production closely with demand, and maintain discipline around unit economics as we scale.

The immediate market we operate in is the fresh basil and herb retail market in British Columbia, which is roughly $50–70M annually. More broadly, the Canadian fresh herb retail market is approximately $250–350M per year, and the North American market exceeds $1.8–3B. We view this opportunity as a city-by-city import-replacement model rather than a centralized production play, with British Columbia serving as the proving ground.

The main growth drivers are structural. Consumer demand for fresh herbs continues to rise, while climate volatility and supply chain disruptions make long-distance imports increasingly fragile. At the same time, grocery retailers are under pressure to reduce shrink and waste in highly perishable categories, creating strong pull for local, reliable supply that performs better at the shelf.

The competitive landscape today falls into two main groups. Local brands such as Roots Organics and Evergreen Herbs grow basil locally for a limited summer window and rely on imported basil for the rest of the year, often packaging it in Canada. The other group consists of fully imported bulk basil supplied through long, cold-chain-dependent supply routes. In both cases, shelf life at retail is typically short, often two to three days, which drives high shrink.

Our differentiation is operational and visible at the shelf. Because we produce locally year-round, we offer basil with a shelf life of seven to ten days under normal retail conditions. Importantly, despite higher quality and longer shelf life, our basil is sold at the same consumer price point as competing products, typically around $3 per ounce. We are not a premium-priced product. Instead, we replace intermediary margins in the supply chain with the additional energy and operating costs of local production.

In approximately 70% of the stores we currently supply, our product has fully replaced competing basil SKUs on the shelf. That replacement has been driven by better consistency, lower waste, and improved freshness rather than pricing pressure. We see competition less as individual brands and more as the import-dependent system itself, and our focus is on proving that local production can win on quality, economics, and reliability at the same shelf price.

Over the next two to three years, our focus is on scaling in deliberate phases, moving from a founder-led operation to a fully scalable organizational structure. As we scale, the immediate priority is expanding our operational staff. We have already validated that the system can be run by entry-level operators with minimal training. The next step is formalizing these roles to remove me from day-to-day production entirely, allowing me to focus on business development and expansion.

In the near term, we are also increasing owned production capacity by adding containers until each unit is capable of funding its own replication. This allows us to meet existing demand, strengthen cash flow, and expand into additional fresh herbs once basil capacity is fully stabilized.

In the long term, rather than building every unit ourselves, we see a clear path to replicating the system city-by-city through partnerships with local farmers and operators. In this model, we provide the production system, brand, operating protocols, and retail relationships, while partners provide land and labor. This approach allows us to scale supply quickly without tying growth solely to our balance sheet.

We have been completely bootstrapped to date. The business was built and scaled using personal savings and operating cash flow, with a strong emphasis on proving unit-level profitability before introducing outside capital.

We have recently opened our first funding round. The primary purpose of this capital is to remove a few remaining constraints rather than to fund speculative growth. We’ll formally protect our intellectual property and build enough additional production capacity to fully meet existing demand from current grocery customers. Demand already exceeds our supply, and this round allows us to close that gap.

The goal is to reach a point where each new unit can largely replicate itself through operating profits, reducing long-term dependence on external capital.

At this stage, we are focused on finding the right lead investor who understands agriculture, capital discipline, and operational businesses. We are less concerned with maximizing valuation in the short term and more focused on partnering with investors who can support responsible, sustainable scaling of the platform.

I’m open to connecting with aligned investors who understand agriculture, operational businesses, and the importance of capital discipline. This is a business built around unit-level economics and real demand, and we’re looking for partners who value that approach over growth-at-all-costs narratives.

I’m also interested in advice from experienced farmer-operators who have scaled production systems and understand the realities of running agricultural operations day to day. Practical insight from people who’ve done this before is always valuable.

Finally, I’m open to conversations with strategic retail or scaling partners who see value in strengthening local supply for highly perishable crops and who are aligned with building reliable, city-by-city production models.

I can be reached via email and LinkedIn.