Building a city of rooftop farms

At Lufa Farms, we’re on a mission to change the way people eat by growing food where people live and growing it more sustainably. To accomplish this, we built the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse in 2011 and more ever since. With each new urban farm, we hold ourselves to an ever-higher standard of sustainability and technical ingenuity growing dozens of vegetables, greens, and herbs hydroponically. We also partner with hundreds local farmers and food makers to provide our customers with thousands of products through our online Marketplace. Every week, we assemble customized baskets filled with fresh, local, responsible food and deliver them to our network of pick-up points across Quebec, or straight to customers’ doors.

A brief history of Lufa Farms

2009

Coming together

Our founding team was created: Mohamed Hage, an entrepreneur and engineer at heart, Lauren Rathmell, manager of plant science and farming, Kurt Lynn with decades of marketing experience, and Yahya Badran supervising construction and engineering projects.

2010

Our first rooftop farm

After knocking on many doors and being turned away by several building owners, we finally found the perfect fit. We started construction on the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse in the Ahuntsic borough of Montreal.

2011

Early days

Planting our first seedlings in February, we harvested the first veg later that year. We were growing 15 varieties of vegetables and delivered roughly 200 non-customizable baskets every week.

2013

And the construction continues

We built a second rooftop greenhouse in the Laval suburb of Montreal and got hundreds of local producers involved with the launch of our online farmers’ market: the Marketplace. Our weekly baskets became fully customizable with the in-house development of our e-commerce platform and warehouse logistics software.

2016

Finding our footing

We went through a growth spurt reaching over 10,000 Lufavores and our team nearly doubled in size to keep up. We also launched home delivery by electric car, and the company became cash-flow positive. A big year.

2017

Growing continues

We harvested the first crop from our third, largest, and most technologically advanced greenhouse to date in the Montreal borough of Anjou. With this latest greenhouse, Lufa Farms boasted 138,000 square feet of growing space.

2019

A new home

After outgrowing our Ahuntsic distribution centre, we moved our main office and warehouse to the Ville Saint-Laurent neighbourhood of Montreal. Once settled, we completely reinvented our packing system for better, faster, and fresher deliveries. In September, construction began on our fourth and the world’s largest rooftop greenhouse at this location.

2020

The arrival of the biggest, baddest greenhouse

In the spring we finished construction on our largest greenhouse to date. This 163,800 square foot greenhouse reached full production in August, doubling our production capacity going from feeding 1% to 2% of Montreal families. Grappling with the struggles of the pandemic, we came together and pushed through the incredibly high demand of Lufavores for local products delivered at home.

2023

Pushing forward urban ag

In the spring, we opened our first-ever indoor farm, transforming our Ville Saint-Laurent headquarters into a unique urban food ecosystem. This site now combines the world’s largest rooftop greenhouse, a brand new distribution centre double the size of our previous one, and an indoor farm - feeding thousands of customers each week.

2024

Our most high-tech greenhouse to date.

We completed the construction of our fifth and most technologically advanced rooftop greenhouse yet in Ahuntic’s Marché Central complex. Spanning 127,000 square feet, this state-of-the-art urban farm is predicted to increasing vegetable yields by up to 40% compared to our other rooftops, marking a significant leap forward in efficiency and technology for us.

What's next?
Our team is hard at work on new innovations to further improve sustainability, responsibility and improving availability.
Our vision is a city of rooftop farms.