Urban Farm Shops combine Dutch greenhouse technology and food retail in one

The Hague, the Netherlands, 11 February 2026 - LocalDutch, a The Hague-based agri-tech and food retail company, is ready to roll out a Dutch-grown model with a local result: a standardised, scalable model that integrates on-site food production with direct-to-consumer retail and local delivery in a single location. Reducing transportation costs, food waste, and operational complexity.

The Dutch company calls the Urban Farm Shops the “LocalDutch Shop”: a compact set-up that combines controlled-environment agriculture with a neighbourhood-facing retail model. The ambition is straightforward and scalable—produce fresh vegetables year-round, sell them locally, and build a social meeting point around food that is grown in the community. That local focus matters in parts of the United States, the Caribbean and Africa where fresh produce can still be hard to access and supply chains often rely on long-distance transport.  

Revenue is generated through direct retail sales, Community Supported Agriculture (SCA) memberships, and last-mile delivery partnerships, allowing flexibility per local market while maintaining a consistent operational backbone. Arne Spliet, co-founder of LocalDutch. “What we are bringing to the United States is truly Dutch technology, applied in a way that is both effective and easy to scale. In a sector where skilled greenhouse climate specialists are scarce, our system automates much of that work. That helps ensure consistently successful local production—and that is exactly what many communities around the world urgently need.” 

A major barrier for high-performing greenhouses is expertise: keeping a stable, optimal climate requires specialist knowledge, and those professionals are scarce. LocalDutch says its answer is automation. Its system uses an autonomous climate “autopilot”, managed centrally through AI and cloud services, so individual locations can run consistently without relying on rare in-depth climate specialists on site. https://localdutch.nl/  

Read more about their story, background in the greenhouse sector and ideas how to bring affordable fresh food in many different places, on Stories of Purpose: