Nerch: Steeped in tradition, grown for today

Our process: This March, our group explored the retail possibilities of the personal food computer and the Open Ag operating system with fresh plants, bikes, and hot tea. Our team, internally named “Nerch,” (an homage to the classic nature vs. nurture debate) approached this nature-meets-technology challenge as an opportunity to address system level solutions for distributed farming, and design for a future of more direct and transparent supply chains.

Inspired by the english enlightenment, we focused in on tea as our crop of choice — for reasons both practical and symbolic. Next to water, tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world, and is on the brink of a cultural “moment.” More people are drinking tea than ever before, and retailers are taking note. In addition to being easy and interesting to grow within a controlled climate, tea is also a beverage that spoke to our revolutionary social ideals. Tea has been at the center of revolutions, served to imperial courts and consumed by deep thinkers for centuries — it only seemed fitting that tea help us start a revolution in our current world of food.

More practically, we wanted to answer some key questions:

• How will potential customers react to hydroponic technology?
• How can we determine if it will create value?
• Will people think food grown under a hot pink light was natural?
• Will there be a connotation of health?
• How will our customers want to interact with this technology in a retail setting?

In order to answer these questions we built a mobile tea shop on a tricycle and took to the streets of Cambridge, MA. We used our bike to deliver three distinct retail experiences, offering hot cups of fresh picked mint tea in exchange for a conversation. We learned that people were curious and trusting about food grown in a computer. The majority of customers associated quality and nutrition with our product. They liked that the tea could be used to assist their personal health and loved the interaction of picking their own blend on the spot. We even rolled the trike out at night, to let the glow of our system’s light stand out. The pink hues brought a crowd and we were ready to expand on our research and test our concepts on a bigger scale.

These three concepts were further developed into three brick-and-mortar concepts, which we showcased as part of the MIT Media Lab’s Annual Open House Event. Inside “The Source” we offered customers a curated, personal experience inviting them to pick their own blends, improve their personal well being, and engage in communal discussion. At “Pnsch,” we brought the party vibe, celebrating a full-body interaction with how your plants grow. In a sense, each customer stepped into a life-sized food computer, altering it’s growing methods with every dance move they made. At “+/-,” the wires, lights and sounds of controlled climate growing technology confronted each guest. We emphasised the power of that technology to bring us a luxurious raw tea, a highly valued drink that is rarely drank outside extremely remote regions.

Not surprisingly, we found that people love tea! And more importantly, we learned that food computer technology can unlock new products and new experiences. Customers were thrilled by the connection of the pick-your-own tea experience, and felt at ease with the technology in a more “natural” and communal environment. At +/-, we discovered that customers are intrigued by the notion of raw tea and could see it as a new beverage altogether. Being able to grow tea from far away climates, and create scientifically superior products is an exciting frontier presented by food computer technology. At Pnsch, we took our customers on a journey to the fringes, to experiment with abstract notions of how to connect consumer inputs with production capabilities. We learned that the retail experience should be fun…. but people were less excited about controlling how their tea was grown, and more interested in tasty tea.

The Nerch journey continues at the CoLAB. We pushed ourselves to use tea to answer tough questions about technology, food and the human condition. In the future, we want to build on our insights and bring these types of new products and experiences to the world. The tea trike was a versatile testing platform that we see being a key part of our development. By deploying a fleet of trikes, we can continually test, and iterate to deliver the best, most personalized tea for each neighborhood. Our discoveries can inform our brick and mortar locations, which will offer a natural and welcoming place to connect and nurture us. For Nerch, Tea was an inspiring way to get started, but only scratches the surface of how we might farm in the future. If you’re interested to learn more or get in touch with us, find us @foodfuturecolab.