Jay Willmot, CEO and founder of Haven Greens farm, in King City, Ont.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The idea for Haven Greens came from a business professor’s prompt: Find something that annoys you. For founder and chief executive officer Jay Wilmot, that was the lacklustre lettuce he found in Canadian supermarkets. “I was getting really sick and tired of old slimy lettuce.”
Mr. Wilmot grew up on the very farm in King City, Ont., where he now grows lettuce. At Dalhousie University, and while practising law, he discovered a passion for sustainability. Combining that with his disdain for wilted lettuce sparked an idea: a five-acre indoor lettuce farm.
While growing lettuce in a greenhouse isn’t novel (over 43 million pounds of it was grown indoors in 2022, according to Statistics Canada), the way Haven Greens does it is.
The greenhouse operates year-round through a completely automated process, from planting to packaging. The operation is so technologically complex that Eric Highfield, the farm’s chief agricultural officer, says, “It’s like a Lamborghini for growing lettuce.”
Haven Greens’ automation model, which uses some AI and tracks data on how to optimize lettuce growth indoors, is an early indication of how new technology can innovate agriculture.
Haven Greens also supplies restaurants in Boston and New York, but the company is phasing that out because of too much demand from consumers closer to home.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The technical operation is run by Mr. Highfield. By trade a horticulturalist, he says the level of automation at the farm makes him “a professional problem solver with more of a side habit for horticulture.”
He added, “There’s a different piece of equipment that malfunctions every day, and we’re really good at coming up with solutions on the fly because this is a perpetual motion machine for growing lettuce.”
Artificial intelligence is used sparingly, and Mr. Highfield says they’ve just scratched the surface of its potential use in farming. It’s mainly used to sort the vast amounts of data they collect on both a macro and micro level. They track the weather and temperature to ensure the greenhouse conditions are optimal and for each of their 30,000-plus gutters – which hold about 10 pounds of lettuce each – there’s a unique data profile, allowing them to improve quality with every new crop.
This large data collection, according to Mr. Highfield, is how they’ve managed to perform “like an operation that is five, six, seven years into cultivation rather than 13 or 14 months.”
Haven Greens harvests about 1,300 gutters or 12,000 pounds of lettuce a day, processing one gutter every 20 seconds.
A bale shaver tops layers of peat mix into troughs that will be seeded with lettuce.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Its first harvest was in March, 2025, and by May that year its products were sold in Metro locations across Ontario. Haven Greens has since secured shelf space in major grocers from coast to coast, including Costco, Sobeys, Giant Tiger and others.
The buy-Canadian movement – triggered after the U.S. placed wide-ranging tariffs on Canadian exports last year – helped secure distribution, but Mr. Wilmot says their product appearing on the shelves of major stores was inevitable.
He’s not worried about buy-Canadian enthusiasm fading. “The number one key to getting traction with any retailer: You have to have a good product.” he said.
Haven Greens even supplies restaurants in Boston and New York, but Mr. Wilmot says they’re phasing that out. There’s too much demand from consumers closer to home.
According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, in 2024 Canada was the second-largest importer of lettuce in the world, with the vast majority coming from the United States. Data from Statistics Canada, though, show the amount of domestically grown lettuce is growing. In 2025, it reached more than 54 million pounds, an increase of around 9 million from the year prior.
Lettuce on a conveyor before being packaged. The greenhouse operates year-round through a completely automated process, from planting to packaging.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Youbin Zheng, a professor at the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Sciences, says Haven Greens’ model has the potential to replace imported greens, and other greenhouses are catching on. Shortly after Haven Greens came into operation, Vision Greens, an indoor vertical farm in Welland, Ont., began to automate their processes.
“If you look at Canadian greenhouses, the growers are really welcoming automation,” he said.
Haven Greens’ automation process means that the lettuce doesn’t need to be handled by people, which Mr. Wilmot says allows them to have a “truly clean product.”
King City is located about an hour’s drive north of Toronto. Like Mr. Wilmont, most of the labour lives in the Greater Toronto Area. He says they employ about 60 full-time people. Fewer workers are required than in a typical greenhouse, but the labour they do have is a lot more specialized. Still, he says the savings far outweigh the costs.
These savings and their proximity to market are how they’ve managed to make the operation economical. “The first rule of business is location, location, location,” points out Mr. Wilmot.
Haven Greens' products are sold in Metro locations across Ontario and the farm has since secured shelf space in major grocers including Costco, Sobeys, Giant Tiger and others.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Being right outside of the GTA has allowed them to keep shipping costs to a minimum. “All of the major distribution centres for Canada’s large retailers are within a one-hour drive of us.”
Although not profitable yet, Mr. Wilmot says they’re well on their way, with a goal of 2027.
Haven Greens already has expansion plans in the works: another five-acre greenhouse located just steps from their first building. To expand beyond that, though, they will have to look elsewhere, a process Mr. Wilmot says they’ve already begun. The importance of location is top of mind, though.
He thinks that Haven Greens’ model has the potential to take a big chunk of the market. “It’s not gonna happen tomorrow, but by the end of my professional career, I would like to turn around and say you know, we made a good dent.”