Design Changemakers 2022: Jacob Pechenik and Zooey Deschanel Are Using Design to Spark a Food Revolution

Who: Jacob Pechenik and Zooey Deschanel, founders of Lettuce Grow
Where to follow them: Instagram at @lettucegrow

The spark for Lettuce Grow, a start-up company that inspires everyday people to grow their produce, may be familiar to many parents. Founders Jacob Pechenik and Zooey Deschanel became acutely interested in food when they were expecting their daughter Elsie, now 6. (Deschanel and Pechenik, who are also parents to Charlie, 4, have since divorced.) The family started eating organic and local, while Pechenik took himself down a self described “black hole” into food systems. What he discovered motivated him to leave behind his work as an executive film producer and start an organic farm in Austin. 

After running the farm for two years, Pechenik saw what small well-meaning farmers like himself were up against it. “The problem is our whole fresh food distribution model: It doesn’t work,” he says. “My small farm and all the other small farms weren’t going to work unless we changed the way we get fresh food to the people. Pechenik and Deschanel wanted to make a wider impact, so they founded The Farm Project, an umbrella organization with the stated goal to “reconnect people with food.” “We want to localize food systems by engaging consumers and helping small farmers,” says Pechenik.

Their goal took them down a surprising path. “I never once thought I was going to start a consumer product company,” says Pechenik, of Lettuce Grow’s Farmstand, a hydroponic home garden with a sleek, curvy design. However, the more he tried to solve the problems he saw, the more he thought, “All of these things just kept adding up and the crux of it was that consumers had to participate in the growing journey.” Here’s how Pechenik and Deschanel used great design to get people eating more locally and where they see design headed in the future.

Apartment Therapy: Tell me how, when, and why you got started doing what you’re doing? 

Jacob Pechenik: When I was running the farm, I discovered that the hardest part of farming wasn’t growing the product. It was getting it from the farm to the people. We had to harvest it, put it in a clamshell or plastic bag, ship it on a refrigerated truck — it could be more than 10 days old by the time anyone gets it at the grocery store, at which point it has lost a lot of its nutritional content.

I realized our whole fresh fruit distribution model doesn’t work. My small farm and all the other small farms weren’t going to work, unless we changed the way we get fresh food to the people. The question was, how do we eliminate all the waste? That’s where the concept of Lettuce Grow came from.

I thought, what if we started the baby plants at the farm. We send them to home growers, and our growers finish growing them on site. Then they only harvest when they’re ready to eat. That way the produce tastes amazing, and there’s zero waste.

AT: How did you design the Farmstand?

JP: When I came up with the idea, I had my engineering hat on, and I’m thinking, “How, how can we efficiently create a unit that would be easy to ship and assemble?” I came up with an initial prototype, and I had an engineering company put it together. When I went to go see it in real life, it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen. I was like, “How are we going to change lives and change mindsets with this?” 

Luckily, I was introduced to an amazing industrial designer, Pip Tompkin. I showed it to him; in turn, he showed me a couple concepts to make it look better, and one of them was very similar to what we have now. The beauty of the design really made an impact that I knew we needed to invest in. We were ready to go, but I saw that it would make more sense to go with a more design-forward product. It delayed our launch by a year, but it was so well worth it.

Zooey Deschanel: It’s basically like a piece of furniture, so it had to be beautiful and something people are proud to have inside their home or in their backyard. It’s also a conversation piece that changes based on what you have growing. 

AT: What would you say sets you apart from your peers? 

JP: From a design perspective, I think what sets us apart is that when we set out to solve a problem, we didn’t want to create more problems. We put a lot of focus on materials, like upcycling ocean-bound plastic wherever we can and making sure everything’s food grade and non-carcinogenic. We think about every part of our supply chain, and we don’t make compromises. A lot of that stuff is hard for the consumer to see, but it’s as important to the design as the lines and the aesthetic design.

AT: What legacy do you hope to leave?

ZD: I hope to inspire and empower people to make healthier choices by involving them in the process of growing their own food easily and effortlessly with the Farmstand. Our goal and hope is to reach everyone.

JP: We want to change people’s mindsets about fresh food. Ten years from now, every household should have something like Lettuce Grow, just like you’d have a refrigerator or a pantry. We have the technology and the ability to do it, and it makes sense in every single way.

AT: Any big plans for 2022 or beyond you can share with us? 

JP: We started this to help people have access to fresh produce. In 2022, we’ll be making that connection to lifestyle on our website and through our app, which will be making recommendations for what to cook based on what you’re currently growing. We’re also in the early stages of development of a smaller Farmstand aimed towards apartment dwellers. 

AT: What is inspiring you in the home/design/garden world right now? 

JP: Clever and innovative sustainable solutions — whether it be composting, solar energy, the use of green or sustainable materials, or the return to a more minimal lifestyle, in which we treasure well-made functional items that will last a lifetime and reduce our dependence on consumables. 

AT: Where do you see the design world going in 2022? 

JP: One of the key inspirations for Lettuce Grow was to create a new food solution which embraced design thinking. I think we’ll see more user-based thinking applied to sustainable solutions. Historically, design thinking has not been as involved as it should have been in sustainability, and this resulted in hard to use products that required a change of lifestyle. Recently, design and sustainability paths have crossed to provide affordable, usable, and aspirational products for everyone. Design thinking has allowed us to turn the corner. 

Interview has been edited and condensed.