Photos by Ella Manthey
When Neon Greens opened in March 2024, its proposition was almost disarmingly simple: Come in for a salad, and you can see where the greens are grown on-site.
Look through the restaurant’s windows and the farm is right there: a hydroponic growing operation producing greens just steps from the kitchen. The system can grow roughly 330 heads of lettuce a day, year-round, in a footprint owner Josh Smith says is equivalent to about six acres of produce growing in just 800 square feet.
But as Neon Greens has moved beyond its startup phase, Smith is increasingly focused on what happens when the restaurant-and-farm model becomes a business platform.
The restaurant has expanded deliberately, moving from salads into grain bowls and wraps only as its team was ready to handle the additional operational capacity. Its menu remains scratch-made, with ingredients chopped, roasted, and prepared in-house, while quarterly seasonal collaborations give the kitchen room to experiment.
Then there is Biscuit Town, the weekend breakfast sister concept that began as an experiment during Neon Greens’ first slow winter and evolved into a substantial second revenue stream. What started as a ghost kitchen eventually became a recurring weekend operation, an offering at Energizer Park, and a way for the company to extend into breakfast catering.
That willingness to experiment with intention is central to Smith’s philosophy. His guiding principle is intentionality: understanding why you are doing something, understanding the story you are telling, and using that purpose as a filter for business decisions.
That philosophy is now shaping the next chapter. Smith sees significant potential for urban and indoor agriculture in St. Louis, but he is skeptical of growth for growth’s sake. He points to the challenges faced by venture-backed hydroponic companies that built large-scale operations without first establishing enough demand or distribution. For Neon Greens, the strategy is different: grow into known demand, build operational capacity gradually, and let the business prove out what comes next.
The goal, he says, is to bring Neon Greens to more of the St. Louis metropolitan area over the next five to eight years, ultimately giving more people access to fresh, delicious food.
That vision extends beyond the restaurant itself. Smith is already talking with major players in St. Louis’ agtech community about how the region could build a more collaborative urban agriculture ecosystem. For Neon Greens, the opportunity is not simply to grow more lettuce. It is to help people reconnect with the food system, and potentially position St. Louis as a place where agriculture, technology, hospitality, and entrepreneurship intersect.
Neon Greens has now moved beyond the startup phase. What have you learned about making a hydroponic farm and restaurant operate as one business?
Intentionality. We don’t make decisions unless there’s a strong reason behind them. My biggest advice to future restaurateurs or business owners is: “Know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and know why you’re telling the story you’re telling.” When you have that as your north star, you can check every decision against it. That’s been a big key to our success here.
Your background was in storytelling and set design. How has that experience influenced the business?
I worked in film and television as a set designer. It sounds very different, but it’s actually very similar. You’re creating a tangible physical product that has to be ready at a certain time. It’s meant to communicate an idea, and it’s part of the storytelling for the whole thing. You often have the same resources: time, money, and people. You have tight deadlines, tight margins, and tight turnarounds.
The menu has expanded significantly since opening. Tell us about that evolution.
We started with salads. We expanded slowly, first into grain bowls and then wraps. That was part of the strategic plan, but the slow expansion was based on making sure operationally we could accommodate the next layer of complexity.
When you add a warm grain mix and warm toppings, that makes things more complicated operationally. Then you add wraps, and that’s a whole other thing. We wanted to give our staff the time and space to get there.
The seasonal menu also gives Neon Greens an opportunity to collaborate with other St. Louis chefs. How did that become part of the concept?
Our seasonal menu changes quarterly, and we have a collaborator we work with for each one. Usually, it’s a restaurant partner or a chef partner. A lot of it comes down to, “How do we make this work? Can we cross-utilize ingredients? What’s going to be in season?” It all sort of builds from there.
Your current seasonal menu includes the Sado Salad, a collaboration with Nick Bognar of Sado and Indo. What did you want that collaboration to bring to Neon Greens?
Nick wanted to do something reminiscent of a side salad you’d get in a sushi restaurant, something with a very Japanese feeling. We use our greens with shaved radishes and sweet potato for some fall flavor, and the star is teriyaki chicken. We roast the chicken breasts ourselves and then marinate them in a teriyaki sauce we make in-house from scratch.
Then there’s a miso-ginger vinaigrette, furikake, and what we call a Sado crunch, which has fried rice balls and oats. It’s almost like a savory Japanese granola. It’s got a lot of texture and flavor going on.
What do you like about bringing other chefs into the Neon Greens experience?
I think it’s really fun because you get to see how somebody else approaches the same ingredients and the same format. We’re able to take what we’re good at and combine it with what they’re good at. It gives us an opportunity to experiment, but it’s also a way to connect with the broader St. Louis food community.
Are there collaborations or seasonal dishes you’re already looking ahead to?
I’ve been working on the next seasonal menu, and we might be doing a biscuit panzanella. That’s a fun collaboration because it has some overlap with Biscuit Town.
Working with bread is actually really complicated for a salad restaurant. It has to be crusty enough to hold up, but it can’t just be a crouton. We’re still figuring out exactly how to make that work, but it’s the kind of thing we’re excited to experiment with.
Is there a dish on the menu right now that you think particularly captures where Neon Greens is in this moment?
That’s a hard one because they’re all great. I really like the Sado Salad. I love the seasonals because we’re so used to the non-seasonal items. Of the year-round dishes, I’d say my favorite is the Seeded Wedge. It’s a plant-based wedge salad, but it has more layers and flavors. It’s really nice.
The Mojo Verde Bowl is really good, too, and the ‘Shroom Shawarma Bowl is great. It’s hard to pick just one.
Biscuit Town is another example of that menu evolution. What began as an experiment became a real part of the business.
The first winter we were open was a little slow. Our name hadn’t gotten out yet, and it was a difficult winter with lots of ice and snow. We had some extra time, so I said, “Let’s come up with a ghost kitchen concept and see how it works.”
Andy, our general manager, had a great biscuit recipe and a pastry background. We started the ghost kitchen, and suddenly, with the smell of bacon wafting down the street, people started coming in. We had to turn it into a real thing.
It’s become our breakfast offering, and it also allows us to do breakfast catering. Between Neon Greens and Biscuit Town, we can really offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner catering.
Tell us more about how catering has become a bigger part of the business. And how much room do you see for growth there?
It’s grown to be more robust, and it’s something we’re continuing to work on. We’ll get $1,000-plus catering orders a day before they’re due, so we’re flexible. With growth at Neon Greens, the ability to cater farther out into the county, into Clayton, you name it, will be an incredible way to share what we believe in.
What do you see as the opportunity for urban agriculture in St. Louis?
I think urban agriculture has an opportunity to grow a huge amount. There is space available, even here in the city, and there are lots of incredible organizations doing urban farming.
When it comes to urban indoor agriculture, there are warehouses and many other opportunities. The only hurdle is capital. If you think about a city that is invested in agtech, I think there’s an opportunity to complete the loop and invest in urban or indoor agriculture.
All that we want at Neon Greens is to give people more opportunities to be in touch with the food that they need. I think there’s an opportunity with regional stakeholders to build a bigger, better version of what we do here in a more collaborative sense.
So, what does growth look like for Neon Greens?
There’s certainly room for growth for us, and it’s on the horizon. The goal is that, in at least the next five to eight years, we’ll have a lot more of the St. Louis metro area and be able to have a tasty salad that was harvested minutes before it reaches the customer.
What has St. Louis uniquely offered Neon Greens?
People here get very excited about food. We’ve experienced a lot of what we call “raving fans” — regulars who are fanatics and love the product.
Beyond that, there’s the business district ecosystem and The Grove. The neighborhood has changed a lot in the past three years, with a lot of new investment and growth, and we’re happy to be part of that.
St. Louis also has a great bank of professionals when it comes to agricultural endeavors. Everyone who works in our farm has degrees in varying sciences that contribute to their expertise. I think it would be hard to find that anywhere else.
Nearly three years in, what does success look like now?
For me, it’s still about connecting the dots from seed to plate for every diner who comes in here. We’re telling a story about food and where it comes from and getting people more engaged and excited about that.