Farmacy Is Bringing the ‘Farm’ Inside Urban Spaces in Hong Kong
This green, impact-focused, smart-living tech company has a decentralised approach to building a new food supply chain
12 September 2026
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Farmacy is a green tech company in Hong Kong that is taking a decentralised approach to food supply chains | Photo credit: Farmacy
Farmacy is a green tech company in Hong Kong that is taking a decentralised approach to food supply chains | Photo credit: Farmacy
For hotels and restaurants, the freshness of ingredients is an important factor that directly affects the quality of their dishes. At the same time, farmland is limited in urban areas. In fact, Hong Kong grows almost none of what it eats: its fresh vegetable self-sufficiency ratio has sat in the single digits since the 2000s, last recorded at just 1.82%, with over 90% of all food imported. The longer food travels, the more it loses in freshness, flavour, and nutrition, and the more waste and emissions it generates along the way.
Farmacy, a green tech company from Hong Kong, is tackling the challenges facing urban food systems with a unique approach.
Raymond Mak, Co-founder and CEO of Farmacy | Photo credit: Farmacy
Raymond Mak, Co-founder and CEO of Farmacy | Photo credit: Farmacy
Launched in 2018, Farmacy developed the Smart Mobile Farm, a system that can be installed in restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, schools, offices, and other locations. Using technology to create and manage an optimal growing environment, it lets users grow the vegetables and produce they need, where they need them, and harvest them exactly when they need them, an approach the company calls ‘decentralised farming’. In an interview with Saladplate, Raymond Mak, Co-founder and CEO of Farmacy, shares how this could transform the way foodservice sources fresh produce, while creating new opportunities for sustainability, culinary creativity and customer engagement.
A Smart Home For Plants
Silver beef wagon | Photo credit: Raffles Singapore
A single unit of the smart mobile farm is roughly the size of a vending machine | Photo credit: Farmacy
A single unit of the smart mobile farm is roughly the size of a vending machine | Photo credit: Farmacy
Raymond Mak describes the Smart Mobile Farm as a smart home for plants. Inside each unit, temperature, humidity, light, light spectrum, water pH, and nutrient levels are controlled according to the vegetable being grown, drawing on a database of more than 100 varieties to optimise conditions for each species. Hotels and restaurants typically draw on around 30 to 40 of these, including salad greens, microgreens, edible flowers, and herbs. The system is modular: the basic model is about a square metre in size, roughly the size of a vending machine, and units can be combined for larger operations. The farms operate in supermarkets, restaurants, hotels, shopping malls, homes, offices, and schools across Hong Kong. By placing a farm close to the kitchen rather than routing produce through collection, transportation, and storage, Farmacy addresses the quality loss inherent in conventional supply chains.
The unique idea here is to make use of unused urban space for agriculture. Hong Kong, with a population of more than 7 million and limited land availability, faces significant space constraints. This technology could also work in other land-scarce cities, such as Singapore.
Turning a Mobile Farm Into a Private Garden and a Customer Experience
Mak tells us that the Smart Mobile Farm has three main purposes. First, it allows restaurants and hotels to have their own private on-site garden, where they can control the quality and availability of the ingredients they grow using Farmacy’s optimised technology. The second purpose is customer engagement. When a farm is located where customers can see it directly, restaurants and hotels can visibly demonstrate their commitment to sustainability, freshness, and traceability, strengthening their brand image in the process. Thirdly, it allows a venue to involve consumers in the experience; customers can harvest their own vegetables rather than simply being served a meal, making dinner more hands-on and memorable. Together, these functions are what give the Smart Mobile Farm its USP.
At restaurants that have partnered with Farmacy, guests could harvest their own vegetables, turning a meal into an experience | Photo credit: Farmacy
At restaurants that have partnered with Farmacy, guests could harvest their own vegetables, turning a meal into an experience | Photo credit: Farmacy
What Inspired Farmacy’s Founding?
The idea behind Farmacy began with a simple question: could technology bring fresh produce closer to where it’s consumed?
The seed of that question was planted years earlier. Before founding Farmacy, Mak who travelled frequently for work was volunteering in a rural area of mainland China, he was served a meal of rice and vegetables, better, he says, than anything he’d had at leading hotels and restaurants. He asked why. A villager told him simply: they grew the vegetables in front of their house.
The experience prompted Mak to consider the contrast between food production in rural areas and the supply chains serving highly urbanised cities. This led Mak to explore whether technology could bring food production closer to the point of consumption. That idea became the foundation for Farmacy and its decentralised urban farming model, which enables hotels, restaurants and other businesses to grow selected produce within urban environments.
SEED by Farmacy | Photo credit: Farmacy
SEED by Farmacy | Photo credit: Farmacy
A System That Enables Everyone to Become a Farmer
When people think of urban agriculture, many may imagine huge warehouses equipped with multiple layers of shelving for growing. Farmacy’s vision is quite the opposite. Mak believes that simply creating a huge centralised farm and distributing produce from there to various locations would not benefit the existing supply chain. That is why Farmacy’s model is to distribute the farms themselves across the city.
“We are one of the few companies, perhaps the only one, working on fully decentralised farming,” Mak says. While others install farms in offices, Farmacy extends the model across supermarkets, schools, restaurants, hotels and even private homes, aiming to build a food network that runs through the entire city.
Farmacy’s partnerships range from hospitality and retail,to corporate and commercial spaces | Photo credit: Farmacy
Farmacy’s partnerships range from hospitality and retail,to corporate and commercial spaces | Photo credit: Farmacy
From a Network to a Food Ecosystem
Farmacy’s model goes beyond installing individual farms. Its aim is to create a connected food ecosystem in which urban farming becomes part of how food is produced, supplied and consumed. The model is already being implemented in Hong Kong. At Le Méridien Hong Kong Cyberport, Farmacy’s Smart Mobile Farm enables the hotel to grow fresh produce on-site for its culinary operations. Supermarket City’super has adopted the units in its stores to offer customers freshly harvested greens straight from the aisle.
Beyond hospitality and retail, Farmacy’s mobile farms have expanded into corporate and commercial real estate, such as the offices of Meta, Edrington, Freshfields, and UBS, as well as at landmark residential and commercial developments such as The Henderson, One Innovale, and Landmark South. These installations not only yield ultra-fresh produce on-site but also engage and educate tenants, staff, and visitors while providing an agri-wellness experience.
They also see their farms as a source of culinary inspiration, best experienced through a visit to SEED by Farmacy, their restaurant at Cyberport. Its Smart Farm Lab harvests vibrant greens at peak freshness, forming the core of the menu, but SEED by Farmacy goes beyond simply serving ESG-driven, farm-to-table food. It invites guests to be part of the process, handpicking fresh herbs for cocktail workshops and joining hands-on experiences built for private gatherings, team activities, and celebrations.
Urban farms at Le Méridien Hong Kong Cyberport | Photo credit: Farmacy
Urban farms at Le Méridien Hong Kong Cyberport | Photo credit: Farmacy
Beyond Hong Kong
Farmacy’s next step is to deepen its existing partnerships in Hong Kong while exploring opportunities to bring its model to other highly urbanised cities. The company has already established a joint venture in Melbourne, Australia, and is targeting expansion into Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore. Farmacy sees underused urban spaces as potential sites for food production and deliver both operational and commercial value for businesses.
Photo credit: SEED by Farmacy
Author: Satomi Nakamura
Satomi Nakamura is a freelance writer based in Tokyo and Singapore, covering food, travel, and culture. She focuses on local gastronomy and hospitality, exploring the relationship between food, place, and community. Her work highlights terroir-driven dining and emerging trends in the global F&B industry.
Additional reporting by Priyanka C. Agarwal