Ryan Oates is the owner of Tyger River Smart Farm, a 13,000 square foot hydroponic farm located in Reidville, South Carolina. Founded in 2012, Tyger River provides local restaurants, markets, and consumers with the highest quality sustainable hydroponic produce available in the area.
In this interview we asked Ryan to share about his journey building a hydroponic farming business, the challenges he’s learned from, and his advice for people interested in emulating his success.
To start, why don’t you tell us your story? How did you get into farming?
As a kid I had a real interest in plants. I liked spending time in the yard working with my mother. So I ended up majoring in biology in college, with an emphasis on botany. I then went on to study in a botany department in graduate school. I liked the idea of being a professor, but by the time I finished, I really felt academia was not for me. So instead, I spent at least the next decade making a living in commercial woodworking.
I always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to start my own business. When you’re working for someone else, you can’t help but fantasize about your hard work directly benefiting you on a personal level. Well, a cousin of mine got us started on the idea of hydroponics and I was fortunate my mom already had a small greenhouse. My mom went and visited a nearby farm who had a hydro system, and it was like, hell, we could do this.
After a fair amount of research, we decided to go with AmHydro, and that’s one of the best choices we ever made. Obviously the equipment works wonders, but more than that, the hands on support was a tremendous help
Was it tough to get started?
In some ways, we were lucky to get in at a great time. A decade ago, the local food movement was really getting a foothold out here. Organic was big. People were thinking about food. Restaurants wanted to buy local. After a few years of operating my mom’s small greenhouse, we realized that our local market could handle even more than we were producing, so we expanded.
It was tough. I can’t tell you how much work it was. But we’re in a really good space right now, both as a team and economically.
What were some of the biggest challenges?
You know, I’m proud of our level of growth, but we’re still small – just five employees. When we expanded, I thought that bringing on employees would let me delegate and spread out some of the responsibilities. But when you have employees, you actually have more duties than if you’re solo. It’s a good problem, because there’s more work getting done; more plants grown and sold. But it’s a whole new ballgame.
I’m a grower, a plant scientist at heart. Managing employees isn’t naturally my strong suit. It’s been a challenge to learn how to run a business and manage people. For instance if you have challenges with personalities clashing, that can make a really big difference when it’s such a small group. Right now though, we’ve got a great group. This crew has a lot of maturity and dedication, and I don’t take that for granted.
How have you approached marketing? A lot of people want to grow, but learning to sell is a totally different challenge.
Listen, everything we do is a team effort, so I can’t take full responsibility, but I do want to brag on us. In our area, we have built a reputation as the place to get premier hydroponic lettuce and basil. So we do business on our reputation. People give us shout outs, refer us to others. They talk about how good the product is and how long it lasts, and I want to give AmHydro credit there. We have a mechanism in place to grow the best product in the area.
But just when we were getting started it was a lot of legwork. My mom started sending letters to restaurants, and our first customer was someone who responded to a letter. We started taking samples around to restaurants, local markets, got ourselves set up in the Greenville Farmers Market. We were fortunate to have some early doors open for us, but I feel it’s the quality of our product that is our best sales tool. And please know I suck at sales, so it must be the lettuce!
I think we’re in a really good place because we have several streams of revenue. For instance, when COVID shut down restaurants, it didn’t hurt us too bad, because people were flocking to grocery stores, and those accounts picked up.
I guess I’d just add that you need to learn to be selective in trying to develop customer connections. Some restaurants have a deep commitment to local and will go the extra mile or pay a bit more to get the best food they can. Others won’t, so don’t waste your time there.
What has it been like working with AmHydro over the years?
Well, he’s passed now, but Scott Kornberg was, I would say, instrumental in my early years. He was a mentor and became a friend. I’ll always have nothing but respect for him, and to me, he was AmHydro.
By the time he passed, we had been growing for a few years and were in the process of constructing our new faciltiy. Even though the system continued to be a core part of our success, I didn’t keep in touch with the company much. But your guy Rudy Clark-Luera has helped rebuild that connection. He’s given some great advice, and I absolutely trust what he tells me. Joe Swartz has also been a valuable source for problem solving issues I’ve had in the past. I finally got the chance to meet Joe when we hosted his Hydroponics Master Class a few months ago, and I really like the guy. I know that AmHydro has my back.
What is your outlook on the industry as a whole right now?
At one point in time, my vision for Tyger River was to have acres of greenhouses, moving trucks full of product, but then I saw these investors pouring hundreds of millions into facilities, I thought I could never compete. The local thing was going great, so I took a step back to focus on that. I feel like there is enough sales potential immediately around us to justify another expansion.
I saw these companies trying to grow, grow, grow, and it just felt weird. 30 acres, then 60 acres. The amounts of money being thrown around were staggering, and I felt like we were going to get stomped by these giants. I thought to myself, am I missing something here? How are they making this work? So to be totally honest, seeing some of these projects run into problems helps me feel that I’m not crazy. Obviously the business and investment knowledge is important, but it can’t be the overriding concern. It’s great that people want to invest, but it’s really about growing quality plants, and in a way that’s economically viable. I hope some lessons can be learned.
What would you like to say to people interested in getting into hydroponics now in 2024? Is it a good time?
We’ll I’d say it depends on your situation. What are your goals? Where are you located? What resources do you have access to? The opportunities are still there, certainly. The interest in whole food and local food is still increasing.
That all being said: Even assuming you’ve got great answers to all those questions, you’ve got to be ready to put in a ton of work; a lot of time. Farming is a lifestyle, not really a job. You can’t walk away from the farm for any extended period of time and expect it to go well. Plants need constant attention. The seasons change, the weather changes, and you’re always making tweaks.
For me, I wouldn’t have been able to do it early on without hands on support from my parents and the continued support of my family. The automation is excellent, and we were growing an excellent product pretty early on, but there’s still a lot of labor. We’re getting to the point where this has become a pretty good business. Our employees are making very good money, we’re doing well, but it takes a lot of personal effort.
If you’re ever in upstate South Carolina, check out Tyger River Smart Farm, and say hi to Ryan! And if you’re interested in building or expanding a hydroponic farm, check out some of the free resources available here on our website, or contact info@amhydro.com.
