Oishii opens Open Innovation Center in Tokyo to advance vertical farming. Oishii, the company behind what it describes as the world's largest indoor vertical strawberry smart farm, opened its Open Innovation Center in Hamura, Tokyo, on August 5, 2026. The company said the facility is a first-of-its-kind research hub built to address core challenges in vertical farming, including scalable farming systems, productivity, sustainability, flavor, crop quality and cultivation technology for new fruit and vegetable varieties. Center builds on US$150 million Series C. The opening follows the first close of Oishii's US$150 million Series C funding round in May 2026 and marks another step in the company's planned expansion across the U.S. and Japan. Oishii said the center will support continued investment in robotics, farm infrastructure and production across both markets, drawing on nearly a decade of research and operating experience with its pesticide-free, non-GMO indoor produce. Japanese officials and Partners back the project. Oishii said it chose Japan for the center because of the country's expertise in agriculture and manufacturing, fields the company said underpin many of vertical farming's technical demands. Norikazu Suzuki, Japan's Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, spoke at the center's opening ceremony. "By combining Japan's exceptional crop varieties with the advanced technologies cultivated through its manufacturing sector, including robotics, and further enhancing them with emerging technologies such as AI, we can create unique value for the world," said Norikazu Suzuki, Japan's Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Oishii Partners with NTT on research projects. Some collaborative research is already underway at the center. NTT, an Oishii investor and strategic partner, is working with the company on optical approaches to pest and disease control and is exploring voltage-controlled refrigeration to extend strawberry freshness and quality. Hiroki Koga, Co-Founder and CEO of Oishii, said the center reflects lessons from the company's first decade of operation. "Building Oishii over the last ten years has given us a much clearer understanding of where some of the hardest questions in indoor agriculture lie," said Hiroki Koga, Co-Founder and CEO of Oishii. "The Open Innovation Center gives us a place to bring that experience together with people who have spent their careers approaching these questions from very different fields. There is still a lot we want to learn, and that exchange can push our work in directions we may not reach on our own." Oishii prepares first Japan commercial launch. Alongside the research center, Oishii is preparing for its first commercial launch in Japan, with sales expected to begin by the end of 2026. Founded in 2016, the company grows its Omakase, Koyo and Nikko strawberry varieties in pesticide-free smart farms in the U.S. and counts SPARX Asset Management, NTT, Yaskawa, McWin Capital Partners and Resilience Reserve among its investors. [adrotate group="4"]

A luxury strawberry brand is popping up in New York City - a dozen berries costs $100. Each perfect piece of fruit is hand-selected by a "berry sommelier." Published on August 20, 2026 * Vertical farming brand Oishii is opening its first retail location in New York City's Chelsea Market, on Aug. 20. * The kiosk will only be open for 10 weeks and offers fresh strawberries as well as non-edible merchandise and pastries. * Oishii's Connoisseur Grade Omakase berries, the top 1% of its Omakase variety crop, will be the star of the retail location. Berry fans that live in the Big Apple can rejoice, because Oishii - the vertical farm famous for bringing super-sweet Japanese-style strawberries to supermarket shelves - is opening its first-ever retail destination in New York City today. Situated in the main concourse of Chelsea Market, Oishii's kiosk will be open Thursday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., through Nov. 1. The berry company is piloting the retail format, with the potential to extend its operating dates through the holiday season. The milestone marks a major evolution for the brand, giving fans direct access to its rarest harvests, curated strawberry gift boxes, and culinary creations beyond produce. Prior to this opening, Oishii's products were strictly distributed through third-party grocery partners, including Whole Foods Market, Harris Teeter, Wakefern, and Giant Eagle. The brand has never operated a storefront anywhere in the world. Oishii first launched its Omakase berry in select NYC stores in 2018. Originally hailing from the Japanese Alps, the Omakase variety is known for its sweet flavor, almost creamy texture, and potent aroma. The vertical farm's retail debut will feature its prized Connoisseur Grade Omakase berries. These coveted strawberries represent the top 1% of the company's harvest and are the largest, sweetest, and most pristine pick of the crop. They are the same variety as the brand's original Omakase berries and are typically released in limited quantities. The brand describes them as "our original Omakase berry, presented at its peak expression," and each piece of Connoisseur Grade fruit is selected by Oishii's in-house "berry sommelier." Customers can purchase a pack of six Connoisseur Grade Omakase berries for $50 or a pack of 12 for $100. Both sets come packaged in delicate gift boxes. For visitors looking for a quick taste of its products, Oishii is also selling individual Connoisseur Grade Koyo berries - a vibrant, slightly brighter varietal with a balanced sweetness and refreshing acidity - for $10 apiece. To maintain peak freshness, berries will be delivered daily from Oishii's New Jersey farms. "This daily farm-to-market rhythm allows our Connoisseur Grade berries to arrive when their flavor, fragrance, color, and delicate texture are at their best," says chief executive officer and co-founder Hiroki Koga. Unlike many grocery store strawberries, which are often bred to have a long shelf life, Oishii's products are grown for peak freshness and the perfect bite. They're ripe when you buy them, and they should be eaten within a maximum of three days of purchase. The premium price tag on Oishii's fruit is a result of its unique growing process. The brand's strawberries are grown in indoor smart farms in New Jersey. Inside these pesticide-free environments, proprietary technology replicates the exact temperature, humidity, and breeze of peak Japanese growing seasons, complete with live bees for natural pollination. This indoor climate is designed to mimic the environment that the Omakase variety comes from in the Japanese Alps, re-creating the delicate fruit that's prized in its country of origin. Alongside its fresh fruit, Oishii will sell a curated selection of strawberry-flavored treats and lifestyle goods at the kiosk. Shoppers can grab Oishii Strawberry Yuzu Lemonade ($10), five varieties of Premium Preserves ($35 each), or merchandise like custom heavy-duty canvas totes and an Oishii x Kinto water bottle. Yoshie Nakanishi, the executive pastry chef at Michelin-starred Odo, has designed a selection of desserts for the retail location, including a Strawberry Cookie Sando with white chocolate cream and dehydrated berries ($7 each), a Strawberry Coconut Cream Puff ($10), and a White Chocolate Strawberry Parfait ($12). Oishii's kiosk will also offer cake and confection collaborations with Lady M, a brand famous for its crêpe cakes. To round out the selection at its first retail location, Oishii curated a collection of artisanal objects that celebrate the ceremony of gifting and serving exceptional fruit in Japan. Highlights include Jikko fruit knives from Osaka, a jade-green tray from Kyoto ceramicist Shigeji Noguchi, a celadon plate restored with traditional urushi kintsugi (the practice of repairing broken ceramics with tree sap and dusting the seams with gold or silver powder) from Hitomi Kohno, strawberry spoons from Tokyo's Kappabashi district, and hand-dyed tenugui wrapping cloths from Kamawanu and Musubi. While Oishii hasn't committed to a permanent storefront just yet, the Chelsea Market footprint serves as a trial run for what could come next. "We're treating Chelsea Market as an opportunity to learn," Koga explains. "For now, we're focused on making this experience as special as possible, listening to our guests, and seeing what unfolds from there."

Oishii Farm opens its first Japan R&D hub, and starts selling strawberries in the country it learned from. Japan taught the world how to grow food indoors. On 5 August 2026, a company built entirely outside Japan opened a research facility of its own inside the country and started shipping fruit to Japanese shelves. That's not how this story usually runs. In this article5 sections What happened. On 5 August 2026, Oishii Farm held the opening ceremony for its "Open Innovation Center" in Hamura City, on Tokyo's western edge. It's the US vertical-strawberry grower's first dedicated research and development facility in Japan, and the next chapter for a company Vertical Farming Events has been following since its Series C round. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike attended and framed vertical farming as one answer to two problems the prefecture keeps running into: unstable weather and a shrinking farm workforce. CEO Hiroki Koga said at the ceremony that although Hamura is formally a research site, it's already producing a meaningful volume of fruit, and some of that harvest will reach Japanese consumers before the year is out. Pricing and distribution haven't been announced yet. With this move, Japan becomes Oishii's third retail market after the US and Canada. Advertising Precision climate control for indoor agriculture HVACD systems engineered for airflow, temperature and dehumidification in high-density growing environments. Why Japan, why now. The timing tracks a real supply problem, not just a marketing opportunity. Japan's domestic strawberry supply has gotten shakier through the summer months as heat records keep breaking: 2025 was the country's hottest summer since national record-keeping began in 1898, and food prices rose more than twice as fast as the broader consumer price index that year. That's the specific gap Oishii's climate-independent, indoor-grown fruit is aimed at closing. Field-grown berries carry a separate kind of risk too, contamination rather than climate, a pressure that's shown up well outside Japan as well, as its coverage of Europe's 2026 berry recalls laid out. There's a policy angle too. Food tech, vertical farming included, is one of seventeen sectors the Takaichi administration has named as strategically important for growth, part of the same government roadmap Vertical Farming Events broke down in detail. That's not aimed at Oishii specifically, but it does mean the company is opening its Japan R&D hub into a policy climate that's trying to make this kind of investment easier, not harder. A Japanese-rooted company, investing back into Japan. Oishii's story is usually told the other way around: a New Jersey-headquartered startup applying Japanese cultivation know-how to the US market. CEO Hiroki Koga was born in Japan, worked there as a vertical farm consultant, then moved to the US for an MBA at UC Berkeley. He's described Oishii's founding goal as bringing Japanese fruit culture to American consumers. Hamura flips that flow: expertise that started in Japan, got built out and commercialized abroad, is now coming back to fund R&D infrastructure inside the country it came from. The crop choice fits the same pattern. Much of Japan's earlier plant factory generation was built on leafy greens, a low-margin, price-sensitive category that has driven a good share of the industry's well-documented startup economics problem. Oishii has stayed away from greens entirely and bet instead on the harder technical problem of pollinated fruit sold at a premium. Hamura's stated job is exactly that: breeding and cultivation research across hundreds of strawberry varieties, plus development of the sensors, climate control, and packaging equipment needed to keep scaling it. Where this fits in the bigger picture. On its own, an R&D center opening is a modest piece of news. But Oishii didn't arrive at Japan's plant factory sector from nowhere, and it isn't building in isolation. The country has spent sixteen years and a recent ¥4.6 trillion government commitment assembling the industrial base, standards bodies, and capital relationships that a foreign-flagged, Japanese-led company like Oishii now gets to plug into on its way in. Understanding what Oishii is walking into, and what it means that a company built abroad is now investing back into that base, is easier with the fuller picture in view: how this sector actually formed, how its best-known pioneers filed for bankruptcy and simply kept operating under new ownership, a different outcome than the collapses that have taken down CEA pioneers elsewhere, and what "standardization" concretely looks like for a newcomer trying to scale here. Vertical Farming Events has mapped that picture, sixteen years of it, in its independent research report, Japan's Plant Factory Standardization. It's the context this article assumes; Oishii's Hamura opening reads differently once you know what it's opening into. Further reading. Sources3 references