Glastonbury Aquaponic Food Producer Named Top Social Enterprise Business
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Fresh Farm Aquaponics, a Glastonbury startup that uses water-based systems to grow produce and fish, has won the top award in the annual reSET Impact Challenge for social enterprise businesses.
Fresh Farm won $20,000 and a package of services from reSET, a nonprofit Hartford group known as the Social Enterprise Trust, at an event Thursday night. The company previously received $10,000 from Connecticut Innovations.
Fresh Farm’s business model includes education, along with a sharp attitude about change that’s common among social enterprise companies.
“Tech companies are too focused on faster cat videos and not enough on the glaring problems facing humanity. We wanted to work on cutting edge technology that actually made a difference,” Fresh Farm says on its website.
Movia Robotics, a Hartford company that helps children with autism, and Planet Fuel, a Fairfield organic juice producer, each won the $10,000 second-place prize.
Hartford Prints!, a downtown letterpress business, and ParrotMD, a UConn student startup with a system to help illiterate patients take medications, each won a $5,000 prize.
The awards this year were open to businesses from outside of Connecticut as reSET, with its offices in Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood, seeks to expand. BookBugs, an online children’s bookseller in West Lebanon, N.H., won a $1,500 prize based on an online vote.
ReSET was the chief advocate of a 2014 state law allowing formation of benefit corporations, which are set up with specified social goals in their charters. Earlier this year, the group won a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
