Greenfield’s Real Pickles is a real success story and a model for increasing energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy. Founder Dan Rosenberg and his wife Addie Rose Holland have run their business with social and ecological responsibility always in the forefront. Founded in 2001, their delicious, northeast-grown and -distributed fermented vegetable business outgrew its space at the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center (WMFPC) in 2009 and moved just across the street, with the owners converting a century-old building into a 100% solar-powered, energy-efficient space.
Key elements of their energy-efficient production space include super-efficient lighting, an on-demand, tankless, gas-powered water heater, and a high-efficiency walk-in refrigerator which uses outside air in the colder months. In 2012, more converting was underway, as Dan and Addie grappled with how to continue to grow their popular business without selling it to a large food corporation, as often happens with successful natural food businesses. In late 2012, Dan and Addie formed a worker-owned cooperative along with staff members, and financed the cooperative’s purchase of the business with a very successful community investment campaign that raised a half-million dollars.
