The REWE rooftop farm Berlin at the chain’s Lankwitz store opened in May 2026, and it has already changed the geometry of grocery supply. Lettuce grown on the roof is cut, packaged by hand, and carried downstairs before most shoppers walk in. The distance from farm to shelf is measured not in miles, but in flights of stairs.
A farm built into the building from the start
The Lankwitz store was designed with the farm in mind. Skylights across the grocery floor let shoppers look up at what is growing directly above them. According to BioÖkonomie, the greenhouse covers 2,760 square metres and is the largest indoor farm in the German capital.
The growing system is hydroponic, meaning very little soil is involved. The greenhouse runs year-round, heated by waste heat from the store’s own refrigeration equipment and watered mostly by rain collected on the roof. Solar power provides part of the energy. Nothing the building produces goes to waste if the building itself can use it first.
ClimateScan reports that the cycle from planting to shelf takes just 23 days. That speed is a direct consequence of the closed loop: the supply chain is a staircase, not a lorry route.
‘We don’t even have an extra truck on the road that usually is necessary to transport the goods from the producer to the central distribution,’ said Leschke, the REWE project lead. The greens grown at Lankwitz are not sold only beneath the farm, either. They go to other REWE locations across Berlin and the surrounding region, extending the reach of a single rooftop.
What the REWE rooftop farm Berlin tells us about urban agriculture’s scale
Prajal Pradhan, an associate professor at the University of Groningen, has spent time studying exactly this kind of project. He and his colleagues examined how much of Europe’s vegetable demand could realistically be met by rooftop and ground-based urban farming. The figure they arrived at is up to 20 million metric tons per year, equivalent to around 28 per cent of the continent’s total. An earlier study by Pradhan found that Berlin alone could grow a substantial share of its own vegetable needs within city limits.
‘There is a disconnection between producers and consumers,’ Pradhan said. ‘This is a way to go forward, because you can provide fresh vegetables to urban consumers on site.’ For Pradhan, the REWE rooftop farm Berlin is a concrete example of what his research describes in aggregate numbers.
He does, however, want to be precise about what rooftop retail farming is not. Supermarket rooftop farms, in his view, are not a substitute for community gardens. Urban agriculture should be inclusive and bring a whole neighbourhood in, not function solely as a selling point for a retail chain. His co-author Stepan Svintsov, a remote sensing expert based in Berlin, made a similar point: ‘Getting people together from a dense city and sharing agricultural knowledge among them helps bring the community together.’
Right now, REWE offers outside tours of the Lankwitz facility, but production rooms are closed to the public. That boundary matters if the ambition is genuine community integration rather than a branded greenhouse visible from below.
Plans for expansion
Leschke has set a concrete target: at least 20 supermarket rooftop farms over the next 10 years, with at least one operational in every REWE region within five. The motivation, as he describes it, is resilience. ‘If we can produce in Germany year-round, we should,’ he said, pointing to the appeal of reducing dependence on supply chains that stretch across the world.
Whether community access keeps pace with commercial expansion will be worth watching. The Common Table noted the Lankwitz opening as part of a broader conversation about what urban food systems are actually for. For now, the farm is producing, the lettuce is fresh, and the staircase between roof and shelf remains the shortest supply chain in Berlin retail.
