Hydro Lodge
The start to easily accessible local natural resource production in Canada
The Journey From Your Kitchen To The Community
Hydro Lodge is a portable, indoor food-growing system designed to make fresh, local produce part of everyday life. It combines soil-based and hydroponic growing into a furniture-grade unit that fits into homes, cafés, pubs, and community spaces.
Currently In Research And Development
It is designed for three places starting with food inside the places we already live, eat, and gather.
- For the Low-Income Family Home
- Furniture grade, hexagonal to fit in small spaces and still produce volume. The design target is 75 cups of produce per month, to sustainably reduce produce cost on a year round basis
- For the Café
- To grow unique, novel produce that sets a menu apart. Ethnic varieties micro greens and high-value leaves and flowers you can’t source from a distributor
- For Community Associations & Resource Centers
- Units as an education platform. Through plant tracking and workshops, centers can produce their own learning materials and community food programs.
Institutional Partners
Building Across North America
The baseline structure and code for the Hydro Lodge home units has been created. While I have worked with many institutions on this pillar, three partnerships have been instrumental
- George Brown
- Led supply chain research for regional production and sourcing. Their detailed analysis mapped logistics enabling flat-pack units under fifty pounds for scalable deployment
- Mohawk College
- Advanced community connection and plant tracking features within the app. Their work is now on our GitHub repository
- Northeastern University
- Leveraging established electrical impedance tomography for root imaging. Prototyping with Northeastern University a sensor to visualize and stream live root structure to an app
I contracted a prototype build of the physical unit. The result was a rough prototype that proves construction is possible and validates the geometry. Further refinement is require
Future Growth
Scaling What Hydro Lodge Proves in the Kitchen
Hydro Lodge is built to prove how a small space can model regional production. Each pilot tests what a community needs to feed itself and make locally, starting in the places we already gather.
Right now, both food and the materials needed to make products are imported. A small community cannot feed itself year-round, and a small maker cannot source raw materials locally without massive minimums and shipping costs.
Each Hydro Lodge pilot is built to test two things at community scale
- Regional food in miniature
- Year-round fresh produce grown in homes, cafés, and community spaces, tracked and shared through the Hydro Lodge app to supply homes and local food programs.
- Regional manufacturing resources in miniature — the natural fibers, dyes, oils, and base ingredients SMEs need to make and sell products locally, validated through the same units they will later source from.
I plan to use these early pilots to conduct infrastructure research for future physical locations across Canada, mapping what grows naturally in each region, what that community eats, and what that community makes. The pilots tell us what is viable before a hub is built.
From Baseline to Production
The Construct
The geometry is proven, the use case is validated, and the app is working
The next step is a production build and a live pilot. I’m looking for manufacturers and fabricators, app testers, pilot locations.
I want funding partners to support the build and pilot locations in low-income homes, cafés, and community spaces ready to host units.
To learn more, email Marguerite Apotre at hi@yoursweetspot.life
Thank you for your time and interest