Vertical farming company Plenty today announced an expansion to 17 more Safeway stores across Northern California, as well as a new tech feature that lets shoppers text Plenty’s farmers directly.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the Northern California expansion is part of the multi-year deal between Plenty and Safeway parent company Albertsons. Through that deal, leafy greens grown in Plenty’s controlled-environment vertical farming facility in the San Francisco Bay Area get shipped to Albertsons stores up and down California. The goal is to eventually get plenty’s produce into more than 430 Albertsons stores, including those under the Safeway and Vons brands.

Simultaneous to this expansion is the launch of what Plenty calls its Text-a-Farmer feature. The tool functions much like its name suggests. A sign in the grocery store’s produce section will display a number users can text questions to. Those questions can be about anything related to Plenty’s produce, from “How should I store my greens?” to “Is your packaging recyclable?” Plenty farmers answer the questions in real time via text with the custom

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