After years of development and regional excitement, Food Market Row 7 Seed Company’s game-changing new vegetable, Sweet Garleek, is now available nationwide at Whole Foods Market stores across the United States. This national debut marks a major milestone for the company and its mission to revolutionize the food system by putting flavor, nutrition, and sustainability at the center of seed development.
Sweet Garleek is more than a novel addition to the produce aisle—it represents a collaborative model of innovation where plant breeders, organic farmers, and chefs co-create vegetables designed not just for yield or shelf-life, but for taste, versatility, and real-life cooking. Food Market The new allium variety joins Row 7’s growing portfolio of uniquely flavorful and thoughtfully bred vegetables that are now accessible to home cooks and professional chefs alike.
“Sweet GarleekFood Market is more than just a new vegetable—it’s proof that when chefs, farmers, and plant breeders work together, we can create ingredients that inspire entirely new ways of cooking and eating,” said Chef Dan Barber, co-founder of Row 7 Seed Company. “We’re thrilled to bring this innovation to Whole Foods Markets nationwide, making it accessible to home cooks everywhere.”
A Decade in the Making: The Story Behind Sweet Garleek
The journey of Sweet Garleek began over a decade ago with Dutch allium breeder Hans Bongers. While working with leeks, Bongers discovered an exceptional plant variety featuring clean, upright stalks and an unexpected but alluring flavor reminiscent of garlic. Food Market This distinctive characteristic sparked the interest of Row 7, a seed company founded in 2018 with the mission of breeding vegetables for taste through collaboration with chefs and farmers.
Rather than commercialize the crop immediately, Row 7 took a different approach. Over several growing seasons, they invited farmers and chefs across the country to grow and cook with the prototype. These feedback loops—between field and kitchen—are central to Row 7’s approach to breeding: vegetables are not finalized until they meet the high standards of both the soil and the plate.
The end result is Sweet Garleek—a vegetable that brings together the mild sweetness of a leek with the rich, mellow savoriness of garlic. Unlike traditional leeks, which often require discarding the fibrous tops, Sweet Garleek is entirely edible from tip to root. Its tender green tops and flavorful white base make it a zero-waste vegetable, perfect for sautéing, grilling, roasting, or even eating raw in salads or dressings.
Sweet Garleek’s flavor, culinary flexibility, and sustainability make it a standout allium, and a reflection of Row 7’s mission to rethink what vegetables can be.
Scaling with Purpose: Organic Partnerships and Flavor-First Farming
The successful nationwide launch of Sweet Garleek is also a triumph of logistics and collaboration. To scale the crop from small trial plots to Whole Foods Market shelves, Row 7 teamed up with a network of organic farms including Norwich Meadows Farm in New York and Lakeside Organic Gardens in California. These farms share Row 7’s commitment to soil health, biodiversity, and cultivating flavor through regenerative practices.
“The national availability of Sweet Garleek represents a milestone not just for Row 7, but for the entire movement to put flavor first in plant breeding,” said Charlotte Douglas, President of Row 7 Seed Company. “When vegetables taste this good, people naturally want to cook and eat more of them—and that’s a delicious way to impact both human and planetary health.”
This expansion is a testament to the idea that growing for flavor isn’t just possible—it’s profitable. In an era where consumers are increasingly looking for transparency, health, and sustainability in their food choices, Sweet Garleek delivers on all fronts.
A Growing Lineup of Flavor-Forward Vegetables
Row 7’s Sweet Garleek is not arriving alone. It’s part of a broader push to bring more of the company’s standout vegetable varieties into everyday kitchens via Whole Foods Market. These vegetables, like Sweet Garleek, have been co-developed with breeders, farmers, and chefs to ensure they exceed expectations on taste and performance.
Here’s a look at other Row 7 offerings now available or coming soon to Whole Foods Market locations across the country:
- Upstate Abundance Potato: This petite white creamer potato is a standout for its creamy texture and rich, nutty flavor. Its naturally buttery quality means it needs no added fat to be indulgent, making it ideal for boiling, roasting, or smashing.
- Badger Flame Beet: Forget everything you thought you knew about beets. This vibrant golden beet is bred for sweetness and mildness, eliminating the earthy bitterness that often turns people away. It’s a perfect introduction to beets for skeptics, whether raw, roasted, or juiced.
- Koginut Squash: This beautifully balanced squash, a cross between kabocha and butternut varieties, boasts a dense, velvety texture and deep, nutty flavor. With a built-in ripeness indicator (the skin turns bronze when it’s ready), Koginut takes the guesswork out of squash season.
- Honeypatch Squash: A mini butternut squash with a rich, honeyed flavor and high beta-carotene content, Honeypatch is both nutrient-dense and perfectly portioned for single servings. It’s tailor-made for small households or individual meal prep.
- Sweet Prince Tomato: Bursting with umami and sweet-sour balance, this small tomato is as good raw as it is cooked. It shines in slow-roasted dishes, sautés, and even sun-dried preparations—but it’s so flavorful you might just eat it straight off the vine.
Each of these varieties reflects years of research, experimentation, and shared belief in the potential of vegetables to elevate how we eat and think about food. They’re not just functional ingredients—they’re conversation starters, culinary inspirations, and symbols of a growing movement toward sustainable, delicious agriculture.
Redefining the Produce Aisle
Row 7 Seed Company’s approach represents a radical rethinking of how Food Market reaches our plates. Rather than treating seeds as commodities, the company views them as the starting point for culinary creativity and sustainable farming.
By collaborating directly with chefs who know what flavors excite diners and with farmers who understand what thrives in diverse soils and climates, Row 7 ensures that every vegetable it releases meets the highest standards for taste, nutrition, and environmental integrity.
Now, with Sweet Garleek and other standout vegetables reaching shelves nationwide through Whole Foods Market, more consumers can experience the flavor-forward difference firsthand.
In doing so, they’re not just buying produce—they’re supporting a model of agriculture that values flavor, transparency, health, and collaboration. And that might just change how we all cook, eat, and farm for the future.
