The Plant

06/04/2026

Visit Whiskey Row Café, a popup coffee and sandwich shop on Sundays in the lobby of The Plant! The Packingtown Museum will also be open during café hours, stop by their grand opening this Sunday, make a day of it!

06/03/2026

Welcome Little Press to The Plant! Little Press is a small-batch Chicago coffee roaster. The name Little Press is inspired by the owner Dylan's graphic design background and the small scale of the operation. Beans are roasted and delivered by bicycle by Dylan across Chicago, rain or shine!

06/02/2026

Check out Bike a Bee in the news! After a massive number of bees swarmed a front yard in minutes, Jana came to the rescue to save the colony and educate residents on bee behavior, creating an unforgettable experience for the neighborhood. Click the link here to read the full story: https://bit.ly/3Qh4V2H

06/01/2026

Join Farm Sanctuary for their 40th Anniversary Celebration on Sat. June 6. Enjoy a special discussion with Farm Sanctuary President and Co-Founder, Gene Baur. Eats and drinks will include vegan hot dogs from Upton’s Naturals (a nod to Farm Sanctuary’s early days selling meatless hot dogs at Grateful Dead concerts), along with a variety of delicious plant-based bites from Meet Stop by SteMartaen! Grab your tickets at this link: https://bit.ly/3PF2s1W

A public tour of The Plant will also be offered, visit insidetheplant.com for tickets.

05/30/2026

In one week! Tour offering for The Plant, click the link below for tickets!
https://bit.ly/4dEYVK4

05/27/2026

Major cleaning operations underway on our first floor! Exciting new tenants are moving in, stay tuned for updates!

05/26/2026

Need space for your food business? South Side Cellars is a shared space with flexible lease terms at The Plant for your prep, storage, or other food production needs.

Interested? Email us at [email protected]

05/21/2026

We're excited to share that Lindsey's Ice Cream has expanded into The Plant! The weather will be summer-like next week, so stop by and pick up a pint of Hong Kong Milk Tea or Peachy Lychee Sugar Cookie, available at the Turtle Stop!

05/20/2026

Join Urban Eden Farms for an engaging in-person workshop all about growing plants without soil on Sat. June 20 from 10am-1pm!
Come ready to learn, ask questions, and get hands-on experience. Sign up at the link below.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hydroponics-101-tickets-1988953024036

05/14/2026

Beer + Pizza. Open at The Plant, check out the hours!
SomosMonos Cervecería

05/08/2026

Looking for opportunities? Businesses at The Plant are hiring, click the link below for more information!
https://bit.ly/4tp15lR

05/06/2026

New at The Plant: CTRL Kitchen is a one stop shop for savory and sweet cuisine, providing meal prep, catering, and your everyday food needs. Founded by Chef Jamy Franklin and Chef Taj Savage, CTRL Kitchen is dedicated to providing quality cooking of various cuisines and giving back to the community. Give a warm welcome to CTRL Kitchen here at The Plant!

05/01/2026

This May Day, we're highlighting the labor history of Chicago's Union Stock Yards. The Plant's former use as the Peer Foods meatpacking facility directly connects us to this legacy. Plan a visit to the Packingtown Museum to learn more, and take action today!
www.packingtownmuseum.org

04/30/2026

Spring has sprung! Edible flowers, herbs, leafy greens, and more are soaking up the rain and turning our backyard into a lush garden, thanks to the hard work of Closed Loop Farms. Lettuce is almost ready for harvest in the Hoop House!
Interested in fresh produce? Click the link below.
https://shop.closedloop.farm

04/28/2026

We got a jazzy new fridge from The Love Fridge network but sad, sad offerings in the pantry at the moment. So if you're planning to visit The Plant, bring a thing from your pantry to share!

Bubbly Dynamics has hosted a Love Fridge at The Plant for over five years, supporting food access for our neighbors in Back of the Yards. As you see, it's challenging to keep the pantry well stocked with a variety of options (and we once found ourselves with a fridge full of celery!), so we ask visitors to just bring a thing from their fridge or pantry to share with neighbors. The result has been a notable uptick in individual donations and a diverse variety of food offerings, especially after events. We try to spread out large donations so that there's always something available, but it's hard to keep up with the huge demand.

The Wasted Food Action Alliance recently wrote a case study about our strategy; find out more about WFAA and check out the summary at the link below.

We are grateful for the Love Fridge network as well as The Port Ministries for their frequent deliveries of sandwiches and the handful of community regulars who drop off pantry staples. We see you, and we appreciate it!

And what can you do? As you're doing that spring cleaning, don't forget your pantry! If you're not going to eat it, or if you have any surplus to share, check the network of Love Fridges for a location near you, and drop off at your convenience.

https://wastedfoodaction.org/

04/24/2026

Happy to be hosting Femmes + Thems Bike Chicago at The Plant after the ride next Sat. May 2. Beers by SomosMonos Cervecería and eats from Raza's are gonna hit the spot!

04/23/2026

04/21/2026

04/14/2026

We're excited to be hosting the Peace and Education Coalition - Back of the Yards, New City for their upcoming scholarship fundraiser on Sat. May 2. Our absolute favorite part of this event is hearing from the young people who have benefitted from this important program -- congrats to Mayra Macias, who will be honored at the event!

Tickets are available at https://peaceandeducation.org/taste-of-back-of-the-yards/

Join in if you can, or consider supporting this worthwhile cause!

This year, we will honor Mayra Macias, past PEC Scholarship recipient, for her advocacy work on the local and national levels. It was here in the Back of the Yards, where she grew up, that she learned the importance of solidarity in community, and as she pursued higher education, recognized the systemic imbalances that challenge the hardworking people of the Back of the Yards and beyond. Join us May 2 in thanking Mayra for her dedication to justice and peace. Visit the Peace and Education Coalition website for tickets.

04/06/2026

The newest addition to our Winter Garden is no small shrub! This massive bird of paradise is 14 years old and was adopted from a community member, who had grown it from when it was just 3 inches tall.

Named King Pong for its huge ping-pong paddle-shaped leaves, this tropical plant has Chicago grit as it has survived two winter moves and now has grown to a magnificent 11 feet tall. We are grateful to have been trusted with this well-loved plant!

03/26/2026

Some new residents have recently moved in to the wetland! Native bluegills, blue channel catfish, and ramshorn snails were eager to call The Plant their home, some even making escape attempts during the acclimation process. These species are all major algae eaters, and the hope is that they'll help keep the seasonal algae growth in check. Come see if you can spot our new friends!

And stay tuned for when our turtles, Justine and Laflin, come back from their winter vacation (a small pool upstairs in Bubbly Dynamics' HQ). Spring is finally here, so it'll be soon!

03/19/2026

And that's a wrap! Many thanks to the fantastic organizations that joined forces with us for our spring Reuse-a-Palooza, and to all of the approx. 550 enthusiastic humans who attended!

It was a busy day, with so many great discussions throughout. Reduce Waste Chicago collected 887 lbs of materials for repurposing and responsible recycling, and the top items were books, CDs, electronics, and school supplies. Community Glue Workshop fielded a whopping 70 items for repair and successfully repaired 59 of them! And the vans for both Habitat for Humanity ReStore Chicago and Cradles to Crayons Chicago were stuffed to the gills with donations.

The metrics on the event are still coming in, so we'll do a deeper reporting in our April newsletter. If you'd like to sign up, just follow the link below and fill in your email address at "subscribe." You'll receive a save-the-date about the next Reuse-a-Palooza when it's announced as well!
https://www.insidetheplant.com/contact

Thanks to Laura Stillwell for the fab photos of Reduce Waste Chicago (including the view with the book table), EcoShip Chicago, and The Struggling Black Girl Magic Club.

03/14/2026

Get ready to repair + reuse, repurpose + recycle, discover + discuss! It's go time for Reuse-a-Palooza this Sunday from 11am-3pm.

Be sure to give a final check to the list of items we'll be collecting as you finish bagging everything up today -- link to the full program as well as the list is below.

We'll help fuel you up starting with vegan coffee cake and cinnamon rolls by Outlaw Bakery along with coffee in the Turtle Stop, and lunch by SteMartaen and Raza's Pizza alongside brews by SomosMonos Cervecería and SUPER limited beers by Whiner Beer Company in their final days (sorry, we didn't save you much).

Thanks to Arturo Duarte for the great photos from last time!

https://www.insidetheplant.com/events/reuseapaloozaspring2026

03/13/2026

What to do with ... umm ... a 10-ways-broken lamp, a vintage e***a from the 1990s, or random plastic toy parts? Welp... since none of those things are on the list of items to be collected during Reuse-a-Palooza, please just leave 'em home.

Here's *The List*:
https://reducewastechicago.org/accepted-items/

You *can* bring in a lamp for Community Glue Workshop but c'mon, they're not miracle workers! They've got you covered on the wiring repair, but you're on the hook for replacing the shade.

You *can* donate unopened supplies from your medicine cabinet before they expire; no antiques please. (Tho our team did appreciate the laugh.)

I suppose you *can* even bring weird little toys, since we've started up a collab with art & sculpture classes at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School ... though their need is limited so PLEASE discuss with folks at the welcome table and don't just leave things behind. Always happy to talk through what to do with tricky things that aren't on The List!

03/11/2026

Where to find plastic-free household and cleaning supplies? While you're at Reuse-a-Palooza this Sun. Mar. 15, check out the Turtle Stop, our tiny but mighty retail shop on the first floor of The Plant. We've got a variety of home and body care products from Meliora Cleaning Products, Zefiro, If You Care and more.

And of course you can pick up your fave products from the business community here at The Plant, including Bike a Bee, Carolyn's Krisps, Closed Loop Farms, Dough Snatchers by Friends & Well Wishers, Four Letter Word Burgazada, The Great American Cheese Collection, Jake's Country Meats, Kombuchade, Mez Foods, and lots of other small, local businesses. Pop into The Jungle Taproom to enjoy fine local brews by Whiner Beer Company and SomosMonos Cervecería. And did we mention that food will be available from MeetStop by SteMartaen and Raza's Pizza during the event? The gang's all here!