I believe that this is a relatively reliable marker for whether 5-star restaurants will be in the area. quick on-demand access to fresh, never-frozen, produce. They also tend to go for out-of-season / exotic produce, which is doesnt need to be grown in end-world-hunger quantities.

Why a restaurant wouldn't run their own private vertical farm where they would control the quality and amount of supply? That would remove supply volatility and transport costs entirely, and even some bulk products can be produced at smaller scale organically.

Because there are serious costs to bringing everything in-house; you've got to get hold of the capital, you lose any economies of scale that come from addressing a larger market, etc.

With regards to transportation costs, you're assuming that a restaurant running a private vertical farm could do so on its storefront premises, which is a big assumption. Most pricey restaurants are space-limited.

like these?

http://m.wtol.com/toledonewsnow/pm_/contentdetail.htm?conten...

https://www.circa.com/story/2017/12/20/food/a-vertical-%20fa...

anyway, I’m not a big fan of the use of indoor farms with artificial lighting. The sun provides the energy that plants need to us at no cost but it’s costly to produce the energy from LED’s. I’m more in favor of the use of greenhouses on rooftops, and urban restaurants getting as much produce as possible sourced from local urban farms, and creating that economy. But hey, people are definitely doing it with LED’s on-premise and making it work for them.

my guess is they have a limited amount of time to manage such a thing and the scale isn't large enough to cover the variety they'd want