A startup called Sunday is hoping to bring "hyper-custom, hyper-detailed, hyper-precise agriculture" to spruce up America's lawns. Now, with $6 million in new fundraising, the young company is ready to build up its technology, science, and team.
Sunday's highly-customized subscription delivery service offers customers less-toxic lawn care options based on soil and climate data, as well as satellite and aerial imagery, to produce a fertilizer mix tailored to every customer.
Founder and CEO Coulter Lewis told Cheddar that Sunday aims to distinguish itself within the industry by focusing on the strength of grass, rather than on killing weeds and pests.
"We use exactly the right amount at exactly the right time, rather than just overdoing the brute force approach. So we use less of everything," he said, pointing to the company's use of ingredients like molasses, seaweed, and recycled grocery store produce waste.
"Our focus is on building grass and soil health, rather than trying to kill weeds continuously," he explains.
In addition to its lawn care subscription, Sunday also sells a "weed warrior" spray that competes with the popular weed killer Roundup.
That means that Colorado-based Sunday stands to benefit from the backlash lobbed at life sciences and pharmaceutical giant Bayer, which sells Roundup. Bayer purchased the weed killer's seller, American agriculture biotech firm Monsanto, last year.
Bayer faces more than 18,000 U.S. lawsuits alleging that Roundup can cause cancer, according to Bloomberg, with many pointing to one of the weed killer's primary ingredients, the herbicide glyphosate.
"It's brought to light the big issues that are existing outside of Roundup. Roundup is a symptom of a much larger problem," said Lewis.
Lawns cover about 40 million acres of land in the U.S., according to a 2005 satellite analysis produced by NASA. And Garden Research, a market research arm of the American Garden Association, reports that Americans spend nearly $50 billion on garden and lawn care throughout the year.
"It's a massive amount of land. But the way we treat it now is we cover entire properties in pesticides and herbicides at a rate much higher than industrial farms," said Lewis.
For now, Sunday is focused on targeting home consumers, though Lewis noted that the company is also beginning to work with public spaces.
"What's interesting in that space is that at this point using Roundup is a liability for your team. And you're actually potentially causing trouble down the road," Lewis said. "So I think there is a B2B opportunity."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
