The term fast growth may conjure images of tech companies with sleek offices and catered lunches. But there are plenty of growing, thriving businesses out there in the real world, getting their hands dirty. Here are six from the Inc. 500. Click for more

Let's Get Physical

Free to Roam

Vital Farms, No. 51

 

Serial entrepreneur Matt O'Hayer founded Vital Farms in 2007 to provide consumers with a humane alternative to eggs laid by cage-raised chickens. Now, through a network of 15 family-owned farms, the $4.9 million business supplies pasture-raised poultry and eggs to hundreds of grocery stores nationwide, including almost every Whole Foods location. At its flagship 27-acre farm in Austin, nearly 2,000 hens rise at dawn to feast on organic feed and pasture grasses before laying eggs in a hen house. Farm manager Dana Salazar is pictured here scattering the first of three daily portions of feed. "It's great that we can provide a standard of life for these chickens that they'd never see elsewhere," Salazar says.



Judith Ohikuare is a reporter for Inc. magazine. She was a features intern for Seventeen magazine, where she covered health and wellness, and her work has been also been published in Marie Claire. Judith is from Brooklyn, New York. @ohikuare