In the early 1900s, Alexander and Elsie immigrated from Scotland to Chicago, where they met one another, got married, and had seven children. Later in life, they purchased 32 burial plots in a Chicagoland cemetery, but as their children continued to have kids of their own it became clear that 32 would be an insufficient number of plots for the extended family. Driven by a mix of selflessness and one-upmanship that was characteristic of him even during the final few years of his life when I knew him, the third child, John, excused himself from the family plot and purchased an additional 40 burial plots adjacent to the original 32 for $400 each. John’s five children—Alexander and Elsie’s grandchildren—went on to have a total of 14 children of their own, most of whom are now married (to people like me) and no longer living in Chicago. So while Alexander’s original 32 plots are filled, it seems likely that many of John’s additional 40 plots won’t be used. So what do you do with extra grave plots?
Burial plot brokerages are not federally regulated, so its state law that determines how you’re able to sell plots and at what price (some states, for instance, require you to sell the plot back to the cemetery, and others prevent sellers from making a profit). Illinois does not impose any strict regulations like this, which means that you are free to sell burial plots to anybody and whatever price they will pay.
According to thecemetaryexchange.com, cemetery plots in this Chicagoland cemetery now go for nearly $6,000, which translates into an annualized return on investment of about 9.45% since John bought them, well outpacing the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the same time period. There’s plenty of resources out there for selling unused graves if you choose to go this route: you can buy and sell burial plots on eBay, AARP has a guide to selling unused plots, and of course there are a ton of poorly-written blog posts by banker bros hawking burial plots as investment vehicles.
But what I find FAR more interesting is what you can do with burial plots if you don’t sell them, even if you have no intention of interring yourself there. For instance, most cemeteries allow for cenotaphs, which are memorials without an accompanying body, so as long as you have somebody’s death certificate on hand there isn’t anything stopping you from putting up a memorial that says something like “In memory of my beloved grandmother, who would have been so proud to know that I, <your name here>, reached level 40 on Pokémon GO on <date>.”
Chances are that when you envision such a memorial you imagine it as a headstone or perhaps a small statue, but I’d encourage your mind to wander in a more utilitarian direction. While it is not uncommon to see memorial benches scattered across a graveyard, oftentimes anything that enhances the overall atmosphere of the burial ground is fair game, and to my mind this means that there is a vastly under-explored world of memorial bird baths, memorial bike racks, memorial sundials, and memorial horseshoe pits.
If you own enough abutting plots you can build a mausoleum, which will usually be custom built by an architect of your choosing, and—crucially—your family will get a key to go inside. So with a few tweaks in the interior decorating department, you could build a little day-use cottage for your family at a fraction of what it would cost to build beyond cemetery lines. While this would by no means suffice to host extended family for week long getaways, it could certainly serve as a humble pied-à-terre to offer shade during summer picnics and warmth for winter afternoons spent ice fishing and drinking cocoa amongst the dead.
The other potential use of burial plots I want to turn my attention to is tree planting. Now most people who are looking to put a tree in a cemetery are just going to plant your run-of-the-mill oak or elm or what have you. But if you have sufficient adjacent plots (say 40), I don’t see any reason you couldn’t plant a little orchard. And should you plant this orchard, and should this orchard bear fruit, then I think it’d be well within your rights to stop by to harvest that fruit. And if you harvest the fruit and take it off the cemetery property, well I don’t see what’s stopping you from setting up a little business selling that fruit or processing the fruit into fruit-derived goods and commodities.
Using Namelix, an AI-powered business name generator, I input the keywords “death, orchard, fruit, bones, skeleton, sad, yummy, local, nutritious, artisanal, grave, cemetery, vitamins”, to create brand names for a potential cemetery orchard produce companies. I took the most compelling names over to brandmark.io, an AI-powered logo maker, to generate logos. I was very inspired by the resulting brand identities, and so I took the liberty to start sketching out business models for eleven distinct cemetery produce companies, each of which is fair game for anybody who happens to have some spare burial plots lying around. You can thank me later.
Grave to Table is a prepared food line with ingredients thoughtfully sourced from nearby cemeteries. Generations of ancestors, each once alive with their own hopes and dreams and fears and insecurities, decompose over millennia to create an unrivaled terroir now made available to you for a quick and nutritious weeknight dinner. Mom said “eat your vegetables”, and now she is your vegetables.
Excess of Life is a grab-n-go lifestyle brand for the Patagonia-wearing crowd, approaching graveyard agriculture from the perspective of minimal waste production. Like, why wouldn’t you recapture the nutrients of the dead? Do you also dispose of single use plastic bottles directly into the windpipes of baby seals? Specializing in fruit leathers and dehydrated trail snacks rich in masticated bone dust, Excess of Life products are chock full of calcium, vitamin D and magnesium; all the minerals and nutrients you need to fuel up and power through that next hike. Thanks Pop Pop!
Funeral Forest appeals to the morbidity within all of us, the part of us that’s always been curious what it would be like to eat an apple from a tree that grew over the bodies of our deceased ancestors. But it’s also fun! It’s a cute and fresh brand, really trying to help people wade into this exciting new sector of death-nutrient fruit companies at their own pace. Funeral Forest affords consumers the opportunity to just plain-old enjoy high-quality, locally-sourced produce without being prompted to reflect on whether cannibalism is a spectrum and, if so, where cemetery-yielded produce sits on that spectrum. At the end of the day it’s just a cute brand for people of all ages.
Grave Seed is a boutique wellness company that specializes in making those really small plastic vials of juice that cost $15. Grave Seed uses the term ‘cold pressed’ because it sounds expensive and, while the nutritional value is questionable, with such vibrant juice colors at such a steep price, questions of nutritional accountability are easily evaded.
Last Picnic tugs at the nostalgia-side of death, providing an opportunity for us to reconnect with loved ones through marmalades and compotes grown in the soil surrounding their decomposing corpses. Last Picnic sees a huge market opportunity for the sizable segment of the adult population who experience daddy/mommy issues: you can say whatever you want to your loved ones during your Last Picnic, and they won’t criticize you or judge you. Because they finally love you. (But also because they are dead).
You can’t avoid death, but you can eat it! Grief Eater is a pan-religious specialty catering service that provides meals for funeral receptions with the goal of helping the living feel connected to their freshly deceased loved one through food. Want to know what the afterlife will be like for Uncle Harry? Well here is some chicken piccata made with lemon and parsley grown from the garden his ashes were just spread in.
Lonely Apple is a secondary marketplace that creates arbitrage opportunities in order to deliver profits to shareholders. Purchasing bruised and imperfect produce at a steep discount from complementary brands that play in the vanity death produce industry (e.g. Grave to Table, Mortuary Farms), Lonely Apple relies on guilt-laden branding to jack the prices right back up, subtly implanting questions into consumers minds such as “what if nobody loved them in life? What a pity if they can’t even be consumed in death?”
Did your kids never have the chance to meet their great grandparents? Well, with Ghost Fruit, their ancestors’ remains can help grow the produce that is gelatinized and conveniently served in fruit snack format perfect for the lunch box. The packaging will also help build a connection between your kids and their ancestors, calling out important events from their great grandparents' lifetime, like the Battle of the Somme and the fact that private pool ownership in the US skyrocketed after the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in public places. Taste the Greatest Generation - They Taste Great!
Bonefeast is for the metalheads who don’t need this graveyard food concept sugar coated or overly symbolized. For Bonefeasters, it’s simple: Graveyard soil is nutritious. The land is inexpensive to farm. By buying up burial plots and planting fruit trees, Bonefeast is able to deliver luxurious apricot jam to your family’s table at a fraction of the cost of competitors. Any questions? Didn’t think so.
Who said transubstantiation needs to taste bland? By growing, harvesting, and milling a variety of indigenous grains on reclaimed cemetery land, Fruit of Our Father appeals to those religious folks who are looking for an extra dose of the Eucharist. Can’t wait til Sunday? Now you can eat little Jesus church biscuits any day of the week. And with refined yet punchy seasonings like honey rosemary and lavender sea salt it’s going to be hard not to - amen to that!
The hills are alive with the taste of death! Organic. Local. Sustainable. Green. Nourishing. Selling to both high-end restaurants and boutique grocers, Mortuary Farms sets the new standard for delicious, seasonal produce. For an additional fee, consumers can request produce grown near the graves of their ancestors, or even their favorite deceased celebrities and politicians. Say hello to Abraham Lingonberries and Ingrid Bergmangos!
Thanks for reading,
– Grif