Microgreens business
You can grow it. Getting paid for it is the other job.
About half of new microgreens businesses do not make it through their first year, and the growing is almost never what ends them. Pricing, buyers and cash flow are. Everything on this page is that other job, and the first five tools cost nothing to run.
The Profitability Calculator and the Gap Assessment ask for nothing at all.
Why I built this
I spent the first year of JPure Farms getting the trays right and the money wrong. The trays were never the hard part. What I did not have was a price I could defend, a list of people who actually wanted the product, and a number at the end of the week that told me whether any of it had worked. Everything below is that second job.
D. Andrew Neves
Read by 1.2 million people in 170 countries since 2017.
The five pages growers here actually open
All business pages →Ranked by reads over the last twenty-eight days, not by what got published last and not by what I would rather you read.
Crops
Most profitable microgreens to grow and sell
Which crops carry a margin worth the tray, and how local demand quietly changes the answer.
63 reads in 28 daysMoney and legal
Licences and permits for selling microgreens
What has to be on paper before money changes hands, and why the answer moves by county.
43 reads in 28 daysProduct and operations
How to package and deliver your microgreens
Presentation is a price lever. It is also the thing growers underspend on first.
23 reads in 28 daysGetting started
Growing microgreens for profit
Startup costs, the ongoing costs nobody budgets for, and what a small operation really carries.
21 reads in 28 daysMarketing and sales
What to charge for microgreens
Retail and wholesale ranges, and how to set a number you can hold when somebody pushes back.
13 reads in 28 days
Eight questions people type before they spend anything
These come off our own search data. The same ones turn up month after month, so each gets answered on a page here rather than in a paragraph on this one. The last two are the ones that decide whether a wholesale buyer calls you back.
- What does it actually cost to start? →Seed, trays, light, rack, and the costs that turn up in month three.
- Do I need a licence to sell microgreens? →Usually yes. What kind moves by state and by county. Start with yours.
- Which varieties actually pay? →Yield per tray is half the answer. What a buyer near you will pay is the other half.
- What should I charge? →Real retail and wholesale ranges, and how to hold a number under pressure.
- Who actually buys this? →Chefs, grocers, market regulars, box schemes. Pick one and stop selling to everyone.
- Why do most of these businesses fail? →Not the growing. Cash flow, pricing, and no customers, in that order.
- What will a wholesale buyer ask about food safety? →Usually GAP certified and FSMA compliant, in the same email. They are not the same thing and one does not give you the other.
- How do I run food safety when it is just me? →Written for one person and a rack, not for a packhouse. Records, traceability, and what an inspector actually opens.
The market forecasts disagree with each other by a factor of four
Every microgreens business plan quotes a market size and almost nobody says where the number came from. We went and read them. The research firms tracking this category publish figures that vary by up to four times for the same year, which tells you something worth knowing: nobody selling you a forecast has the answer either. What holds up across all of them is the direction, not the size.
- 4xThe spread between published forecasts for the same year, from our own read of the firms tracking this category.
- 9Countries whose microgreens market people searched for on this site in the last twenty-eight days. The interest is real and it is not American.
The whole read is in Microgreens Trends 2026 to 2032, which is the one page here that goes at the numbers directly and says which of them it does not trust. A working figure of $2.5 to $3.5 billion globally in 2025 sits in the business plan guide with the same caveat attached to it.
What growers say about the work
Three people who wrote in. Their words, not mine, and not edited.
“Most sources are pretty decent, but there is one source in particular that far surpasses all of the sources that I have discovered. Most importantly, Microgreens World emphasizes evidence-based information, citing scientific studies to support its content. It is my go-to source.”
Glen Howard
Greny’s Greens, Canada“Honestly, we have learned quite a lot from your digests, especially the research sections. The business is growing with us, we are basically pioneers in live microgreens here in casa, so thanks for your help, the information saves us time.”
Simon Denton
Microgreens farm owner, Casablanca, Morocco“Thank you for sharing this information with the world. I am organizing myself to start this business and I am looking forward to your course. This is exactly what I needed.”
Adrià C.
Aspiring grower, Spain
These are readers describing the site, not customers reporting business results. Testimonials reflect individual experiences. Results vary. We do not guarantee income or health outcomes.
Before you buy anything
Whatley wrote ten commandments. Nine of them are about you.
In 1987, Dr. Booker T. Whatley published How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres. That’s about $300,000 today. He set out ten commandments for making a small piece of ground pay. Year-round cash flow. A guaranteed market instead of hoping somebody turns up. A population centre inside forty miles. Only what your buyers actually ask for. No middleman. A revenue floor on every square foot, and insurance carried before you ever need it.
He never saw a microgreens tray, and it does not matter. That list is a description of the business you are trying to run. The one commandment that does not carry over is pick-your-own, and nobody is coming to cut your radish.
Two of the ten are about the ground under you. Whether there are enough buyers within reach of it, and whether the space you have can clear a floor. The Growth Path answers both.
- Your revenue ceiling where you actually are
- How saturated your local market already is
- A ninety day plan, not a list of tips
- Two minutes, no account
The $100,000 and the ten commandments are both Dr. Booker T. Whatley’s, from his 1987 work on diversified small-acreage farming. The 2026 figure is an inflation adjustment of his number, not a target. All of it is a planning framework, not a projection of what you will earn.
Two machines for this
One tells you whether you are ready to sell. The other tells you whether the selling is making money. Both are open and neither asks for a card.
Assessment · no account needed
Business Readiness Assessment
Are you ready to sell, or ready to find out the expensive way? Questions on food safety, paperwork, pricing and buyers. You get back a score, your biggest gaps, and what to fix first rather than what to buy first.
Check where I stand →Calculator · no account needed
Microgreens Profitability Calculator
Put your real seed, labour, tray and overhead numbers in and see the margin you are actually running, per tray and per week. Most growers have never done this arithmetic once, which is why so many of them are surprised by it.
Run my numbers →
There is a third machine and it is not free, so it waits until further down the page. The Microgreens Business Plan Builder takes the same kind of questions and turns your answers into a document you can hand to somebody.
Farm management software is a different machine again, and it is somebody else’s. The Microgreen Manager review is here.
The guides
Four documents you can work from. Each one solves a single problem, and none of them is a course you have to sit through.
Digital guide · PDF
Who’s Buying? Find your customers before you plant
You finish this one knowing who your first buyers are and where they are, before a dollar goes on seed. It is the guide that answers the question the other two assume you have already answered.
$17
Find my buyers →Digital guide · PDF
Price Your Microgreens with Confidence
A number you can defend at a market table and in a wholesale email, plus the reasoning underneath it so you can hold the number when somebody asks you to come down.
$17
Set my price →Digital guide · PDF
Package Like a Pro: packaging and delivery
Your product looks like it belongs on a restaurant shelf instead of a hobby table, and it arrives in the condition it left in.
$17
Package it properly →Assessment · five minutes · anonymous · no account needed
Food Safety Gap Assessment
Selling what you grow puts you in front of a buyer’s questions long before it puts you in front of an inspector. This walks your operation and shows you the documentation you do not have yet. It is the front door to the food safety guide below, and it costs nothing to find out where you stand.
Find my gap →
The rest of the shelf is in the business guides collection.
The two that get you paid
Permission to sell, and somebody to sell to
A grower who cannot answer a buyer’s food safety questions does not get the account. A grower nobody has heard of never gets asked. Everything else on this page is downstream of those two, and both cost the same.
Digital guide · PDF
Comprehensive Food Safety for Microgreens
Minimising risk from seed to plate, written for the grower whose greens leave their own kitchen. Buyers now ask for safety credentials before they ask for a price list, and this is the document that lets you answer them the same day.
- What GAP and FSMA each actually require
- The records an inspector opens first
- Sanitation, seed handling and water
- Traceability for a one person operation
- What to send a buyer who asks
$197 $97
Get the guide →Digital plan · with bonuses
A Complete Digital Marketing Plan
Most microgreens businesses struggle with marketing, and not because the product is bad. There is no plan behind it. Posting when you remember to, dropping samples at a restaurant that never calls back, then wondering why the stall was quiet again.
- Digital Marketing Checklist
- Canva Marketing Toolkit
- AI Marketing Guide
- Seven-email welcome and drip campaign
- Customization Framework
$97
Get the plan →
The plan itself
The blank page usually wins
Ask a grower why there is still no business plan and you will not hear laziness. You will hear that page one wants a whole business described in paragraphs, and paragraphs are about the hardest way there is to think about one.
So the Builder does not hand you a blank document. It asks nine plain questions about the business you already run. Who buys from you. Why they pick you over the stall next to yours. Where the sales actually come from. What it costs you to open at all.
You answer in your own words, with microgreens examples sitting on every section instead of the usual advice written for software startups, and the plan comes out of the answers. One afternoon, and the business stops living only in your head.
Doc Green is in there the whole way, so a question that stalls you has somebody to ask rather than a help article to go hunting for.
What you end up with is the thing nobody tells you that you need until you need it the same week. A document somebody else can read. A lender, a landlord, a partner, or you in six months, on a quiet Saturday, trying to remember what you decided and why.
Rung six of seven on the ladder below. The step under it is Growth Path PRO at $149, the step over it is the Sales Accelerator at $497.
Web app · one payment
Microgreens Business Plan Builder
- Nine canvas blocks, in the order they actually depend on each other
- A SWOT built out of your own answers rather than an empty four box grid
- Margin of safety, live, so you can see how far sales can fall before it hurts
- A ninety day plan broken down week by week
- Customer profiles, a market research checklist, and the First Five Customers guide
- Variety and pricing quick reference, open beside you while you work
- The finished plan exported as a PDF you can send to somebody
$197 One payment, not a subscription.
Build my business plan →Work through the canvas and the plan sections. If you do not walk out with a microgreens business plan you can actually use, email inside fourteen days and every cent comes back.
The ladder
Here is the whole staircase
Start on the step you are actually standing on. Nothing here is a stretch from the step below it, which is on purpose, and every rung is a real product with a real price rather than a number you only hear on a call.
01
Readiness Assessment, Profitability Calculator, Market Finder, Food Safety Gap Assessment, Growth Path Five tools. The Gap Assessment shows you what a buyer will ask for, and Market Finder alone lists 8,700 places to sell.
No account
02
Who’s Buying, Price with Confidence, Package Like a Pro One problem each, worked start to finish.
$17
03
Comprehensive Food Safety for Microgreens The document a wholesale buyer asks for before they ask your price.
$97
04
A Complete Digital Marketing Plan The whole marketing system, with the toolkit and the email sequence.
$97
05
Microgreens Growth Path PRO Your local market, named. Which buyers near your zip fit the profile, from public local business data.
$149
06
Microgreens Business Plan Builder Nine plain questions, and the plan comes out of your answers. What is in it.
$197
07
Microgreens Sales Accelerator Nine live sessions, a cohort of twenty, and your actual work reviewed rather than a recording you watch alone.
$497
Every step above is buyable today. Nothing on this page asks you to book a call to find out what something costs.
Microgreens weekly digest
One letter a week. Smarter business by Monday
What is making microgreens businesses money right now, and the mistakes costing growers theirs. Every new guide and every price change goes out here first.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Educational only. Not legal, financial or business advice. No income is promised and nothing here projects what you will earn. Selling rules and food safety requirements change by state and county, so check yours. Testimonials are individual experiences. Everything here takes work to use, and none of it works on its own.
