4 Practical Ways to Maximise Your Profit Margins in Your Microgreens Farm Business
You may have already heard that microgreens farming can generate healthy profit margins. In my experience these figures can sometimes be over inflated online, but actual margins are still pretty healthy. I’ve been running my microgreens farm, Nell’s Urban Greens in Leeds UK, profitably since 2017. I absolutely LOVE this business and I particularly love obsessing over finding ways to make the whole process as streamline and efficient as possible, which will always optimise your profit margins!
I’ve been honing these skills for years, so I want to share with you today my top 4 practical ways you can start maximising your own micros profit margins right now. Jot them down and keep checking in with them as you build your business.
1. Streamline your processes
As a business owner, you get paid for what you produce, not the time you spend on producing it. So an absolute no-brainer when it comes to maximising profit is to reduce the time it takes you to carry out all your tasks. Increase efficiency and you’ll increase your pay per time spent.
Practical ways to do this (tried and tested by me!):
Time block all your tasks across your weekly timetable.
Everything will get done in a certain timeslot, batched together, so making it more efficient. Plus, you’ll then know exactly when you’ll be spending time on your business throughout your week and can relax on your time off :)
Optimise your deliveries.
Length of route - This can be tricky to start with until you know where your customers will be concentrated. Firstly though, try to focus on taking on as many customers as possible in the smallest geographical area as possible. You might need to go further afield to start with, but as the years progress, it will become apparent where most of your customers are situated, so think about just focussing on those areas. Shorter delivery runs will save time and fuel costs. And linked to that, try and get out as much produce as you can on one delivery run. Maybe think about just doing one a week (your produce will last) and aim to get as large orders as possible per drop. Maybe consider having a minimum order number for free weekly delivery.
Offer fewer product options.
This is always one of the first strategies I suggest when I’m consulting for established microgreens farms. In a nutshell - growing and selling fewer varieties will reduce your time (and headaches!). Again, if you’re new to all this - experiment with different varieties to start with. See what you like growing and what sells well for you. Then as your business progresses, focus on selling your top few varieties in larger amounts. This will massively reduce your planting and harvesting time and your brain space!
Choose fast growing and easy to grow crops.
This is especially important if you have limited grow space. Choose crops that grow consistently well for you and ones you can turn around quickly, optimising your space. Pea, radish, broccoli and sunflower are great options for this!
2. Spend less money!
Probably one of the simplest strategies to implement. Don’t spend money on stuff you don’t need.
The main consumables (ongoing costs) you need to spend money on to run your microgreens business are:
✔ Seed
✔ Grow medium
✔ Packaging
✔ vehicle fuel & maintenance
✔ Energy (usually elecrtricty)
✔ Cleaning stuff
The main capital items you need to spend money on to run your microgreens business are:
✔ Grow room (ideally keep at home)
✔ Grow racks
✔ Grow trays
✔ Fans
✔ Dehumidifier
✔ Cutting tools
✔ Fridge
Just get what you need and nothing you don’t. Keeping your operation lean will maximise your profits.
3. Optimise individual grow tray production
This takes some trial and tweaking for your own individual growing space, but always aim to hit the sweet spot between harvest yield and crop quality. Over-seed and your crop quality will suffer, under-seed and you won’t be maximising your yields. Getting the most out of every single tray of microgreens you grow will maximise your profit.
Different grow spaces, seed varieties and grow mediums perform differently, but here are some of my current tray seeding to yield numbers in a small grow space kept within 18C - 22C temperature range, with current seed stock available in the UK:
Organic green pea - 270g dry seed weight - 400g harvest
Rambo Radish - 45g dry seed weight - 325g harvest
Leek - 25g dry seed weight - 130g harvest
Sunflower - 100g dry weight - 450g harvest
All grown on UK-made Garland’s Microgreens Trays
4. Find the sweet spot between pricing and sales numbers
Depending on how you’re supplying your microgreens and who you’re supplying them to will determine your price points. Generally:
You’ll be able to sell for a higher price point if you’re selling directly - usually to home customers, chefs and food establishments and at farmers markets.
You’ll be selling for a lower price point to customers who will be selling your microgreens on for you such as a retail shop and wholesale distributor.
Shops and distributors will tend to take higher volumes of product on a regular basis, lower volumes for home customers and potentially restaurants. Restaurants are one of those that if you manage to start supplying a busy larger place, you may be able to sell larger volumes directly to them at a slighlty higher price point than a distributor - which ticks both boxes for you.
It’s then a matter of working out what’s best for you, and your profit margins, when designing your business model. Personally, I’ve tried every method over the past 7 years! I think it’s useful to do that at first, then you can start narrowing your model down once you know how everything works for you and how you can make your most profit efficiently. For me, just over a year ago, I decided to narrow down and just supply my wholesale distributor, our local green grocers, a handful of (very) local home customers and the odd private chef for collection only. This optimised my time, and therefore my profits, and it’s working really well.
If you focus on implementing these 4 strategies in your microgreens business, you’ll be running a lean, mean, profit maximising machine!
Wishing you the best!
Fancy some training?
If you’re new to the microgreens business lark and are at your:
✔ Planning
✔ Trial grows
✔ Market research
✔ Starting to think about selling stages
…then it might be time to take some focussed training on getting you to the next stage. My introductory online course - Micro Steps - will take away all the guess-work of how to do this properly and will have you maximising your own profits in no time!
My Micro Steps Course enables you to properly test the waters to see if pursuing a successful microgreens business is for you.
Through step-by-step video tutorials from my Grow House in Leeds, UK, you’ll be able to grow your first crops to a commercial standard along with me. Then learn exactly how to sell these to your first paying customers. It’s detailed, succinct and will get you results fast.
It’s open now! Click below for the details:
Hi! I’m Amy Wright and I teach people how to set up their own home based microgreens business, specifically in the UK.
If you’re keen to get started growing your first microgreens crops and selling them to your first paying customers, let me teach you how.