Microgreens Farming in the UK. A decent side hustle or a full time job?
I’ve successfully run both of these microgreens business models at my own farm and, after 7 years of running Nell’s Urban Greens, I’ve settled on a third option. More of that shortly.
For some context to get us started, this is the number one question I get asked the most when people ask me about starting a microgreens business - can you realistically do it as a full time job in the UK? I’m going to answer this honestly for you today and use my own story to give you an idea of the options.
I speak to a number of different microgreens farmers a week, plus aspiring microgreens farmers, all about their aims and ambitions for their microgreens farm. These range from those just wanting to make an extra £50 - £100 a week to supplement another income, all the way through to one man earlier this year wanting to farm 6000 trays a week.
All goals are valid, but no matter what your goals are for your microgreens business, my first piece of advice is always the same - start small and grow it gradually. I see lofty business plans time and time again from those who love the idea of microgreens farming and want to go big. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but you at least need to start growing and selling a few trays first before going all in buying a load of equipment, renting a large space and contacting national distributors before you even know if you enjoy the business and understand how it works.
Here’s a snap shot of my story and how I’ve experimented with three different business models over the past 7 years.
I started planning my own microgreens farm back in the early winter of 2017. We’d just moved into a new house with a conservatory at the back, which meant I potentially had the room to grow a few plants(!). I was pretty burnt out at the time from working in the environmental charity sector for a decade, then for a small company for five years and I was definitely ready to take a step back and have a go at running my own thing. I wanted to work at my own pace at home and I loved the idea of spending my days quietly growing plants for people to eat.
The Conservatory Years! I spent the first 3 years of my business growing in here, alternating with my outside greenhouse during the warmer months.
The ‘Job on the Side’ Days
Naturally, Nell’s started as a side hustle for me whilst I was still employed at my last job. I highly recommend doing this first, then you can just enjoy it without having any income pressure. I loved the growing, loved the selling, so I gave myself a goal of when I hit a regular £150 a week selling microgreens, then I’d leave my job and focus on it full time. 9 months after starting that inital planning I reached £150/week, left my job, went wild camping in Canada for a couple of weeks, then went all in with Nell’s Urban Greens when I got home. I worked around 25 hours a week on it in that first year with an aim of hitting £500 a week in sales.
The ‘Full Time’ Days
Because I’d already been selling weekly to local chefs (and it was only chefs for the first two years of my business!), I knew the market was there and I had a good hunch I could sell alot more microgreens to our local community. Over the next few years I took on more restaurant customers, expanded my delivery area, moved onto selling to home customers, then a local distributor got in touch and I started supplying them at scale.
At it’s peak, Nell’s Urban Greens was supplying restaurants, cafes, private chefs, food events, a golf course, a greengrocers, a farm shop, a veg box scheme and lots of home customers. By this point I was working around 30 hours / week, my partner and friend did around 7 hours between them and my mum and dad volunteered to do my cleaning whilst I went out on deliveries every Thursday morning! It was a group effort and we reached around £1200 a week in sales, £900 of which was profit. This continued for a few more years.
Part time perfection
Testing lots of different business models over the years gave me a really clear insight into the market that was out there, how I wanted to structure my days, what I enjoyed about the work and therefore exactly what I wanted my business to look like going forwards. As of writing, I have my business perfectly set up for me, with streamlined operations, that I spend less than 20 hours a week on and generate around £500 revenue/week.
I decided to scale it back significantly around 18 months ago. The market was (and still is) thriving, but I wanted to develop my training business alongside Nell’s, so needed to free up the time to spend on this. I actually passed many of my restaurant customers onto another local microgreens grower.
This is my story of how I‘ve chosen to farm microgreens. It’s all just been a big experiment really. A very enjoyable, exciting, busy, fun experiment that has, and continues to, pay my living.
SIDE HUSTLE - 40 HOURS - 20 HOURS
So to answer the question of my blog post title today, microgreens farming can be a great side hustle to bring in extra income whilst doing something fun and worthwhile, and it can also be your full time job (depending on how much you’d like/need to earn).
Being entirely realistic, running a microgreens operation full time (40 hours ish), on your own, within the current UK market, you could earn around £30K profit a year. That’s from my own experience and from chatting and consulting with other established microgreens growers around the UK. If you reach this point and want to go bigger, firstly make sure it’s viable in your market and if it is, then it’s time to bring in staff members and significantly scale up.
This was my full time set up. You really don’t need alot of space to generate a healthy income from microgreens farming. This Grow House in our garden measures 3m wide by 6m long and 2m high.
Personally, I like to keep my farm small, lean and profitable enough to support me. However, I hope this has been a useful insight into what’s possible when you start microgreens farming and can help you decide whether it’s something you’re keen to do.
And if it is, no matter what scale you’re operating at, know that you’ll always be doing an incredible service by providing your local community with highly nutritious microgreens to enjoy :)
There is a real need more than ever right now to choose to grow and eat locally produced, nutritious, high quality food. We owe it to our communities. By taking this important step to be professional small-scale growers, we are improving our local food system at a grassroots level. And that's something to be very proud of and motivated for.
If you do fancy giving a microgreens business a go, my beginners online course Micro Steps is a perfect place to start. You get all the content at once, can go through it at your own pace and have lifetime access to it.
Here’s what’s included:
✔️ A recommended kit and supplies list to get you started - all UK suppliers.
✔️ Full video walk throughs of exactly how to grow pea shoots and radish shoots to a commercial standard. The two best selling microgreens varieties in the UK! Including suggested seed suppliers, quantities to sell in and profit margins.
✔️ An overview of the different customer streams you can target in the UK, with a specific step-by-step process teaching you exactly how to sell your two new crops to local chefs and what prices to charge. If you can sell to chefs, you can sell to anyone!
✔️ An introduction to the legalities and environmental health requirements of setting up a microgreens business in the UK.
✔️ A valuable insight into the current microgreens industry in the UK, including how I started my own microgreens farm and how that operates day to day.
✔️ The potential challenges of running a microgreens business and how to maintain a balanced mindset whilst navigating these.
Hello! I’m Amy Wright and I run my microgreens farm in Leeds , UK.
I also 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.