Selling Your Microgreens Directly to Home Customers
Selling your microgreens directly to home customers is a no-brainer. And especially if you’re just starting out. Your first customers can literally be your friends, family and neighbours. It’s a simple, fun and non-scary way of starting to trade your microgreens; allowing you to dip your toe in, get a feel for how the business works and get honest feedback on your products.
Before you start selling to the masses
If you’re just starting out with your microgreens business and you want to test the waters first before going all in (which I highly recommend doing!), then start by giving your microgreens away to friends, family and neighbours to get this honest and very useful feedback. This will also give you the confidence in your product which will massively help you when you start selling to the public.
If this initial feedback is sounding good, you’re enjoying the process and you want to start selling your microgreens regularly, then you’ll need to register with the Environmental Health Department in your local UK Council as a primary grower food business. This is free of charge and they’ll let you know what you need to be doing to run your business in an environmentally sound and food safe way.
Make sure you do this first before cracking on and raking those sales in.
Here are my top 3 reasons that selling your microgreens directly to home customers is a good idea for your business:
1. It’s an abundant market! In the UK, it’s likely that you live close to lots of other people! These can all be your potential customers, as everyone needs to eat. Just count how many people live on your own street alone. I currently have 8 different household customers that have a microgreens delivery every single week, just living on one half of our street!
2. By selling directly to your customers, you’ll retain more of your profit, as opposed to selling through a middle-person such as a grocery shop or wholesale distributor. You might want to take on these customers further down the line, but only when you can grow larger amounts consistently and manage to secure much higher orders for it to be worth the lower price point you’ll get paid by them.
3. Home customers are pretty straight forward to work with. No meetings, no changing orders at the last minute (most of the time!), no invoicing or additonal paperwork.
Finding home customers to sell to - there are lots of different options!
Here are some tried and tesed ones I recommend:
✔ Family and Friends - you know them already! And never under estimate the marketing power of word of mouth. Chances are your nearest and dearest will be rooting for you to do well, so will do a load of promoting for you. My Mum now has her own little delivery route to her friends and neighbours in her own local area!
✔ Set up your business social media account and start posting regularly
Be clear on what you’re selling, how your product will benefit your customer and exactly how they can buy your product. Make it as easy as possible for people to buy your microgreens. Reply promptly to any comments and dm’s. You can have an ordering system on your website to signpost people to or to start with, I recommend just taking orders via text, dms or email and taking payments via bank transfers. I still do this.
✔ Post in local Facebook groups, including – local food and neighbourhood groups, vegan and vegetarian groups in your area and healthy living and fitness groups. (Always ensure advertising your product is allowed in these groups first though). Obviously link your posts to your busienss social media account that’s full of amazing photos of your microgreens and really clear instructions of how they can buy them!
✔ Hit the streets!
This old-skool method still very much works! Make an attractive flyer then deliver it door to door in your local area. Focus on promoting locally grown, nutrient dense food. Be clear on pricing, what’s on offer and how to buy from you.
My top 3 recommended methods of selling to home customers
1. HOME DELIVERY SERVICE
This is definitely the most convenient option for your customers and is probably the best method to offer if you want to get lots of home customers buying from you. Ideally, you’ll set up a subscription programme where they’ll be ordering the same quantity and varieties from you every week. This may take some tweaking to start with, but once it settles down and they know how much they like to use each week, this is a great way of getting recurring revenue for you as the farmer. Also, you’ll know exactly how much to grow each week.
Decide whether you want to add a small delivery charge and/or have a minimum order for delivery. You can even do a small delivery charge for a certain amount, then free delivery over say £10. Or whatever makes sense for you and your location.
2. COLLECTION POINTS
This involves finding a café or shop in an area that is willing to act as a collection point for your products. Ideally this is a place that you already have a good relationship with and their products align well with yours – such as a café that champions local produce, a health food shop or higher end grocers or delis. They’ll need to have a fridge, and space in it, to store your microgreens before they are collected.
How it works - You deal with all the ordering and payments your end before collection day, then deliver to the collection point and your customers pick up from there.
The advantage of this to you is that it’s just one delivery for potentially many orders. The advantage for the collection point is that they may get more custom themselves from your visiting customers when they collect as a result.
I recommend you have a leaflet advertising your collection point service that you can leave at the venue.
3. DIRECT COLLECTIONS
There’s also the option of offering direct collection from your house (or where your farm’s based). If you’re able to leave a cool-box out somewhere you don’t even have to be in when collections are made! I pop these on my doorstep twice a week and people come and collect when it’s convenient for them to do so during the delivery day.
Obviously only offer this if you feel safe in doing so. And you know your cool box will be secure if left out.
When you get to know your regular, local customers well, then you can upgrade them to swish reusable tupperware boxes!
Streamlining your home customer sales
Whenever I teach any microgreens business processes to people, I always emphasise the need to make them as streamline and efficient as possible. In microgreens farming you get paid for your output, not your time, so reducing your time as much as you can, without compromising quality, is always the aim and will always optimise your profit margins. Selling is no exception.
Here are some techniques to try and incorporate when you’re desiging your home customer model:
✔ If you’ve decided to offer home delivery, try and focus on a small a geographical area as possible. Get as many customers as you can in that area, then move onto the next etc. This is tricky to start with as you’re just picking up your first few customers, but persevere, ask for word of mouth help from your customers and flyer areas that you’re already delivering to.
✔ Collection points will streamline home deliveries further and farm collections even more, as you won’t be delivering. This tends to work much better once you know your customers though and you’re established. It’s not the best idea to offer home collections right off the bat.
And finally, a really useful TOP TIP when supplying home customers.
Collect the email addresses of all your customers and send out a quick newsletter on the same day every week. This can be about what’s happening at your farm this week, a reminder for them to collect / accept delivery of their order that week, any new products you have on offer, any promotions etc.
It’s a great way to stay connected to your community of people and they’re less likely to forget about you :) Being part of a healthy microgreens community is a great feeling - for you, and your customers! Don’t lose touch with them.
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 customers, let me teach you how.
Download my Free UK Microgreens Business Starter Guide and get started today!
In your 13-page guide, you’ll get:
5 great reasons for starting a microgreens business in the UK right now
A basic equipment list
A step-by-step guide to growing and harvesting radish shoots and pea shoots, including UK pricing suggestions, seed supplier recommendations and profit margins.
A how-to guide to selling your microgreens to your local community.