The 5 key elements needed to set up and run a long-term, sustainable microgreens farm.
In my opinion, you need 5 key elements in place to start and then run a successful microgreens farm. And not just any old flash in the pan microgreens farm, one that will last long term and be a sustainable business for you for years to come.
These elements are:
A love for growing microgreens AND the business side of it.
A willingness to commit to your business and work consistently to reach your goals.
A space to run your microgreens business from.
Local customers to sell to.
Training that can fast track you to reaching your goals and support you throughout the whole process.
Let’s look at these in a little more detail.
1. A love of growing microgreens AND running a business.
Seems like an obvious one, but firstly if you don’t love the actual process of growing these crops, then it will eventually become a chore and could lead to you giving up. If you love the growing, then you’ll naturally want to work at growing the best microgreens you can. If you grow consistently fantastic microgreens, then you’ll be able to sell them over and over again.
You also really need to enjoy (or be strongly OK with) all the tasks that are involved in the whole business.
These include: Filling seed trays up with compost (or another growing medium), checking on and watering all your crops every day, harvesting and packing all your greens, emptying and washing used grow trays, connecting with people consistently to gain customers, delivering your produce, streamlining all your systems to maximise your profit, invoicing customers and managing the money side of things, being OK when your income fluctuates (especially at the beginning)….to name but a few.
2. A willingness to commit to your business and work consistently to reach your goals.
One of my (many) favourite things about running a microgreens business for a living is that your timetable of work can be very flexible and you can honestly design it to fit in with your life. A small caveat here though - you need to work at it to get it to this stage. You need to commit to getting your growing space set up well, make sure you can consistently grow great quality microgreens in that space and be commited to consistently increasing your weekly sales and customer numbers. Then you hit the sweet spot, you tweak when necessary….then you rinse and repeat.
3. A space to run your business in.
This can be as simple as a windowsill to get you started, but if you’re keen to make a real go of your business, you’ll need a space to be able to expand into when your customer base increases. And you don’t need a huge amount of space to turn great profits, just enough for a few growing racks, work table and some storage. A spare room in your house is great. Another option further down the line is to convert an out building in your garden such as a garage or have one made from scratch.
But to start with, just use your house and keep your overheads as low as you can!
4. Local customers to sell to.
Without them, you don’t have a business. And the key to ensuring your business survives in the long term is to focus on building a diverse local customer stream for your microgreens. This can include (but is not limited to) - restaurants, cafes, delis, private chefs, greengrocers, health food shops, gyms, hotels, door to door residential supply, public supply at farmer’s markets and food events, wholesale distribution grocers.
This might seem alot when you’re first starting out, but you don’t go and find them and start supplying them all at once. In fact I massively advise against doing this! (way too stressful and overwhelming). You choose one customer stream to get started with, get really good at supplying them, then move onto the next. Get really good at supplying them, then onto the next. And just keep going.
By selling to a diverse range of customers, your business will become much more resilient in the long term, whatever life throws at it. During the pandemic, hospitality completely closed down. That was almost half of my business gone over-night. Luckily I had also been supplying a local wholesale veg box scheme and residential customers in our local area at the same time (but to a much lesser extent). When hospitality closed, I offered more product to my other customers (and made an effort to get new ones) and was able to eventually divert ALL my sales to my other two customer streams! This is an extreme example too - complete lockdowns due to a global pandemic is a very rare event. But if your business can survive this, it can survive just about anything!
Ultimately, if enough people want to buy your microgreens, you’ll always stay in business. It’s your job to find these customers and supply them consistently with excellent quality greens!
5. Comprehensive training that will teach and support you through the whole process.
The previous 4 elements are essential to have in place to run a successful microgreens business. You can do a really good job of it without this 5th element.
However, having ALL the steps needed to get this thing up and running and continuing to be successful in the long term, along with a full support network cheering you on and being able to answer your questions as and when they come up, will massively take the headache out of navigating all this yourself.
I started this blog a couple of months ago to do just that. To try and teach different topics about this business to make it a smoother ride for you AND to try and lift the veil on exactly what’s involved in it all, but this is merely just scratching the surface.
If you’ve done your research, maybe loved doing a few practice grows and you have a strong inclination that running your own microgreens farm is something you’re very keen to do, then I’m here to support you through it.
Last year I created the UK Microgreens Business Course. A comprehensive, step by step online course that teaches you the exact steps you need to take to create your own successful microgreens farm business - specifically in the UK!
And for GREEN FRIDAY this year (see what I did?!), I’m offering you a juicy discount over the 4 day weekend.
If you’re not already on the Farm Microgreens UK mailing list, then click below to be the first to receive your discount code this Thursday 24th November at 4pm (GMT).
Winter is also a great time too to hunker down and get stuck in to learning how to run your new business.
It will be great to see you in there!
Some video stills from the UK Microgreens Business Course