How to Price Microgreens: A Framework for Chefs, Retailers, and Distributors (Workbook Included)
Written by Garrett Corwin
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Introduction
Most microgreen growers set their wholesale prices by copying what they saw on Instagram or by guessing 20% below their farmer's market rate. Both are wrong more often than they're right. I did a version of this when I started too. The problem is that pricing isn't just a number you pick — it's a system. And without a system, you either leave money on the table with every restaurant account you land, or you price yourself into margins that can't sustain the farm.
This is the framework I built over six years running Piedmont Microgreens — 350+ trays a week, 50+ restaurants, retailers, wholesalers, and schools. Your region, your costs, and your customer base are different from mine. What this gives you is the thinking behind the numbers so you can set your own prices with confidence.
If you want to work through the math yourself, download the free Pricing Workbook. It has fill-in worksheets for every step covered here.
The Pricing Guide for Microgreen Farmers (Workbook)
Start With Your Anchor Price
Before you think about distributors, grocery stores, or farmers markets, you need one number: your per-ounce price for each crop category, sold direct to a restaurant. Everything else in your pricing system is calculated off this anchor.
There are four crop categories, and each has a different baseline:
Common crops (arugula, broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, radish, standard blends) typically run $2.50–$4.00/oz at the restaurant level. These are your workhorses — high volume, reliable yield, lower seed cost.
Shoots (basic pea, sunflower) typically run $1.50–$3.00/oz. They're heavier per tray but lower margin per ounce, so you're making it up on volume.
Premium shoots (tendril pea, fava) typically run $2.00–$4.00/oz. More labor and a better presentation than basic shoots, which earns a small premium.
Specialty crops (basil, beet, chard, dill, fennel, parsley, shiso, cilantro, chervil, mustard, nasturtium, lettuce, onion) typically run $3.00–$8.00/oz. The spread is wide because the crops are different. Basil takes 20+ days. Cilantro develops mold if you just look at it wrong. Nasturtium seeds cost 10–20x what radish seed costs. The price has to reflect the extra time, space, and inputs — and chefs know these are harder to source, so they'll pay.
If you're new, start at the high end of whichever range fits your crop. It's far easier to lower a price than to raise one after a chef already has it in their system.
One thing to nail down before you move on: price per ounce is the constant. Pack size doesn't change what you're charging per ounce. It just changes the SKU. A 2 oz. retail clamshell at $6 and an 8 oz. bulk clamshell at $24 are the same $3/oz price. Keep that separation clear in your head or the math gets messy fast.
Pack Size Follows the Customer
A lot of growers get confused here. They think changing the pack size means changing the price. It doesn't. Your per-ounce rate holds. What changes is the format you deliver it in, which is driven entirely by who's buying.
Here's how it typically breaks down:
Farmers market and direct-to-consumer customers want 1.5–3 oz. retail clamshells. These are the people at your market stall on a Saturday morning or they’re a home delivery subscriber. Small, accessible, grab-and-go.
Restaurants buying direct want 8 oz. bulk clamshells for common crops and shoots. Chefs go through volume fast and don't want to open six small containers to get what they need for a service. The exception is specialty crops. Drop those to 2 oz. packs for restaurants. An 8 oz. clamshell of cilantro at $8/oz is a $48 SKU. The sticker shock will kill their desire to buy it again, and half of it spoils before the chef uses it. A 2 oz. pack at $16 is an easy standing order. Same per-ounce price, same margin, better fit.
Food-service wholesalers (FreshPoint, Sysco, US Foods) want 8 oz. bulk clamshells. They're just moving the same product your restaurant accounts want, with a middleman layer added.
Retail wholesalers, like aggregators, CSA platforms, grocery resellers, want 1.5–3 oz. retail packs, same as your direct consumer customers, because that's what ends up on a store shelf or in a delivery box.
Figure out which segments you're actually selling into before you build your price sheet. The segments determine the pack sizes, and the pack sizes determine which per-clamshell numbers go on the menu.
One more nuance. Pack size can affect your effective price per ounce when you offer multiple sizes for the same crop. Offering a 4 oz. and an 8 oz. pea shoot SKU at the same per-ounce rate is technically identical pricing, but in practice a lot of farms offer a small bulk discount on the larger size to encourage bigger orders. There's nothing wrong with that once you know your accounts well. But if you're just getting started, don't go down that road yet. Pick one SKU per crop, price it confidently, and keep your menu simple. One size per crop is easier to manage in production, easier to explain to a chef, and a lot easier to track week to week. You can always add a second size later once you understand what your accounts actually order.
Region Matters — But Less Than You Think
A chef in Manhattan isn't paying 4x what a chef in rural Alabama pays. Maybe 30% more. Cost of living moves the needle, but the spread across the US is tighter than most growers assume. The real variable is who's buying and what you're selling, not where you are.
That said, here's a rough framework for regional adjustments:
If you're farming in rural areas, like the rural South, rural Midwest, small-town Appalachia, rural West, expect to land 10–15% below the national baseline. Competition is thin but so is the customer base willing to pay premium prices.
Most of the US, like mid-size cities, suburbs, smaller metros, is your baseline. Use your anchor price as-is.
Larger metros like Atlanta, Denver, Austin, Minneapolis, Charlotte, and Portland support a modest premium, typically 5–15% above baseline.
High cost-of-living coastal markets, including most of coastal California, Seattle, Boston, DC, Brooklyn, run 15–25% above baseline.
Ultra-high-COL markets like Manhattan, SF proper, Aspen, and the Hamptons can support 30–50% above baseline.
For a more precise read on your specific city, pull your cost-of-living index from Numbeo.com and compare it to a mid-sized benchmark city like Raleigh or Columbus.
And don't price off your competition. If the only other farm in your county is charging $2/oz for specialty crops, that's not market rate. That's a farm that's either leaving money on the table or heading out of business. There's no commodity microgreen supply chain. Restaurants who want this product will pay a fair price for it.
Price Differently for Every Customer Type
This is where most growers bleed the most margin. They charge restaurants one price, then give distributors the same price, not realizing the distributor needs to mark it up 30–35% to make their own business work. So the distributor either passes on the account or quietly drops you when they find someone cheaper.
Every customer type has an expected gross profit margin they need to mark your product up to. Once you understand that, pricing them correctly is just math.
Your restaurant price is your anchor. 100% of the number you landed on in Step 2.
Farmers market and DTC customers should actually pay slightly more than your restaurant rate — roughly 100–110%. They're buying small clamshells and small volumes.
Grocery stores buying direct need a 30–40% gross profit margin (GPM) on resale, which means you're selling to them at 65–75% of your restaurant anchor. On a $3/oz crop, that's roughly $2.10/oz.
Food-service wholesalers (FreshPoint, Sysco, US Foods) and retail wholesalers both need 30–35% GPM, landing you at 60–70% of anchor — around $2.00/oz on that same $3 crop.
B2B wholesalers, operations reselling to other wholesalers, need 20–25% GPM, which puts you at 50–60% of anchor, around $1.65/oz.
The rule of thumb: every layer between you and the end consumer takes roughly 20-30% off your price. One layer = ~70% of anchor. Two layers = ~55%. If those numbers don't work for your farm on a given crop, that customer type isn't the right fit for that crop. It's not always the account that's the problem — sometimes it's just the specific crop you're offering them.
One more thing on chefs: they are not bargain hunters. Consistency and reliability matter far more to them than price. A chef will pay your full rate without negotiating if you show up on the right day, your clamshells weigh what the label says, and you don't disappear for two weeks when you have a crop failure. Don't underprice to win restaurant accounts. Price with confidence and then earn the relationship.
Four Checks Before You Send the Price Sheet
Once you have a number, run it through these four tests before it goes to a customer.
The COGS floor. Your restaurant price needs to cover seeds, soil, packaging, and labels with enough gross margin left over for rent, utilities, and labor. Target at least 75% gross margin across your menu average to start. For reference, at my farm, Piedmont Microgreens, we averaged around 82% weighted gross margin across all customer types over five years. If your GPM isn’t above 65-70%, the math won't hold up at scale.
Quick test: take your restaurant price times your average yield per tray. Subtract COGS per tray (typically $3–$6 for common crops). If gross profit is under $20/tray, something needs to move.
The menu readability test. Don't let the math land you on $3.42/oz or $7.78/oz. Round to clean numbers. Chefs look at a price sheet for about 15 seconds. Weird decimals read as amateur. Aim for 3–5 price points across your whole menu, all in whole dollars or clean half-dollars. Your entire menu should fit on one page. If it doesn't, you have too many crops or too many price points.
The "would I buy this" test. Put yourself in the chef's chair. If a grower handed you this sheet today, would you call them back? If prices are too low, it reads as desperate or inexperienced. If prices are too high, it prices you out before they've tasted anything. The sweet spot is a confident number that matches the quality you're bringing through the door.
The raise test. Can you live with this price for the next 12 months? Raising prices on restaurant accounts mid-year is awkward and they push back. Lowering is easy. Err high. Build in headroom for the inflation that's coming regardless.
Use the Workbook to Build Your Actual Price Sheet
The thinking above tells you how to price. The workbook turns it into actual numbers for your farm.
Download the free Pricing Workbook and work through the two worksheets inside - The Pricing Guide for Microgreen Farmers (Workbook)
Worksheet A is your internal master price list. One per-ounce price per crop, per customer segment. This is your single source of truth before you quote anyone anything.
Worksheet B turns those per-ounce numbers into per-clamshell SKU pricing. These are the actual numbers that go on the menu you hand a chef or a grocery buyer.
The last page of the workbook has a sample one-page restaurant menu showing what a clean, finished price sheet looks like. That's the deliverable — one page, crops grouped by category, readable in 15 seconds, no clutter.
Once Your Prices Are Set, the Hard Part Begins
A price sheet is the easy part. Running a wholesale microgreen operation means tracking dozens of standing orders across 10, 20, 50+ accounts, each with their own crops, pack sizes, delivery days, and exceptions. It means knowing every Sunday night exactly how many trays of each variety you need to seed this week to cover upcoming orders.
Spreadsheets break quickly. Hand written notes break even faster.
Microgreen Manager is software built specifically for microgreen farmers. It handles crop planning, order management, harvest lists, and production scheduling automatically — so you can spend your time growing and selling, not reconciling a spreadsheet at 10pm on a Sunday.
Try Microgreen Manager free for 30 days. No credit card required.
Other free tools you can find on our website:
- Pricing & Profit Calculator: plug in your costs, get your break-even and target prices instantly
- Tray Calculator: figure out how many trays you need to meet a weekly order target
- Seed Density Calculator: convert seeding rates between tray sizes
- Excel Production Planner: for growers who aren't ready for software yet
- The Microgreen Manager Blog: 80+ articles on crop production, sales, and farm operations
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