Which Microgreens are Most Profitable?
Written by Garrett Corwin
Introduction
Understanding the profitability of your product(s) is the basis of any business. If you’re not making enough profit, you’re liable to go out of business. In today’s blog, we’ll discuss the most profitable microgreen crops. The data below comes from running my farm, Piedmont Microgreens, for the past five years. The analysis includes production costs, yield per tray, grow time, selling price, and market demand. All five factors are key to the profitability of your microgreens. We’ll focus our discussion on individual crops with a short mention of blends.
TLDR - Cilantro, Radish, & Tendril Pea
The 5 Factors Explained
Production Costs - Production costs include seeds, soil, packaging, labels, and the electrical costs to run lights. Costs may vary based on where and how you source these inputs. However, these differences won't significantly impact the analysis. We won't include labor costs. They can change a lot based on how skilled someone is at growing and processing microgreens and their salary. As you can see from the chart below, most microgreens have direct costs of $2.00-$6.00, but they're generally less than $3.50.
Yield per Tray - The yield per tray is an average based on the grow time listed in the adjacent column. These are averages found in my farm. Yours might be higher or lower, depending on sow density and grow time.
Grow Time - The grow time is what we use in my farm. Growing your crops for a longer or shorter period will lead to different yields. These changes will affect how much money you make per tray. The grow time is the time from soaking or planting to harvest.
Selling Price - The selling price is what we charge restaurant customers. Wholesale prices are lower per ounce. However, all prices will decrease in proportion to each other. It doesn’t matter which customer group you pick for pricing in the analysis. We generally price specialty crops at $8.00 per ounce, common crops at $3.00 per ounce, and shoots even lower.
Market Demand - Market demand is the popularity of a crop. We’ll use production volume as a proxy for market demand. If we look at my Farm Report on Microgreen Manager, we can see the top crops. If we narrow the time range from 1/1/25 to today, we’ve grown 5,875 trays using Microgreen Manager. The top crops are basil, cilantro, arugula, tendril pea, cabbage, two radish varieties, and a few others. Market demand is arguably the most important of the five factors. It doesn’t matter if a crop costs $0.00 to grow and yields 20 ounces, if nobody wants it.
Ignore Difficulty to Grow
I would be remiss if I didn’t note the difficulty of certain crops. Of course, some crops are harder to grow than others. However, there’s a huge caveat. Generally, once you figure out how to grow a crop, it’s no longer difficult. I know that sounds stupid, but hard crops aren’t hard forever. Cilantro was confusing and difficult when I first started farming microgreens. It always died or under-yielded. Now we grow 70 trays a week and it’s second nature. The key is that production difficulty for a crop doesn’t matter here. This blog focuses on profitability. Profitability depends on how much you can produce quickly, production costs, and how much buyers are willing to pay and purchase.
The Profitability Analysis
| Crop | Production Cost/Tray | Yield/Tray (oz.) | Grow Time (Days) | Avg. Price/oz. | Market Demand (Out of 10) | Revenue/Tray | Gross Profit/Tray |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arugula | $2.05 | 5 | 10 | $3.00 | 5 | $15.00 | $12.95 |
| Basil | $2.40 | 4 | 24 | $8.00 | 6 | $32.00 | $29.60 |
| Beet | $4.05 | 3.5 | 17 | $8.00 | 4 | $28.00 | $23.95 |
| Broccoli | $2.60 | 7.5 | 10 | $3.00 | 9 | $22.50 | $19.90 |
| Cabbage | $2.60 | 8.5 | 10 | $3.00 | 7 | $25.50 | $22.90 |
| Celery | $2.40 | 3 | 20 | $8.00 | 3 | $24.00 | $21.60 |
| Chard | $3.10 | 4.5 | 17 | $8.00 | 2 | $36.00 | $32.90 |
| Chervil | $3.40 | 4.5 | 17 | $8.00 | 1 | $36.00 | $32.60 |
| Cilantro | $3.80 | 5 | 17 | $8.00 | 10 | $40.00 | $36.20 |
| Dill | $2.80 | 5 | 17 | $8.00 | 2 | $40.00 | $37.20 |
| Fava | $2.00 | 14 | 11 | $2.50 | 2 | $35.00 | $33.00 |
| Fennel | $3.20 | 6 | 17 | $8.00 | 1 | $48.00 | $44.80 |
| Kale | $2.50 | 8 | 10 | $3.00 | 4 | $24.00 | $21.50 |
| Kohlrabi | $2.60 | 7.5 | 10 | $3.00 | 6 | $22.50 | $19.90 |
| Lettuce | $2.35 | 4 | 17 | $8.00 | 1 | $32.00 | $29.65 |
| Mustard | $4.00 | 5 | 17 | $8.00 | 6 | $40.00 | $36.00 |
| Nasturtium | $6.00 | 7 | 10 | $8.00 | 5 | $56.00 | $50.00 |
| Onion | $4.00 | 6 | 17 | $8.00 | 3 | $48.00 | $44.00 |
| Parsley | $2.50 | 3 | 24 | $8.00 | 3 | $24.00 | $21.50 |
| Pea, Basic | $3.25 | 16 | 9 | $1.75 | 7 | $28.00 | $24.75 |
| Pea, Tendril | $3.60 | 15 | 11 | $2.50 | 8 | $37.50 | $33.90 |
| Radish | $2.60 | 12 | 7 | $3.00 | 8 | $36.00 | $33.40 |
| Shiso | $4.50 | 5 | 24 | $8.00 | 3 | $40.00 | $35.50 |
| Sunflower | $3.85 | 16 | 9 | $1.75 | 7 | $28.00 | $24.15 |
| Averages | $3.17 | 7.29 | 14.67 | $5.77 | 4.71 | $33.25 | $30.08 |
The Rankings
I put the same data into Excel and then conditionally formatted the most important columns. The closer to dark green across all three columns, the better. If we only focused on gross profit margin (GPM), dill, fava, and fennel stand out. Unfortunately, those three crops have the lowest demand scores. We have them on our menu to round things out, but they don’t get ordered often. The most popular crops are broccoli, cilantro, two types of peas, radish, and sunflower. In my farm, cilantro shows up on our menu solo and in a blend. Same with radish and broccoli. Depending on the customer type, buyers want a lot of these varieties solo or in their blends. For example, wholesalers buy tons of cilantro. Retailers buy tons of our Taco Mix, which is a blend of cilantro, cabbage, and radish. Finally, the grow time is important because time equals space and space equals money. Let me explain. Basil takes more than four times longer than radish to grow. After considering each crop’s germination time, there are three cohorts of basil under lights at a given time versus just one for radish. Even if basil and radish had the same yields, I would need three times the rack space to grow basil compared to radish. As farms scale, they often face limitations due to the size of their production space, making longer growing crops costly. You can also think about this in terms of how much money a crop might make in four weeks. Let's assume the yield per tray and the price per ounce stay the same. After four weeks, you’d have only one harvest of basil, but four harvests of radish. Let’s assume we are growing 50 trays of each, yielding five ounces/tray, and selling them for $3.00/ounce. The basil would only gross us $750, but the radish would gross us $3,000.
In my opinion, cilantro, radish, and tendril pea are the most profitable crops when we consider that all three rank relatively well in grow time and GPM, which is a function of pricing, yield, and production costs. Other crops rank higher in one or both of these categories, but market demand is a higher leverage variable than anything else. Cilantro, radish, and tendril pea are the most popular crops across direct to consumer, restaurants, and wholesalers. These results align with my suggestions in our other blog “The 20 Microgreen Varieties Every Farm Should Offer.” Cilantro, radish, and tendril pea are on the list of “Essential” crops every farmer should grow.
I want to comment on a few discrepancies, like basil. According to the Farm Report shown above, basil is our most popular crop, but I only ranked a 6 for Market Demand. Why? 97% of that production volume comes from two wholesalers, which skew the results. Basil is liked by restaurants and home consumers, but not as much as the three winning crops. Broccoli should earn an honorable mention, but not as a solo crop. None of our wholesalers and few of our restaurants order broccoli as a standalone offering. However, all our customer segments like our Nutrition Mix, which is a blend of broccoli, cabbage, and kohlrabi. That’s why you see all three crops at the top of our Farm Report. All three are fast and easy to grow, and they have decent GPMs. However, it’s only because we combined them into a blend that they are collectively liked by our customers.
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