Episode Description
Do you want to know all the best places to sell microgreens? In this episode I discuss all the different sales channels that are available to sell microgreens.
I give a full breakdown of my experience in selling on these 4 main platforms:
- Restaurants
- Home Delivery Service
- Grocery Stores
- Farmers Markets
By listening to this episode, you should have a good understanding of how these sales channels differ from each other, and what each one is like and what to expect when you sell through each different channel.
Mentioned in this episode:
The millionaire Fastlane: https://amzn.to/2A4DnWS
Leave me a voice note: https://www.speakpipe.com/Microgreensentrepreneur
Website: https://microgreensentrepreneur.com/
Free Seed Density Calculator: https://microgreensentrepreneur.com/seedcalculator
Episode Transcript
Microgreens Entrepreneur Episode 5: Where to Sell Microgreens
[0:00] Hey, there. Welcome to The Microgreens Entrepreneur Podcast. This is Episode 5. Today I’m going to be talking about where to sell your Microgreens.
[0:07] There are farming avenues to sell microgreens, and I’m going to give you all of my experiences in all four of them. They’re all a little bit different, and they need a little bit of a different approach for each of them, so I’m going to give you everything I know about selling in all of these four avenues. So, stay tuned, and hopefully, by the end of the episode, you’ll have a better idea of where you’re going to sell your microgreens.
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[0:32] You’re listening to The Microgreens Entrepreneur Podcast, where the aim is to help you start, grow, and improve any microgreens business. I’m your host, Brian, owner of a microgreens business that I operate out of my own home. Stay tuned and welcome along.
[0:52] Hello, there. You’re very welcome along and thank you for listening. I want to say hello to anybody who is new to the podcast if you’re just tuning in for the first time, and welcome back if you’ve been listening from the start.
[1:03] Surprisingly enough, there are actually a few of you out there that are listening. One of the cool features about having a podcast is that you can actually see what countries that you’re all listening from.
[1:12] So, I can see here that there are a good few of you tuning in from the U.S. I actually lived over there for a couple of years. I lived in Pennsylvania for a while, and I lived in Florida, both great places. I love them both.
[1:23] We’ve got somebody listening in Canada, somebody listening in South Africa, Sweden, Holland, New Zealand, India. I hope you’re all able to understand what I’m saying, and my accent isn’t too bad. Lastly, there’s
France, as well. I lived over there for two years, too. What a beautiful place to live. Really nice.
[1:39] So look, anyway, thanks very much for listening. I’m very surprised about how many different people in different countries are listening, but it’s really nice. So, thanks very much. Anyway, that is enough of that. We will get on to today’s episode.
[1:50] Today’s episode is all about the different places that you’re going to sell your microgreens. Like I said in the intro, there are four main avenues where you are going to be able to sell microgreens.
[2:00] This is just my experience, so if you have a different avenue that I don’t mention, I’d love to hear from you, and hear what it is. You can contact me through the SpeakPipe link that’s in the show notes, or you can email me at brian@microgreensentrepreneur.com
[2:13] The four main avenues that you’re going to be able to sell microgreens through are to restaurants, farmers markets, shops, and a home delivery service. Hopefully, wherever you are, one of these might be a winner for you, and there’s an opportunity to sell through these avenues for you.
[2:28] I’m going to start with restaurants, and I’m going to start with restaurants because restaurants are my favorite. The reason that I like restaurants so much is that in my experience, they’re the most profitable.
[2:39] You grow specifically toward or for the restaurants, so there’s no waste. You usually have the same orders every week, and you have consistent revenue from the restaurants. Well, that was until COVID-19, but on a normal basis, you have consistent revenue from your restaurants every week.
[2:55] The reason that restaurants are the most profitable is because you’re selling directly to them, so there’s no middle man, and there’s no one else taking a cut of the sale – only you.
[3:04] Another good thing about restaurants is that you’ll usually have a day or two days a week where you’ll deliver to all of your restaurants, so you get to plan all your growing around those two days, and you get yourself into a good routine because of that.
[3:17] What I also like about restaurants is that you have direct communication with your customer, i.e., the chefs, and you’ll be speaking to them, and they’ll tell you their wants and needs, and you’ll get their feedback directly.
[3:27] So, for example, you might be challenged by a chef to grow a new crop or change the way you’re growing an existing one to meet their needs.
[3:34] When I was first starting out, one of the chefs that I was delivering to asked me if it was possible that I could get a pea shot with a bigger leaf on it. So, I had done a bit of research, and I was able to do that for him.
[3:45] This is different to a retail setting where if someone wanted your product a different way, they might just go looking to buy the product somewhere else, or get it off someone else that’s already doing it that way, where you might not get that feedback.
[3:57] Getting that feedback is good. It helps you to improve, and that’s something I appreciate about restaurants, and it is a good feeling to know that you’re meeting their needs, and you’re providing a good product.
[4:06] Just on the subject of feedback, if you have any for me of how I can improve this podcast, there are links in the show notes where you can contact me with that feedback.
[4:15] Another thing I like about restaurants is that you get to build a relationship directly with your customer. So, when you’re delivering your product, you’re probably going to chat with the chef for a little bit when you’re delivering it. In my experience, most of them are really nice.
[4:27] There is one guy that I deliver to, and he actually brings me into the kitchen, and he’ll show me how he uses the microgreens, and he’ll explain to me what he likes about them, and all the ways he uses them. So, I enjoy
hearing and seeing all of that because, obviously, it’s something that I have invested in.
[4:41] And another thing is, with chefs and restaurant owners, there’s already a network between all of them, and they usually talk to each other. If you have a good product, and they like you, and they like your product, they’ll be your best marketing team. They’ll spread the word about your product through word of mouth.
[4:58] Another cool thing that I like to think about when you’re supplying microgreens to restaurants is, think about all of the people that you’re having an effect on. If you’re supplying some busy restaurants, there are going to be thousands of people that you’re having an effect on and that are tasting your microgreens.
[5:12] That reminds me of a really good book that I read before. The name of the book is The Millionaire Fastlane. It’s a bit of a funny name, but trust me. It’s a great book, and it’s well worth the read. The general gest is that if you want to make millions, you have to have an effect on millions of people, and you need to become a creator and not a consumer.
[5:29] Obviously, we’re not talking about millions, here, but we’re talking about thousands. So, you really are having an effect on a lot of people, and that’s really something to be proud of. I’ll leave a link for that book in the show notes in case you want to have a look at reading it.
[5:41] All right. We’ll move on to shops and grocery stores. The best thing about shops in my eyes is, it’s really good because you can bring a large amount of microgreens to them, and leave them there, and let them sit, and wait for people to buy them. Of all of the different avenues, it takes the least amount of your time up. You’re just bringing the microgreens to one place and leaving them there and waiting for people to buy them.
[6:03] In my experience, what I’ve found with shops is that you can supply them in two different ways. The first one would be where the shop orders a certain amount of product from you, and regardless of whether or not they sell them, you get paid, and it’s the shop that’s taking all of the risk.
[6:18] This is probably the most common relationship between producers and grocery shops, but if you’re going to be a small enough scale grower, like me, it’s probably not going to be the best way and probably not the most profitable way.
[6:30] The reason for this is because when a shop or grocery store buys in a way like this, they’ll usually be paying a very low price for the product. They’re used to buying from big suppliers who can afford to give them that low price. And by them getting that low price, it offsets the risk that they’re taking, and the risk is that they might not sell all of the product that they’re buying from you.
[6:50] So, the way that I would recommend that you sell your microgreens in a shop if you’re a small enough grower, like me, is that you negotiate a sale or a return deal with the shop.
[6:59] If you don’t know what that means, basically, it means that you get to put your product into the shop. If the product doesn’t sell, you don’t get paid. You take the product back.
[7:08] If the product does sell, you get paid, and also, the shop will take a quota out of that as well. The average deal that I’ve been able to negotiate with shops is that they get a 20% quote of the overall price of the product.
[7:21] If you decide to go down the route that I mentioned just previously where you’re going to ask the grocery store owner to buy your product and pay you for it regardless of whether it gets sold or not, you’re probably looking at only making 50% of the price that the shop actually sells it for. So, personally, for me, that just wouldn’t be profitable, and it just wouldn’t be something I could do.
[7:41] With a sale or return deal, you’ll most likely be getting about 80% of what the grocery store sells the product for, which is much better. Now, the thing is there, though, that you’re taking the risk if you put product in there that doesn’t sell, you need to take it back, and that’s your loss.
[7:56] The thing is, though, that after a few weeks of putting a certain amount of product in, you’ll see how much it’s starting to sell, and you can
pretty much get it down to a tee of how much is going to sell each week. If you’re keeping a close eye on that, you’ll be able to get an understanding of how much is selling each week, and you really shouldn’t have any waste of very little waste.
[8:14] Another good thing about selling in shops is that if you have any reservations about communication skills, this is an avenue where you can get your product out to a lot of people with only having to deal with only one person usually. So, it could be a place to start if you’re a little worried about the communication side of things.
[8:30] Okay. We’ll go on to the next one, and that is a home delivery service. This is something that you probably need to set up online where you can provide a subscription service maybe to the general public, where you deliver them a certain amount of microgreens every week or every two weeks.
[8:46] If you can get this up and running and there’s a market for you in your area, this can be a very good one because it’s also consistent revenue just like the restaurants.
[8:55] If you’re a small enough grower, like me, you’re probably not going to want to deliver to an area that’s too far away from you, so you’re going to have to have something like a radius limit to where you won’t deliver to somewhere outside a certain distance from where you’re based.
[9:08] The reason for that is that it’s probably just not going to be that profitable to be driving all over the place delivering microgreens unless the area outside the radius limit there were a lot of people that wanted your subscription service. Then, obviously, if there’s a demand there, you can increase your radius and serve those areas too where there is a demand.
[9:26] In my opinion, the best way to provide a home delivery service is through a subscription service, and that is because, for you, you’re going to be able to put those microgreens that they need into your schedule and it will be in your routine, and you’ll be growing the same amounts each week,
and there will be no waste. If you do it this way, it’s good to offer them to be sold alive in the trays or also boxed in clamshells.
[9:49] So, just to touch on something that’s similar to this is selling your microgreens online to anybody, and delivering them through a courier service.
[9:58] Now, I have to admit that this isn’t something that I’ve tried myself yet, and I don’t know if I will or not. That’s because I can see a couple of drawbacks to it, and that is that for the courier service, the truck needs to be refrigerated and that costs a good bit extra than a normal courier would.
[10:14] Then, the other thing is that if you’re selling online, and someone pushes a button on your website to buy microgreens, you need to have them ready at all times. Personally, I like to grow to order, and I also like the idea of every area having its own local microgreens grower.
[10:30] It’s much better for the environment, too, if every area has its own growers. You’re taking out the need for trucks to be driving around delivering everything. I think the more we can produce food locally. The better it is for the environment.
[10:41] All right, so the last avenue I have for you is the farmers market. There are a lot of good things about the farmers market. Probably most notably is that you have the potential there to sell a lot of microgreens in one day to a lot of different people.
[10:55] One thing to note about the farmers market, though, is that it’s the way of selling microgreens that is going to take up the most amount of your time. As well as all of the time that you’ve put into growing the microgreens, you’re going to put in a lot of your time actually being at the stall and selling your microgreens at the farmers market. So, for the farmers market to be profitable, you have to sell a lot of microgreens there, and there’s definitely potential to do that.
[11:16] I think with the farmers market, as well, though, there’s more value there to actually what you get as a profit. What I mean is that it’s worth more for your business than you’re actually getting because by being there,
you’re getting your name out there. People are getting to see the face behind your brand. You’re getting to tell people information about your product. You’re getting to tell the people about the shops that you’re stocked in, and it’s also good fun, and you get to meet a lot of good people there.
[11:40] Another way you can sell at a farmers market if you actually don’t have the time to be there at the farmers market is that you can give your product to someone else, maybe, who has a fruit and vegetable stall or a similar stall that microgreens could be sold at, and let them sell them for you, and let them take a quota out of the profits just like you would with a grocery shop.
[11:59] I’ll give you a little bit of an insight into some things that you’ll need to know before you go to a farmers market if you’ve never done it before. Before you go and sell it to market, you should do some research and see what else is getting sold at the market and if it is somewhere that you think that microgreens are going to be able to be sold and will sell for you there. Call up the organizers of the market and see what they think. See if they think if microgreens would be able to be sold there or not.
[12:23] If it is something that you’re going to do, and you’re going to go to the market, you’re going to need to consider the budget that you’ll have to spend before going. So, you might want to get some branding for your stall with your logo on it, and then you’ll have to negotiate with the organizers on the size of the stall that you get.
[12:38] What we’ve found for microgreens is that you really don’t need that big of a stall. So, if there’s an option there for a smaller stall or half of a stall, we would start with that. Obviously, the bigger the stall you get, the more it’s going to cost you. In my experience, the price for going to a farmers market and getting a stall, it isn’t that much, so just check that out what it’s like in your area.
[12:58] A couple of things that were specific to my situation and they may apply to you as well is that before I went to any of the markets, I had to get my business approved by the local Health Authority here. They had to
check everything out to make sure that everything was being done in a safe and healthy way.
[13:14] Then, another thing I had to get was Traders Insurance. This was to cover if anybody happened to fall at the stall that I was on or if any type of accident like that was to happen.
[13:24] When you do decide to go to a farmers market, you can learn from our mistakes. Before you go, do some marketing. Let people know that you’re going to be at the market.
[13:34] You can do this in an old-school way by putting some signs up in the shops that you supply or in some other places where you think that people might be interested would see them.
[13:43] Or you could also use social media. Social media is a really good one. I recommend anybody that has a microgreens business to have either an Instagram page or a Facebook page or something like that where they can promote their business.
[13:54] I would go so far as to maybe run a Facebook ad or an Instagram ad that promotes the fact that you’re going to be at the market and when you’re going to be at it. Just let people know that would be interested in buying your microgreens that you’re going to be there.
[14:06] If people don’t know that you’re going to be there, they’re not going to come, and that is the mistake that we first made when we went to the market for the first time. We had only done a very small bit of marketing, and we expected people to be there and know we were there, but they didn’t know we were there, and nobody came.
[14:22] Yes, so I recommend doing some marketing before you go to the market. And just on that, the farmers market might be a slow starter for you, just because people might not know you’re there, and people in your area, they might not actually know what microgreens are.
[14:36] So, the first couple of times you’re there, you might just be there talking to people, explaining what the product is, getting them used to it,
and you just have to build it from there. But by going every week, you might start getting the same customers, and you build trust by being there every week, and hopefully, you can turn into a good business avenue for you.
[14:53] When you are there, I recommend that you try and get to know the other people that are on different stalls selling different things and even give them some of your product and let them try it out and see what they think of it.
[15:05] You know, by them trying your product and getting to know you and getting to like you and your product, they’re actually going to talk about you to their customers, and that is going to send business your way.
[15:15] All right, so that is pretty much everything I can think of right now on where to sell microgreens. They are the four main avenues that I’ve come across in my experience. Again, like I said at the start if you have a different one that I haven’t covered, let me know. I’m all ears.
[15:28] We all want to sell more microgreens. You can get in touch with me and let me know on the SpeakPipe link in the show notes or email. My email is brian@microgreensentrepreneur.com.
[15:40] So, that brings us along to the end of the episode. Thanks a lot for listening all the way through. If you want to know more on growing and selling microgreens, you can check out my website microgreensentrepreneur.com. So, yeah, that’s pretty much it. Have a great week. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll catch you on the next episode.
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