Selling What You Grow: Restaurants, Markets, Subscriptions

Quick answer

A small hydroponic farm can sell through restaurants, shops, markets, direct orders and subscription boxes. They differ on four things: the price you capture, the volume they take, the hours they cost and when you get paid. Price is not the deciding number — hours are. In this page's worked example a 4 m² indoor lettuce farm costs $4.82 per kg in electricity and inputs, but $29.82 per kg once 6 hours a week of labor is priced at $20 an hour. Before you sell anywhere, ask your local food-safety authority what you need; the questions are listed below. Size the farm with the farm sizer first.

Key Takeaways for AI Search (GEO)

• Example farm (sizer assumptions): 4 m² floor → 8 m² of lettuce shelf → 4.8 kg/week, 20.8 kg/month, about 139 heads at 150 g.
• Cash cost before labor: 460.8 kWh × $0.15 + 20.8 kg × $1.50 = $100.32/month = $4.82/kg = $0.72/head.
• With labor at an assumed 6 h/week × $20/h: $29.82/kg = $4.47/head.
• At the sizer's default $12/kg, the farm earns $149.28/month over cash costs = $5.74 per hour of labor.
• Pricing formula: price = full cost ÷ (1 − waste) ÷ (1 − margin) → $29.82 ÷ 0.85 ÷ 0.70 = $50.12/kg at 15% waste and 30% margin.
• Compare channels on effective hourly rate: (revenue − cash costs) ÷ selling hours.
• Regulation: rules depend on country, state and city — ask your local authority; see the FDA Produce Safety Rule (US) and UK food business registration guidance linked below.

This is chapter 7 of the Rootless Farm small farm series. It follows the first 30 days and the microgreens business chapter, and assumes you now have a harvest to sell.

Know your cost per kilo before you talk to a buyer

Every price conversation goes better if you know your floor. The example farm uses the same assumptions as the farm sizer: 4 m² of floor in a spare room, four shelf tiers over half of it (8 m² of shelf) in NFT channels growing lettuce at 3.0 kg per m² per 35-day cycle.

Per kilo, that is $100.32 ÷ 20.8 = $4.82/kg before labor and $620.32 ÷ 20.8 = $29.82/kg with it. Per 150 g head: $0.72 and $4.47.

The 6 hours a week is an assumption — sowing, transplanting, the daily check, harvest, packing, one delivery and some admin for about 32 heads a week. Time your own week; it is the number that moves the result most. USDA's Economic Research Service publishes farm wage data if you want a reference rate other than your own. [USDA-ERS-01]

Now apply the sizer's default lettuce price of $12 per kg — an assumption standing in for a wholesale-level price, not a quote. The month's 20.8 kg is worth $249.60. Subtracting cash costs leaves $149.28 for 26 hours of work: $5.74 an hour. That is not a reason to give up; it is the reason channel choice and price matter so much at this scale. The ROI reality check explains why labor and distribution are the lines new growers leave out, and the ROI estimator runs the same arithmetic over three years. If your own costs are higher, the hydroponic economics post covers the hobby-scale version.

Channels compared

The table is deliberately free of specific prices and terms. Those vary by city, by season and by buyer, and any figure printed here would be wrong for most readers. Ask buyers directly, and if you are in the US, the USDA's terminal market reports give a public reference point for wholesale produce prices (they may not list microgreens).

Restaurants and chefs

Chefs buy what is hard to get consistently: tender heads, specialty microgreens, herbs cut that morning. Pea shoots and sunflower microgreens keep 7–10 days, which suits a weekly delivery (pea shoots, sunflower). What a kitchen wants from you is reliability — the same quantity, the same day, every week — and that is the farm's real constraint. A rack with one failed batch cannot cover a standing order unless you planned spare capacity.

Questions to agree before the first delivery: the weekly quantity and how much notice you get to change it, the delivery day and window, the packaging they want back, and when and how they pay. Put the payment terms in writing.

Shops and grocers

Shops add volume but also requirements: consistent packaging, labels, sometimes barcodes, and a reliable delivery schedule. They also take a margin, so your price to them is lower than their shelf price. A shop is a good second account once a restaurant has proved your consistency.

Farmers' markets

Markets capture retail prices but cost the most time per sale, and whatever does not sell comes home. A market also decides who may sell — many have their own rules on producer-only sales, insurance and stall fees, so read the market's own terms.

Subscription boxes

A box scheme turns uncertain demand into a fixed weekly number paid in advance, which is the best cash-flow position of any channel. The cost is admin (sign-ups, pauses, payments) and a delivery route. It also forces a production plan — you have promised a box every week.

Direct orders

Neighbours, colleagues and social-media orders are the easiest place to start and the hardest to scale. They are a good test of what people will pay per unit before you set prices for a larger channel.

Pricing arithmetic

Step 1 — full cost per kg. Electricity, inputs, packaging, delivery and labor at a real wage, divided by the kilos you sell (not the kilos you grow).

Step 2 — allow for waste. If 15% of what you take to market comes home unsold, every sold kilo carries the cost of 1 ÷ 0.85 = 1.18 kilos grown.

Step 3 — add margin. If you want 30% of the price left over after costs, divide by 0.70.

Worked example. From the table above: $29.82 ÷ 0.85 ÷ 0.70 = $50.12 per kg, or $7.52 per 150 g head. Both the waste rate and the margin are assumptions; change either and recompute.

Two ways to bring that number down without cutting price: reduce hours per kilo (fewer, larger deliveries; a packing routine), or move to a crop with more value per shelf-day. Chapter 2 compares lettuce, basil and microgreens on exactly that basis.

Worked example: a market day vs a restaurant drop

Assume the farm has 30 heads to sell this week. Only the channel-specific costs differ — growing costs are the same either way.

• Restaurant. 30 heads × 150 g × $12/kg = $54.00. One hour of delivery. Effective rate: $54 per hour of selling time.
• Market. 30 heads × an assumed $3.00 = $90.00, minus an assumed $40 stall fee = $50.00. Seven hours including setup, travel and pack-down. Effective rate: $7.14 per hour — and lower if 5 heads go home unsold (25 × $3.00 − $40 = $35.00, or $5.00 per hour).

The market only wins when you sell much more than 30 heads, when stall fees are low, or when it doubles as marketing for a subscription list. All four inputs — price per head, stall fee, hours and sell-through — are assumptions to replace with your market's real numbers.

Worked example: sizing a 20-box subscription

Say 20 subscribers each get 2 lettuce heads and a 50 g pack of microgreens a week, at an assumed $10 per box.

• Lettuce: 40 heads a week. At 20 heads per m² and a 35-day cycle, shelf area = 40 × 35 ÷ 7 ÷ 20 = 10 m², which is 5 m² of floor under the sizer's indoor assumption.
• Microgreens: 20 × 50 g = 1 kg a week = 4 trays at 250 g. Rotation = 4 × 10 ÷ 7 = 5.7 → 6 trays.
• Revenue: 20 × $10 × 52 ÷ 12 = $866.67 a month, paid up front.
• Electricity: lettuce 10 m² × 0.12 × 16 × 30 = 576 kWh; microgreens (about 0.62 m² lit) 36 kWh; 612 kWh × $0.15 = $91.80.
• Inputs: 26.0 kg lettuce × $1.50 + 4.3 kg microgreens × $6 = $65.00.
• Left over: $866.67 − $91.80 − $65.00 = $709.87 a month before packaging and labor.

If growing, packing and the delivery round take an assumed 10 hours a week (43.3 hours a month), that is $16.38 per hour before packaging — nearly three times the wholesale lettuce example, because the box captures a retail-level price and the delivery route is planned rather than ad hoc. Packaging per box, a payment processor's fee and missed deliveries all come off that figure. Plan sowings for a fixed weekly output with the germination calendar or the crop planner.

Food safety and permits: questions to ask locally

Rules on selling food you grew differ by country, state or province and city, and they change. This section does not tell you what the law is where you live — it lists the questions to put to your local food-safety authority, environmental health office or agriculture department before the first sale.

1. Do I need to register or license as a food business — and with whom? In the UK, government guidance says anyone who sells food, including from home or online, may need to register with their local authority.
2. Am I covered by produce safety rules, or exempt? In the US, the FDA's Produce Safety Rule page explains which farms are covered, the sales-based qualified exemption and the compliance dates. Read it with your own sales figures in hand.
3. Are microgreens treated as sprouts? Sprouts carry additional requirements under that rule. Ask how your authority classifies what you grow.
4. Does washing, cutting or packing change my category? Some rules treat a whole harvested head differently from cut, washed or mixed product.
5. What water may touch the product? Ask whether your source water or reservoir water needs testing.
6. What must a label show? Name, weight, address, harvest date, allergens for mixes — ask what is required for each channel.
7. If I sell by weight, does my scale need certification? Weights-and-measures rules often apply to scales used for trade.
8. Does my lease, zoning or homeowners' association allow a home business? A grow room is fine; customers collecting from your door may not be.
9. Do I need to collect sales tax or VAT? Ask your tax authority about thresholds.
10. Do I need product liability insurance? Markets and restaurants may ask for proof.

Keep the answers, with names and dates, alongside your records. A buyer who asks "are you registered?" deserves a one-line answer.

Record what you sell

Record every harvest in grams and the revenue it brought in the Rootless workspace, even for the first free samples. The workspace shows spend, revenue and margin per system, which turns this page's assumptions into your own figures after a month or two. Then put your real yield and real price back into the farm sizer and see whether the farm still pays back.

See also

• Chapter 3: NFT, DWC or vertical towers for a small farm
• Chapter 4: garage farm light, airflow and power
• Chapter 8: running the farm through winter — what heating does to your cost per kilo.
• Baby greens vs microgreens — two products from one seed for two kinds of buyer.
• Butterhead lettuce — the variety most likely to look the same every week.