MICROGREEN BUSINESS · PRICING
How to Price Microgreens for Restaurants. The Number, and How to Hold It.
A chef asks what you charge. You have about three seconds before the pause starts costing you credibility. Most growers fill that pause with a number they picked to be safe, and it becomes the ceiling on that account forever. Here is how to set the number, what it has to cover, and what to say when the chef pushes back.
The three seconds after a chef asks your price
Think back to the last time you quoted a restaurant. Did you say the number, or did you say the number and then keep talking?
That extra sentence is the tell. "It's $2.40 an ounce, but I can work with you on that" hands the chef a discount they did not ask for. So does "it's $2.40, I know that's a bit more than the distributor." You just told a professional buyer that your own price is negotiable and that you are not sure it is fair. They will believe you.
The chef is not trying to trap you. They are trying to work out whether you will still be delivering in six months. A grower who cannot say their price cleanly reads as a grower who has not done the math, and a grower who has not done the math is a grower who quits in March.
So the first question is not "what should I charge." It is "what number can I say out loud and then stop talking."
What restaurants actually pay in 2026
Start from your own retail price, not from another grower's quote. Retail is the anchor because it is the price a real customer pays you with no relationship, no volume and no commitment. Everything else is a discount off that for a reason.
Across common varieties (sunflower, pea shoots, broccoli, microgreen radish) farmers market retail runs $2.00 to $4.00 per ounce in 2026. Specialty varieties, basil, cilantro, amaranth, run $4 to $8. Restaurant wholesale is typically 20 to 35 percent below retail. Grocery wholesale is 35 to 50 percent below.
| Channel | Common varieties, per ounce | Specialty, per ounce | What the discount buys you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Farmers market retail | $2.00 to $4.00 | $4.00 to $8.00 | Nothing. You staff the booth and carry the unsold product home. |
| Restaurant wholesale | $1.50 to $3.00 | $3.00 to $6.00 | A standing weekly order, one drop, no booth hours, predictable volume. |
| Grocery wholesale | $1.00 to $2.20 | $2.00 to $4.00 | Volume and a single invoice, at the cost of the thinnest margin you will run. |
Those bands are wide on purpose. A grower in a dense metro with a PA Preferred certification and a Tuesday delivery slot is at the top of the band. A grower 40 minutes outside a small town delivering 6 ounces is at the bottom. Region, certification, delivery distance and order size move the number more than variety does.
Pick your number inside the band and write it down. Not "around $2." A specific figure: $2.40 per ounce for common varieties, $4.50 for specialty, minimum order 8 ounces. Now you have something to say in three seconds.
Sell bulk bags, not clamshells
Clamshells are a retail format. The package is part of what a shopper is buying, because it protects the product in a tote bag and looks like food you would put on a counter.
A line cook opens your clamshell, tips the contents into a lexan, and throws the clamshell in the bin. You paid for that packaging. You built it into your price. The chef paid for it. Nobody got anything.
Sell restaurants 4 ounce and 8 ounce bulk bags. It lowers your cost per ounce, it speeds up your pack-out, and it makes the price comparison cleaner because you are quoting product rather than product plus a container. Keep clamshells for the market table where the container earns its cost.
One exception worth naming. If the restaurant plates directly from the container at the pass, or runs a retail case out front, ask before you switch them. Some kitchens genuinely want the clamshell. Charge for it separately when they do.
Concede the obvious: sometimes the cheap grower wins
Here is the part most pricing advice skips. There are restaurants that buy on price alone, and the grower who quotes $1.10 an ounce will win them.
That is real. It happens. A high volume kitchen with a hard food cost target and a purchasing manager who has never walked a grow room will take the lowest number on the sheet every time.
What is also real is what happens next. That account calls at 4pm on a Wednesday asking for 12 ounces they forgot to order. It pays on 45 day terms. It rejects a delivery because the sunflower came in at 4 inches instead of 3. And it drops you the moment a grower quotes $1.05.
You are allowed to lose that account. Losing it is not a pricing failure. Winning it at a price that does not cover your drive is.
Why undercutting loses you the account you wanted
Two mechanisms, and both of them are quiet.
1. A low price reads as risk, not value
A chef has been supplied by small producers before. They know roughly what it costs to grow and drive something. When your quote lands well under the band, the chef does not think "bargain." They think "this person is not covering costs, and I will be re-sourcing this item in four months."
Menu items are printed. Suppliers who disappear cost the kitchen more than a 30 cent per ounce difference ever saves.
2. The opening price becomes the permanent price
There is no comfortable route from $1.20 an ounce to $2.40 with the same buyer. You can raise 10 percent a year and it takes seven years. You can ask for a step change and hand the chef a reason to get another quote.
Growers who undercut to land their first restaurant usually walk away from that restaurant inside a year, because once they have run the delivery for twelve months they can see it never made money. They did not lose the account on quality. They lost it on the number they said in the first thirty seconds of the first conversation.
I quoted my first restaurant $1.60 an ounce because I was scared they would say no. They said yes in about two seconds, which should have told me something. Eighteen months later I was still at $1.60, driving 25 minutes each way for a 10 ounce order, and I finally dropped them. The second restaurant I quoted $2.75 and they said yes too.
Side-hustle grower, Berks County PA
What chefs actually buy
Ask a chef why they dropped a microgreen supplier and price is rarely the first answer. Here is the order, from every version of this conversation I have had.
- Consistency. The same product, at the same size, with the same shelf life, every single week. A chef writes a plate around a 2 inch radish. If yours arrives at 4 inches, the plate is wrong and they cannot serve it. Variation is not a small quality issue. It is the dish not working.
- Reliability. Same delivery day, same window, no surprises. A missed Thursday means the kitchen changes a plate at service with no notice. Do that twice and you are done, at any price.
- Price. It matters. It is third. An ounce of microgreens garnishes a lot of covers, so the cost per plate is usually in cents, and a chef running the numbers knows that.
- Communication. Telling a chef on Monday that Thursday's radish will be light is a completely different event from them discovering it at the delivery door. The first is a supplier. The second is a problem.
- Story. Real, but last. Being local and certified goes on the menu and helps the sell. It does not survive two weeks of inconsistent product.
Notice what that list does to your pricing strategy. The two things above price are both operational. They are decided by whether you know what is planted, what it will yield, and when it lands. Which is exactly why growers who run a real production schedule can charge more than growers who do not.
What your price actually has to cover
Most growers price off seed cost. Seed is the smallest line on the sheet.
- Seed. Roughly $1 to $3.50 per 10 by 20 tray depending on variety.
- Substrate. Roughly $1.20 to $1.60 per tray for a quality mix.
- Water, electricity, climate control. Small per tray, real per month.
- Packaging. Bags are cheap. Clamshells are not.
- Rent or the space cost of your rack. Even a basement has a cost.
- Harvest labor. Your time, at a rate you would accept from someone else.
- Delivery. Fuel plus drive time plus the loading and the waiting at the back door.
- Payment processing and bad debt. Terms accounts sometimes pay late, and occasionally not at all.
Run one delivery through that list honestly. A 10 ounce order at $2.00 is $20 of revenue. If the round trip is 50 minutes and you value your time at $20 an hour, the drive alone ate $17 before you counted a single gram of seed.
That is the real argument for minimum orders and for clustering deliveries by day. It is also the reason a $2.75 price to one restaurant can be worth less than a $2.20 price to three restaurants on the same street.
Holding the price when the chef pushes back
Pushback is not rejection. It is usually the buyer doing their job. The mistake is answering it with a discount before you know what the objection is.
Ask before you defend
"Too high compared to what?" is the whole move. Three answers are possible, and each has a different response.
- They have another quote. Ask what that grower's delivery day is and what shelf life they commit to. If they cannot answer, the quote is not comparable. If they can, you now know your real competition.
- They have a food cost target. Work the yield with them. How many plates does an ounce garnish? Forty? Then the cost per plate is around six cents at $2.40, and the conversation moves off per ounce entirely.
- It is a habit. Some buyers negotiate every line as policy. Hold the price and offer something that costs you nothing: a fixed delivery window, first pick on a new variety, a standing 12 week commitment at the same rate.
Trade, do not shave
If you move on price, get something. Larger order on the same drop. Payment on delivery instead of net 30. A second restaurant introduction on the same block. A discount given for free teaches the buyer to ask again next quarter.
Silence is a tool
Say the number. Stop. Let the chef respond. The pause feels much longer to you than it does to them, and filling it is the single most expensive habit in small-farm sales.
Raising a price on an existing account
Growers dread this and it is usually anticlimactic. The rules that make it work:
- Thirty days notice, in writing. Email is fine. Surprise increases on an invoice are what damage relationships, not the increase itself.
- Once a year, on a fixed date. Pick January or your fiscal year start. Predictable is easier for a chef to plan around than fair.
- Name a real reason. Seed cost, fuel, a new certification, a packaging change. A specific cause is accepted. "Costs have gone up" is not.
- Keep it modest. Eight to 12 percent lands. Thirty percent invites a re-tender even when it is justified.
- Do not apologise. One sentence of reason, one sentence of the new number, one sentence of thanks. Anything more sounds like you expect to be talked out of it.
If you have run the account for a year without a single miss, you have earned the increase, and the chef knows what re-sourcing costs them.
Where the app fits, briefly
Pricing is a decision, not a feature. What software does is stop the decision leaking.
Per-client pricing lives in GLAP, so the $2.40 you quoted a restaurant in March is still the number on the November invoice without depending on your memory or a note in your phone. Orders are tied to the trays that fill them, so at the end of a quarter you can see what an account actually consumed rather than what you think it did. The Solo tier at $3.00 per month adds analytics and CSV export, which is the minimum you need to work out margin per variety per client instead of estimating. Grower at $12.99 per month covers up to 50 clients and 200 orders per month, plus environment sensors, which is the tier most growers land on once restaurants are the main channel. The Free tier is $0 and covers 8 active trays with unlimited varieties, which is enough to run the numbers on your first account before you pay anything.
None of that sets your price. It just means you find out which accounts are worth holding a price for.
Track your restaurant accounts in GLAP →Frequently asked questions
How much should I charge a restaurant for microgreens?
Restaurant wholesale runs roughly 20 to 35 percent below your farmers market retail price. With common varieties (sunflower, pea, broccoli, radish) retailing at $2.00 to $4.00 per ounce in 2026, that puts restaurant wholesale at about $1.50 to $3.00 per ounce. Specialty varieties like basil, cilantro and amaranth retail at $4 to $8 per ounce, so restaurant wholesale lands near $3.00 to $6.00. Set your number from your own retail price, not from what another grower charges. Region, organic status, delivery distance and order size all move it.
Should I sell restaurants clamshells or bulk bags?
Bulk bags, in most cases. Clamshells are a retail format built for a shopper picking up a package. A line cook opens the bag, dumps the contents into a lexan, and throws the packaging away. Charging a restaurant for clamshell packaging they immediately discard is a cost you are adding to your own price for no benefit. Sell restaurants 4 ounce and 8 ounce bulk bags. Keep clamshells for farmers market and retail, where the package is part of what the customer is buying.
What do chefs actually care about when buying microgreens?
Consistency and reliability, in that order. A chef writes a dish onto a menu that will be printed for a season. If your radish is 2 inches one week and 4 inches the next, the plate changes and the chef stops using it. If you miss a Thursday delivery, the chef has to change the plate that night with no notice. Price matters, but it is roughly the third thing on the list. Chefs pay a premium for a grower who shows up on the same day with the same product every single week.
Why does undercutting lose the account?
Two reasons. First, a low price signals a hobby operation, and a chef reads it as risk, because a grower who is not covering costs is a grower who will quit. Second, the price you win the account with is the price you are stuck at. There is no path from $1.20 an ounce to $2.40 an ounce with the same buyer without a fight you will probably lose. Growers who undercut to win the first account usually drop that account within a year because it never made money.
How do I raise the price on an existing restaurant account?
Give 30 days notice in writing, name a specific reason, raise it once, and keep it modest. A single 8 to 12 percent increase with a month of notice and a real cause (seed cost, fuel, a new certification) is accepted far more often than growers expect. What gets rejected is a surprise increase on an invoice, or repeated small increases that make you feel unpredictable. Raise annually on a fixed date so the chef can plan for it.
Should I offer a restaurant a volume discount?
Only when the volume genuinely lowers your cost to serve. A restaurant that doubles its standing order on the same delivery day costs you almost nothing extra, so a discount there is defensible. A restaurant that wants the same discount for the same 6 ounces spread across two delivery days is asking you to pay for the privilege. Tie any discount to the thing that saves you money: order size on a single drop, a longer commitment, or paying on delivery instead of on 30 day terms.
What costs does my restaurant price have to cover?
Seed, substrate, water, electricity, packaging, the tray share of your rent, delivery fuel and time, payment processing, and your own labor at a real hourly rate. Most growers price off seed cost alone, which is the smallest line on the list. Seed for a 10 by 20 tray runs roughly $1 to $3.50 depending on variety, but the delivery run and the harvest hour usually cost more than the seed did. If your price does not cover the drive, the account is a donation.
What do I say when a chef says the price is too high?
Ask a question instead of defending the number. "Too high compared to what?" tells you whether they have another quote, a food cost target, or just a habit of negotiating. If it is another quote, ask what that grower's delivery day and shelf life are. If it is a food cost target, work the yield with them: an ounce of microgreens garnishes a lot of plates, and the cost per plate is usually cents. Discounting before you understand the objection is how a $2.40 price becomes $1.80 for no reason.
How does GLAP help with restaurant pricing?
GLAP stores per-client pricing, so the number you quoted a restaurant in March is still the number on the invoice in November, and it does not depend on your memory. Orders are tied to the trays that fill them, so you can see what each account actually consumed. The Solo tier at $3.00 per month adds analytics and CSV export, which is what you need to work out margin per variety per client rather than guessing. Grower at $12.99 per month covers up to 50 clients and 200 orders per month.
The bottom line
Set the number from your own retail price, land inside the band, and say it in three seconds without a second sentence. Sell bulk bags. Expect to lose the accounts that buy on price alone, and let them go.
The chef in front of you is not deciding whether you are cheap. They are deciding whether you will still be delivering in March. Price like the answer is yes.