How to find and keep microgreens customers

Growing microgreens is the easy part. Most people who give up on a microgreens business could grow them fine. What they couldn’t do was find enough people to buy every week.

We teach one starting route: local home delivery. You bring nearby households to a clear offer, confirm the order, and then grow what they asked for. The customers you keep are what make the business work, because each one who stays orders again next week without you having to find them twice.

This guide covers how to find those first customers, turn interest into confirmed orders, and keep people ordering.

Start with an offer you can deliver every week

Before you tell anyone about it, write your offer down: what you sell, the pack size, the price, the area you deliver to and the day you deliver. Say clearly whether someone is buying once or signing up for a regular delivery, and how they’ll find out when their first order arrives.

Keep the offer small enough to deliver every single week. One delivery day and an area you can drive in an evening is plenty to start. A customer can always ask for something different, such as a bigger pack or an extra delivery, but work out what that does to your costs and your schedule before you say yes.

Our guide to growing microgreens for profit shows how to price an order so it covers your costs and your time.

Find your first customers close to home

The place people actually order is your website or online store. Everything else is a way of bringing local people there. The routes we teach include posts on your own Facebook page, local Facebook groups, paid Facebook ads, Instagram and plain word of mouth.

Pick one you can keep up with and start there. Local Facebook groups work well for a first round:

• Find a group for the area you deliver to.
• Read the group’s rules and check that business posts are allowed.
• Post what you grow, what’s available, your delivery day and where to order.
• Watch how people respond before you post in more groups.

That last step matters. More interest only helps if you can answer every message and grow every order that comes from it.

“I landed my very first customer from the Facebook group post and I am being recommended to a personal chef friend of theirs.”

Wendy, course student

Let people taste it first

Many people have never bought microgreens, so a free sample often does more than any post. Give a small pack to someone who has shown interest, tell them how to order, and follow up a few days later.

“I got my first subscriber this afternoon!! They subscribed bi-weekly and they were someone I gave a free sample to.”

David, course student

Count the cost of samples as part of finding customers, and give them to people in your delivery area who could realistically order.

Turn interest into a confirmed order

A comment or a message is interest. It isn’t an order yet, so don’t plant for it until the details are settled. For each new customer, confirm:

• what they’re buying and how much
• whether it’s a one-time order or a regular delivery, and how often
• the price and whether they’ve paid
• their address and any delivery instructions
• the first delivery date you can actually meet

Some growers send an invoice and follow up; others take payment directly on their website. Either works, as long as you know who has paid before you deliver. Keep customer details private.

Tell customers when their first order will arrive

Because you grow to order, a new customer’s first delivery can’t be tomorrow. The crops we start growers on take about ten days from seed to harvest, and then the order goes out on your regular delivery day.

Say this up front, so nobody expects their greens on your next run. A short confirmation does the job:

“Thanks for your order of two packs of pea shoots. We grow every order fresh, so your first delivery will arrive next Thursday between 6 and 8 p.m. After that, you’ll get a delivery every Thursday.”

Only send what you’ve actually agreed. Don’t say an order is paid if it isn’t, and don’t turn a one-time order into a subscription through vague wording.

Keep your regulars ordering

A customer who gets the right order on the right day, every week, is the one who stays. Put every confirmed order into your growing schedule with dates for planting and harvest, and plan from your own measured yields, not a number you hoped for. A short order is one of the fastest ways to lose a regular.

Help new customers use what they bought. Someone trying microgreens for the first time may not know what to do with them. With the first delivery, tell them what’s in the pack and give one or two simple ideas, such as adding them to a sandwich, eggs or a salad.

A few days later, ask:

• How did you use your first order?
• Was the amount right for you?
• Was anything about ordering or delivery confusing?

Write the answers down before you change anything. If someone didn’t use it all, find out whether the amount, the frequency or unfamiliarity was the problem. A bigger order isn’t always the answer.

Small changes to how people order can matter too. One student moved the subscription question to the top of their order form:

“…I moved the subscription question to the top, and that seems to be converting more people to subscriber, vs just one-time purchasers!”

Stephanie, course student

What about restaurants and farmers markets?

They’re real options, but they aren’t where we start people. Restaurants and markets each come with their own buying needs, costs and schedules, and they’re harder to plan around than a list of households who order every week. Penn State Extension’s guide to planning a microgreens business is a useful overview if you want to compare them later.

You don’t need every channel to begin. Get home delivery working first.

Track every customer from first message to repeat order

Keep one record per person, in a spreadsheet or notebook:

• Where they came from: Facebook group, sample, friend, ad
• In your area? Yes or no, and which delivery day
• What they want: product, amount, price, how often
• Stage: interested, details confirmed, waiting on payment, confirmed, first delivery done, ordering regularly, not going ahead
• Next step: what you need to do, and when
• First delivery date: and whether they confirmed it
• Feedback: what they said after the first order, and what you changed

The point is to keep “interested” and “confirmed” separate, so you only grow what’s actually been ordered.

Try the free training

Our free microgreens training walks through setting up a home growing space and finding your first customers online, and it introduces our full course.