---
title: "Microgreens Profit and Margins: What Missouri's Enterprise Budget Shows"
description: "One extension budget models income over total cost at $5.84 to $19.45 a tray. The calculators quote $12 to $54, which is revenue. And 62 percent of surveyed growers reported under $10,000 a year."
url: "https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/profit-and-margins/"
lang: "en"
published: "2026-08-12"
modified: "2026-08-12"
image: "https://microgreensguru.com/og/selling-microgreens-guides-profit-and-margins.jpg"
---

# Microgreens Profit and Margins: What Missouri's Enterprise Budget Shows

[Cal Hewitt](https://microgreensguru.com/about/cal-hewitt/)Published August 12, 2026

- profit
- margins
- costs
- business planning
- selling microgreens

**If you are working out whether this pays, start from a real enterprise budget rather than an online calculator.** The one used throughout this page is University of Missouri Extension's G693, and it reports far smaller numbers than the calculators do, because the two are not measuring the same thing.

⚠️ **It is one budget, from one state, for one system**, and the figures below are its figures. It models five crops in a greenhouse on a stainless shelf under artificial lights, at Missouri labour and energy rates and Missouri packaging costs. The METHOD transfers anywhere. The NUMBERS do not: labour rates, electricity, packaging and achievable price all move by state and by channel, and all four are large enough to change whether the answer is positive. Treat what follows as a worked example to rebuild with your own three numbers, not as a national margin.

The three inputs that decide it are [labor](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/labor-and-time-per-tray/), which is the largest and the one most often left out, [pricing](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/pricing-and-what-to-charge/), which varies 8.3-fold across observed sellers, and [energy](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/electricity-and-water-costs/), which is small but whose rate varies 4.2-fold by state. This page puts them together.

## What to actually do

- **Start from Missouri's budget, not from a calculator.** It is the only document that costs a tray all the way through and publishes its assumptions.
- **Check which number you are reading.** Revenue per tray and income over total cost differ by up to nine times in the sources on this page.
- **Distrust any gross margin figure.** It excludes the largest input by definition.
- **Price the [crop choice](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/most-profitable-microgreens/).** A 3.3-fold difference between cabbage and radish in the same budget is larger than most operational improvements you could make.
- **Put the refrigerator in the [plan](https://microgreensguru.com/blog/microgreens-business-plan/).** It is 57 percent of the reference capital and it is what a wholesale buyer expects.
- **Count the labels.** On several crops they cost more than the seed.
- **Rebuild the budget with your own three numbers**: your labor minutes, your electricity rate and your actual achieved price. All three vary enough to change the answer's sign.
- **Treat 99 of 124 under $10,000 as the population you are joining**, and remember it counts only the businesses that were still there to answer.

## The one published budget

**University of Missouri Extension published a microgreens planning budget, G693, new in May 2024 and revised that July.** It models five crops in a greenhouse on a stainless shelf under artificial lights, and it reports **income over TOTAL cost per harvested 1020 tray**.

Income over total cost per harvested tray, Missouri Extension G693

| Crop | Per tray |
| --- | --- |
| Cabbage | **$19.45** |
| Broccoli | $14.36 |
| Mix | $14.20 |
| Pea | $6.58 |
| Radish | **$5.84** |

**Cabbage returns 3.3 times what [radish](https://microgreensguru.com/microgreen-types/radish/) does, under the same assumptions, in the same budget.** The crop choice is not a preference. It is the largest single lever in the model.

**It is an enterprise budget, not audited accounts.** Its inputs are assumptions, clearly labeled as such by its authors, including the 15 minutes a tray at $20 an hour that [the labor guide](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/labor-and-time-per-tray/) examines. But it is the only document in this category that costs a tray all the way through and shows its work.

## What those figures actually require of you

**Take a modest $30,000 a year from the enterprise and see what each crop asks for.**

Trays a week to clear $30,000 a year at Missouri's figures

| Crop | Trays a week | Production hours a week, at 15 minutes a tray |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Cabbage | **29.7** | 7.4 |
| Broccoli | 40.2 | 10.0 |
| Mix | 40.6 | 10.2 |
| Pea | 87.7 | 21.9 |
| Radish | **98.8** | **24.7** |

**Thirty trays a week against ninety-nine, for the same money.** And the hours follow: seven and a half production hours a week against nearly twenty-five, before any selling, delivery or administration, which Missouri's 15 minutes does not include.

**That is arithmetic on Missouri's own published figures**, not a forecast, and every input to it is theirs except the $30,000 target and the 52-week year.

## The calculators are quoting a different number

**Read the two columns below against each other before you use either.** They are not measuring the same thing, and taking a promotional figure as a profit figure is the usual way a plan ends up overstated.

What the promotional pages publish, against what the budget publishes

| Source | Figure per tray | What it actually is |
| --- | --- | --- |
| One profit calculator | $12 to $20 | **Revenue** |
| A grower supply site | $24 to $54 | **Revenue** |
| Missouri Extension G693 | **$5.84 to $19.45** | **Income over TOTAL cost** |

**The top of the promotional range is 9.2 times the bottom of the budget's range**, and they are not in conflict, because they are answers to different questions. One is what the tray sells for. The other is what is left after everything.

**A reader who compares them directly concludes this business is roughly ten times better than it is.** The calculators are not lying; they are labeling loosely, and the label is doing all the work.

**One of them publishes a 68 to 80 percent gross margin** alongside its revenue figures. Gross margin excludes labor by definition, and labor is the largest input, so a high gross margin is compatible with a small or negative net.

## What growers actually report earning

**The best business-scale evidence available is a national US survey of microgreen growers**, 176 respondents, run 2018 to 2019 and published January 2021.

- **99 of the 124 who chose a revenue bracket reported under $10,000 in annual gross microgreen revenue.**
- 40.3 percent used trays on stacked, artificially lit shelves.
- 75 percent had opened after 2010.

**Read the survivorship problem before reading the numbers.** Respondents were self-selected and every one of them was still trading when the survey ran. **It does not follow businesses, count closures or estimate a survival rate**, so it cannot tell you the odds. It tells you what the operating population looked like, and most of it was small.

## The lines that get left out

**Labor is the one every promotional page identifies and none of them counts.** One of them calls it the "silent profit killer" and then publishes materials-only costs.

**The capital is more concrete than most guides admit.** Missouri's small reference system totals **$4,384**: 20 heavy-duty 10x20 trays at $200, one four-level stainless shelf at $150, four LEDs at $900, four fans at $220, a cutter at $30, a refrigerator at **$2,500**, and 8 square feet of growing infrastructure at $48 a square foot for $384.

**The refrigerator is 57 percent of that.** It is the line most home-scale plans skip entirely and the one a wholesale buyer will require.

**Packaging is not a rounding error either.** Missouri assumes **$0.42 a package and $0.60 a label**, which its budget turns into **$3.36 to $6.30 of packages and $4.80 to $9.00 of labels per harvested tray**, depending on how many units the crop packs into. **On several crops the labels cost more than the seed**, which across the [50 costed crops here](https://microgreensguru.com/microgreen-types/) has a median of $1.09.

## What nobody has measured

- **A survival or failure rate.** The one survey has survivorship bias by design and does not follow businesses over time.
- **Audited financials** from any microgreen operation, at any scale.
- **A price time series.** No public US series tracks identical SKUs, weights, channels and locations over time.
- **Actual achieved prices**, as opposed to asking prices. Every price on this page and the pricing guide is a listing.
- **A second enterprise budget**, from anywhere, to check Missouri's against.
- **The point at which an operation must hire**, which no source documents.

### Terms on this page

**Enterprise budget.** An extension-published cost model for one activity. Its inputs are stated assumptions, not measurements, which is what makes it checkable.

**Income over total cost.** What is left after every cost the budget counts, including labor and depreciation. The nearest thing to profit in these figures.

**Gross margin.** Revenue minus direct materials, before labor. A high one tells you very little about whether the business works.

**Revenue per tray.** What the tray sells for. The number the calculators publish, and the one most often mistaken for profit.

**Survivorship bias.** The error of studying only the survivors. It is built into any survey of currently trading businesses.

**Depreciation.** Spreading a capital cost across the years it is used, which is how a $2,500 refrigerator lands in a per-tray figure.

**Reference system.** The specific equipment list a budget models. Missouri's is $4,384 and is stated item by item.

## Sources

Opened 2026-08-11 and 2026-08-12. The trays-a-week table, the production hours and the ratio between the promotional and budget figures are arithmetic performed for this page on the published figures below. The $30,000 target and the 52-week year are this page's illustration; every other input is Missouri's.

- [University of Missouri Extension, Microgreens Planning Budget G693 (PDF)](https://extension.missouri.edu/media/wysiwyg/Extensiondata/Pub/pdf/agguides/agecon/g00693.pdf) - new May 2024 and revised July 2024, modelling five crops in a greenhouse on a stainless shelf under artificial lights: income over total cost per harvested 1020 tray of $19.45 cabbage, $14.36 broccoli, $14.20 mix, $6.58 pea and $5.84 radish; the $4,384 reference system itemised as 20 trays $200, one four-level shelf $150, four LEDs $900, four fans $220, a cutter $30, a refrigerator $2,500 and 8 square feet of infrastructure at $48 a square foot; the $0.42 package and $0.60 label assumptions and the $3.36 to $6.30 and $4.80 to $9.00 per-tray totals they produce; and the 15 minutes a tray at $20 an hour labor input.
- [Misra and Gibson, characterization of microgreen growing operations and associated food safety practices, Food Protection Trends, January 2021](https://www.foodprotection.org/publications/food-protection-trends/archive/2021-01-characterization-of-microgreen-growing-operations-and-associated-food-safety-practices/) - the first national US online survey of microgreen growers, 176 respondents over 2018 to 2019, with 62 percent reporting under $10,000 annual microgreen revenue, 40.3 percent using trays on stacked artificially lit shelves and 75 percent having opened after 2010. Self-selected respondents, so it describes the operating population rather than counting all businesses or estimating survival.
- [Penn State Extension, growing microgreens](https://extension.psu.edu/growing-microgreens) - the direct-market example of $1.75 for a half-ounce bag, the wholesale example, the identification of clamshells and plastic bags as the packaging in use, and the per-tray task estimates totalling 9.5 minutes with scissors or 6.8 with clippers, costing $1.90 or $1.38 at its stated $12 an hour.
- Promotional and grower-supply pages, used as practice only and as the source of the revenue-against-profit comparison: [FinanceOrbitX on what to charge, published 2026-03-28](https://www.financeorbitx.com/how-much-should-you-charge-for-your-microgreens/), which publishes $12 to $20 a tray and 68 to 80 percent gross margins and separately calls labor the silent profit killer; and [On The Grow](https://onthegrow.net/pages/best-microgreens-for-restaurants), which publishes $24 to $54 a tray. Both are calculation examples rather than sourced transaction data.

## Keep reading

- Selling guides

    ### Most Profitable Microgreens: Break-Even by Crop and Channel

    The most profitable microgreens change with your selling channel. Compare break-even yields across 38 crops before deciding what to grow next.

    [Read Most Profitable Microgreens: Break-Even by Crop and Channel](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/most-profitable-microgreens/)
- Selling guides

    ### Which Microgreens to Sell: What Gets Grown, and What the One Real Budget Says Pays

    Radish and pea are grown by 29 and 27 percent of surveyed growers, and they rank fifth and fourth of five in the only published enterprise budget. Cabbage, which ranks first, is not in the popular three at all.

    [Read Which Microgreens to Sell: What Gets Grown, and What the One Real Budget Says Pays](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/which-crops-to-sell/)
- Selling guides

    ### Electricity and Water: The Lights Were 3 Percent of the Bill

    In the one published microgreen room with a metered breakdown, air conditioning took 150 kWh of 188.4 and two LED lamps took 5.4. And US rates run 12.35 to 52.00 cents, so a national average is nearly useless.

    [Read Electricity and Water: The Lights Were 3 Percent of the Bill](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/electricity-and-water-costs/)
- Selling guides

    ### Minutes Per Tray: The Cost Every Microgreens Business Plan Leaves Out

    Two institutions publish a per-tray time: 6.8 to 9.5 minutes and 15. At real wages that is $2.21 to $5.00 of labor against a median $1.09 of seed, so the input everyone prices is the smallest one.

    [Read Minutes Per Tray: The Cost Every Microgreens Business Plan Leaves Out](https://microgreensguru.com/selling-microgreens/guides/labor-and-time-per-tray/)