Profit and Margins: What the One Real Budget Says, and What the Calculators Say

This page is the arithmetic on top of the three before it. Labor is the largest input and nobody had priced it. Pricing has a 10.7-fold observed range. Energy is small but its rate varies 4.2-fold by state. Now put them together.

The short version: one real enterprise budget exists, it reports far smaller numbers than the calculators do, and the two are not even measuring the same thing.

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.

Cabbage returns 3.3 times what 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 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.

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

This is the most important thing on the page.

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.

• 62 percent reported under $10,000 in annual 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 has a median of $1.09.

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. 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. 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 62 percent under $10,000 as the population you are joining, and remember it counts only the businesses that were still there to answer.

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.

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) - 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 - 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 - 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, 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, which publishes $24 to $54 a tray. Both are calculation examples rather than sourced transaction data.