🧠 A Microgreen Side Hustle
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🧠 A Microgreen Side Hustle
What I'm reading and Turning a Side Hustle into $350M
Today’s read time: 2 minutes and 45 seconds
What’s up party people! We’re back with another side hustle idea!
Before we dive into today’s idea, let’s connect on Twitter!
1. Business idea of the Week: MicroGreen Farming
What if I told you there’s a business that has a low start-up cost, high margin, and can be done from any room in your house?
And no, I’m not talking about OnlyFans.
I’m talking about growing microgreens.
Microgreens are vegetable greens used by chefs for toppings on things like salads, sandwiches, and almost any dish you can think of.
They’re the leafy sprout from the vegetable seed that’s harvested before the vegetable part starts growing. You can use most vegetable seeds to grow them, but popular ones include vegetables such as radishes, cilantro, broccoli, etc.
And they’re growing in popularity.
Check out the increase in Google searches over the past few years. 👇
The idea: Grow and sell Microgreens.
This side hustle is growing in popularity and for good reason.
You can get started with under $150, and start making a few thousand dollars within your first few months.
Let’s lay out the basics:
This business involves growing microgreens in a room in your house, and then selling them to local chefs, restaurants, farmer’s markets, or grocery stores.
Using racks with four shelves, many growers can produce 50lbs of microgreens every 2-week cycle in a 60 square foot space. At $20 per pound, that’s $1,000 each cycle or about $2,000 per month. - grocycle
As you can see, this is a side hustle that can start generating meaningful revenue very quickly.
Now let’s talk about getting started:
There are two key pillars of this business: 1) Grow good microgreens and 2) Find customers.
Although you’ll need to grow the microgreens in order to sell them, I recommend getting your first 1-2 customers lined up before you even start growing.
Call around to local restaurants and markets. Tell them you’re getting ready to start your next batch and ask if they would be interested in buying from you.
This will also give you a chance to understand what type of microgreens they’re looking for (broccoli, radish, cilantro, etc.)
Once you have your first 1-2 customers, it’s time to start the grow.
The 4 things you’ll need include:
Microgreen seeds (start with something popular like broccoli)
I’d recommend watching one of the many Youtube tutorial videos for a full breakdown of how to grow microgreens.
Once you have your batches on a 2-week cycle, you can begin adding more customers and growing more trays.
And this is how you turn this side hustle into a full-fledged business, with that sweet, sweet recurring revenue.
And that’s a wrap!
2. Things I’m Reading.
How Not to Suck at Writing (newsletter)
The 6 Levers of Influence, Part 1 and Part 2 - The Follow Up
A URL on 800,000 Maryland License Plates is now redirecting to an online casino based in the Philippines. - Vice News
Turning a Side Hustle into $350M
Meet Paige Mycoskie.
While working in a Venice Beach surf shop back in 2007, Paige decided to start a little side hustle out of her garage.
Paige started designing clothes that fit with her 70’s retro surf lifestyle and named her brand “Aviator Nation”.
Fast forward to today, Paige is worth $350M and Aviator Nation sells >$110M worth of clothes every year (and Paige owns 100% of it).
But unlike some popular clothing brands, Aviator Nation didn’t go viral overnight. It’s been a slow climb since the start in 2007, but Paige got an extra boost in the last few years.
In 2020, Aviator Nation started going viral on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. They finished 2020 with $70M of revenue and increased to $110M in 2021 (expected to double by 2023).
Aviator Nation prides itself on only manufacturing its clothes in the US, but it comes at a price. Their average sweatpants range from $160 to $190 and their jackets are upwards of $400.
It’s safe to say their unit costs help with their revenue.
So what can we learn from Paige? A lot.
But here are a few key takeaways
Stick with it. It took Paige almost 13 years to hit a pivotal time in the business. Most would’ve given up a long time before then.
Sell Premium. If you charge $100 instead of $50, you only need one instead of 2.
Ownership is important. Paige still owns 100% of the company which is the sole reason she has amassed her $350M net worth.
And that’s a wrap!