Scaling and planning microgreen production with Garrett Corwin of Piedmont Microgreens and Microgreen Manager in North Carolina

Garrett Corwin started Piedmont Microgreens out of his garage in Durham, North Carolina, and after six years he’s scaled the business to 350-400 trays a week. In addition to the farmers market, Piedmont sells to more than 50 restaurants, grocery stores and wholesalers, including FreshPoint and Sysco with just a two-person team. As the business expanded, Garrett realized the limitations of spreadsheets for crop planning, so he enlisted the help of his brother Spencer to help build a better way to keep track of their crops and customers.  Spencer left a software engineering role at Meta to help build Microgreen Manager, and now it’s how they plan their crops and is available to other farmers. In this interview we discuss how Garrett hacked his house to provide a low-cost platform for the business, how to get in with wholesalers, and what equipment he would buy if he were starting over. We talk about the functions of Microgreen Manager that make it more robust than spreadsheets, how Piedmont Microgreens has kept its workforce the same size even as they scaled production, how they grow everything to order and lots more in this week’s Growing for Market Podcast interview! Connect With Guest: Website: microgreenmanager.com piedmontmicrogreens.com Instagram: @microgreenmanager @piedmontmicrogreens Podcast Sponsors: Huge thanks to our podcast sponsors as they make this podcast FREE to everyone with their generous support: Nifty Hoops builds complete gothic high tunnels that are easy to install and built to last.  Their bolt-together construction makes setup straightforward and efficient, whether it's a small backyard hoophouse, or a dozen large production-scale high tunnels- especially through their community build option, where professional builders work alongside your crew, family, or neighbors to build each structure -- usually in a single day.Visit niftyhoops.com to learn more. Farming is hard. Running it shouldn’t be. Tend helps you plan your season, map your farm, and track every task from seed to sale. No spreadsheets, no guesswork, just seamless workflows. Tend is the all-in-one farm management platform that brings together planning, field mapping, fulfillment, real-time inventory, sales, labor, traceability, and accounting in one easy platform. Built for small market gardens, CSAs, and large diversified farms. Get started with a free account at Tend.com. No credit card required. If you grow for market, you know performance is everything. That’s why so many farmers are turning to Burpee’s Farmers Market. Dedicated to professional growers, Burpee is now offering non-GMO seeds in larger quantities – bred and selected for standout flavor, strong yields, and the kind of visual appeal your customers crave. Burpee’s been doing this for 150 years, and they’re still creating new varieties with growers like you in mind. You can check out the full lineup at Burpee.com/FarmersMarket. Tilth Soil makes living soils for organic growers. The base for all our mixes is NOP-compliant compost, made from the 4,000 tons of food scraps we divert from landfills each year. And the results speak for themselves. Get excellent germination, strong transplants, and help us turn these resources back into food. Try a free bag and learn more at tilthsoil.com/gfm. There are a lot of farm sales platforms out there, but there’s only one that’s cooperatively owned by farmers. That’s GrownBy — your all-in-one solution to simplify farm sales. GrownBy makes online farm sales easy and affordable; setting up your shop is free, and you only pay when