August 2015 — Shawn and Karen King are making big business out of tiny greens. The couple’s company, MicroGreen King in Yadkin County, produces a variety of microgreens hydroponically, using only water, light and natural burlap fiber as a growing medium. They were ready to expand their business when they attended the NCGT/NC 10% Campaign Grower-Buyer mixer in March 2015.

At the event they connected with Lowes Foods Director of Produce Merchandising, Richard McKellogg, and Locally Grown Accounts Representative and NCGT Liaison, Krista Morgan. Karen compares the event to speed-dating: “it’s enough time to get the information about what buyers’ requirements are, like GAP certification and liability insurance. As a grower, you don’t always know their requirements, and you don’t always know who you need to speak to [within a company] to start the conversation. It made it so much nicer and easier and faster for us” to do business with a large grocery chain like Lowes Foods, she says.

Shawn and Karen King with sons Noah and Jesse. Photo by Anida Kleege/Lowes Foods.

After the Grower-Buyer mixer, they moved through Lowes Foods new vendor process and in April, began selling into two Winston-Salem area Lowes Foods stores. Karen stresses the importance of consumer education to selling their product. “We go every weekend and sample our products,” she explains. “People don’t know what our product is; we have to educate them. Marketing is our biggest hill to climb.”

The couple notices a strong relationship between their sampling events and their sales. They’ve also had marketing help from Krista Morgan, who created their farmer “story” for in-store promotion, and scheduled them for the stores’ “Community Table” outreach events.

Once their products were established in the two Lowes Foods stores, they were approved to sell through Lowes Foods’ sister-company, Merchants Distributors, Inc. Now their microgreens are being sold at about a dozen Lowes Foods stores throughout the state. Selling into Lowes Foods/MDI has enabled MicroGreen King to double their production, Karen says.

The next NCGT/NC 10% Campaign Grower-Buyer Mixer will take place at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association’s Sustainable Agriculture Conference in November.  For more information please contact NC 10% Campaign Statewide Coordinator Robyn Stout.

This article originally appeared in the August 2015 NC Growing Together Newsletter.