Greens in January. Grown on your ground.

Both put a climate-controlled greenhouse on your ground. Buy one outright and the house is yours with no royalty and no system to follow, but so is everything around it: the crop plan, sourcing inputs, the pack standard, food-safety paperwork, delivery, and finding the buyers. Franchise a territory and the house drops into the chain Local Greenhouse Farms already runs: the crop plan and training, price-book seed and supplies, the pack and cold-chain standard on the platform, delivery service at rate, and introductions to the school food authorities, grocers, and restaurants in your territory, plus NFN Farmers Market. You grow; the franchise handles the rest.

Leafy greens, microgreens, specialty greens, and a culinary herb line, on hydroponic towers under LED light with the climate held steady by a computer. Those crops turn over in weeks, so a house harvests every week of the year, and they are what schools, grocers, and restaurants buy most consistently. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberries are possible in the same house; the base crop plan starts with greens because that is where the year-round demand is.

The franchise unit is roughly 2,700 square feet of climate-controlled house, expandable as your accounts grow. Multi-tier hydroponic towers put more growing canopy under the roof than the footprint suggests, which is how a house that size feeds a county's schools. Our pilot house is being built now and is where the standard is being proven.

From the Midwest to the Northwest, the outdoor season runs roughly May through September. Schools operate September through May. A farm that only grows in summer is closed for most of the months a cafeteria is buying. A climate-controlled house flips that: winter becomes a selling point, and a four-month income becomes a twelve-month one on the same land.

No. The opposite. Your farm or family name is what goes on the box and what the cafeteria manager and shopper see when they scan it: your farm, your county, the harvest date, and a link back to your own site. Local Greenhouse Farms is the system behind the label: the house, the crop plan, the food-safety record, and the buyers. We back your name, we do not replace it.

The royalty is 5% of gross revenue, paid in perpetuity, and it covers training, the hosted site with e-commerce, the operations software, marketing materials, buyer connections, the help desk, and the peer forum. Consumables such as seed, transplants, nutrients, and packaging are bought from the program price book. The initial franchise fee and any installation fee are being finalized; we walk through the current numbers on the discovery call. The Franchise Disclosure Document in effect when you sign governs.

Pricing for the 2,700 sf house is being finalized with our greenhouse manufacturer and is covered on the discovery call. What we can say now is how it usually gets paid for: equipment financing on the house and grow systems, FSA facility loans for cold storage and packing, SBA and USDA-guaranteed loans for the rest, and grants for energy, packing, and value-added produce stacked on top. Our in-house grant and SBA specialists do that work with you. Local Greenhouse Farms introduces lenders but does not finance the house directly.

Yes, and that is the point of the stack. REAP covers up to half the cost of LED lighting, efficient heating, and solar. FSA Farm Storage Facility Loans cover cold storage and wash-and-pack at 15% down. Value-Added Producer Grants, the Specialty Crop Block Grant, and state food-system infrastructure grants cover packing, marketing, and school supply links. Our in-house specialists handle the applications alongside your financing paperwork.

Heating and lighting are the largest operating line in any greenhouse in a cold climate, and we do not hide that. The standard house is specified for efficiency from the start: full-spectrum LEDs that dim when the sun is strong, thermal curtains, gas heat with evaporative cooling, and a climate computer that runs it all together. The energy grants above exist to pay for exactly that equipment. Your numbers for your site are part of the discovery call.

No. The franchise is a standardized production program with training and onboarding for you and your crew, a best-practice library, a help desk, and a peer forum of other growers. What we do require: an owner who runs the house day to day, capital qualifications, and willingness to follow the system. If you buy a greenhouse outright instead, the crop plan and the crew are yours, and we provide training to get you started.

Site prep runs alongside the greenhouse build, so the house goes up as the pad, power, water, and gas are ready. Greens are on a weekly cycle, so the first harvest follows commissioning within weeks, not months. We are targeting first franchise harvests in spring and summer 2027, and we will give you a timeline for your own site on the call.

Nebraska to start, offered first to the 500-plus members of the Nebraska Farmers Network, with other states following as franchise registration completes. The house sits on your ground, so the produce moves miles to the school, not states. Distance to us does not matter; distance from your house to your buyers is what you are optimizing.

Site pre-work. The pad, three-phase power, water, gas, and drainage have to be ready before the structure goes up. Farmers who start the funding intake and site planning early get placed first. Get on the list and we will give you a timeline for your site.

Each franchisee receives a protected territory around their greenhouse where no other Local Greenhouse Farms franchisee operates, sized so your delivery routes to schools and stores stay short. You also receive right of first refusal on adjacent territories as you grow. The exact boundary rule is set in the FDD and shown on the territory map.

Any financial performance representation is made only in Item 19 of the Franchise Disclosure Document, which is provided after initial qualification, per FTC Franchise Rule requirements. The figures on this website are gross, illustrative program assumptions, not historical results and not a projection for your operation.