FoodLore · Prototype
Most calculators in this business are built by people selling you the farm. This one starts from the physics — the light you need, the heat it makes — and tells you what it costs per pound. Including when the answer is no.
And the crop list is a shortcut, not a catalogue: these are the five that actually pay at spare-room scale. The commodity salads everyone tries first are missing on purpose — they lose money in a small space, every time. Start from the options that already work.
What's working against you
What's going for you
| Lever | You have | Break even at |
|---|
Cash you need before anyone pays you
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Who is going to eat all this?
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Risk analysis, the reverse solver, and the ten-year model an investor will ask for.
See what's in ProYou've used it — now tell us what you make of it
What was useful, what was confusing, what you'd want next, or numbers that don't match what you see on the ground. It goes straight to the person who built it, and it is genuinely what decides what gets built next.
Prototype. The engine is real and runs in SI units; the crop library is five crops deep instead of fifteen, and the Pro panel is a mock-up.
Estimates for planning only. Your genetics, climate, market and operating skill will move these numbers. Do not hand this to a bank as a business plan.
Crop choice follows the published margins for small growers: microgreens at $25–50/lb, gourmet mushrooms at $16–24/lb direct (GroCycle), oyster yielding up to 25 lb/sq ft a year, lion's mane selling at roughly twice oyster. Commodity leafy greens are excluded because they do not clear their costs at this scale.
Benchmarks: measured energy use of 10–18 kWh/kg for vertical-farm lettuce (energy benchmarking study); modelled best practice of 2.3–7.8 kWh/kg (Frontiers, 2026); build cost $150–250/sq ft.
Packaging and delivery: stall fees of $25–60 a day (Holland, Bend); delivery runs built from a driver at $18/hour and $0.65 a mile, against a published last-mile average of $17.20 per drop. Packaging unit costs are estimated — anchored to $0.85 per clamshell at retail, since no supplier publishes bulk pricing.