Little Leaf Farms on Track to Break $100 Million in Retail Sales in 2023

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Apr 03, 2023, 10:30 ET

Brand grows to #3 position in all packaged lettuce sales in the Northeast

DEVENS, Mass., April 3, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Little Leaf Farms, the country's #1 brand of packaged lettuce sustainably grown through controlled environment agriculture (CEA), is on track for a banner year in 2023, projecting that it will break $100 million in sales by the end of the calendar year. The sales milestone comes as Little Leaf Farms continues to capture a significant share of the packaged lettuce segment. In fact, the brand recently rose to the #3 position in all packaged lettuce sales in the Northeast, inclusive of field-grown greens, and has steadfastly maintained its leadership position in the CEA segment, with now nearly double the sales of the #2 CEA brand according to the most recent Nielsen data available in the category¹.

Little Leaf Farms Greenhouse in McAdoo, PA.
Credit: Brian Riedel Photography — Little Leaf Farms Greenhouse in McAdoo, PA. Credit: Brian Riedel Photography

"We're incredibly excited about what the future holds for Little Leaf Farms," said Paul Sellew, Founder and CEO of Little Leaf Farms. "We have an aggressive expansion goal of 100 acres under glass by 2026 and are well on our way to meeting that goal. We believe in the promise of CEA as a sustainable, scalable solution to the climate challenges facing field-grown crops and remain committed to our mission to bring fresh, sustainable leafy greens to all."

Little Leaf Farms credits its success to both technology and people.

Thanks to development of several first-of-their kind growing systems, in partnership with vendors from around the world, Little Leaf Farms is consistently improving on plant health, yield, and production. The recent implementation of next generation sensors and a data science system that allows the brand to quickly react to changes in the greenhouse have also helped improve yields. In fact, Little Leaf Farms has recently achieved a yield 30x that of conventional farms and today, with just 30 acres, a Little Leaf Farms indoor greenhouse is achieving the yields a traditional farm would see on 900 acres.

Little Leaf Farms has placed a premium on not only attracting but retaining some of the top talent in the world across all areas of the business, with several employees who started at Little Leaf Farms in entry level roles now holding management-level positions in a variety of departments, from Growing to Production to Human Resources. Little Leaf Farms has also implemented a robust training program for its employees to further career development by encouraging the adoption of new technical skills.

"Our technology is second to none," continued Sellew. "However, we have always operated from the position that we are a farming company before we're a technology company, and I think that mentality is the secret sauce that's allowed us to grow and remain profitable. As our recent sales numbers have shown, at the end of the day no one is going to buy your lettuce because you have the best tech – they're going to buy your lettuce because it tastes better than anything else out there."

Consumers have certainly responded to the great taste of Little Leaf Farms, with the brand receiving so much positive feedback about its lettuce – a product that doesn't typically receive rave reviews – that it recently tapped into the hundreds of voicemails and emails left by fans and turned those "tastemonials" into the voice of the brand itself for its first-ever brand campaign, "Lettuce that Speaks for Itself."

About Little Leaf Farms
Little Leaf Farms is on a mission to transform the way food is grown through peri-urban agricultural practices that are rebuilt for the modern world. Using advanced greenhouse technologies, Little Leaf Farms is growing fresh, sustainably farmed lettuce 365 days a year. Little Leaf Farms utilizes captured rainwater, natural sunlight that shines through high transmission glass, and solar-powered energy in their precise, soil-less hydroponic farming. The crispy, flavorful baby greens are harvested without ever touching human hands and are never treated with chemical pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. For more information, visit littleleaffarms.com or @littleleaffarms.