Kyle MacNaughton holds some of the microgreens he grows and supplies to restaurants, chefs and customers throughout the Spartanburg area. Photo courtesy of Kyle MacNaughton.
When local business owner Kyle MacNaughton decided to pursue entrepreneurship, he had one priority in mind.
“I wanted to do something that was going to provide real value for the community,” says MacNaughton. “It was really important to me to bring something that would be valuable to Spartanburg.”
As he researched different pursuits, MacNaughton discovered microgreens. Immediately, he was intrigued.
“The neat thing about them was that they could grow vertically, so you could grow a lot in a very small space,” he explains. “From an agricultural standpoint, the big hangup for a lot of people is having space, and I didn’t have access to land, but I could start growing microgreens from my house.”
So, he did. Alongside coursework from some of the most premium microgreen growers in Canada, MacNaughton began to grow microgreens, launching a business that would soon become a career. The end of 2026 will mark his third year of running Spartanburg Microgreens, and he shows no sign of slowing down.
Spartanburg Microgreens serves two different customer bases: local restaurants and chefs, as well as individual members of the community.
MacNaughton supplies restaurants in the area with 25 different varieties of microgreens, which are used both in dishes as well as for beautiful garnishing. However, the business’s retail and delivery service — their original offering — remains the heart of the business.
“We’ll deliver microgreens to your door, and we also work with a handful of local markets and stores to supply microgreens that you can purchase in-person,” he says.
Microgreens are a beneficial part of any diet because they’re an easy way to incorporate immense nutritional value into everyday meals. “If you think about the micronutrients, macronutrients, and minerals that you get in the mature version of a plant, these are even more concentrated in microgreens,” explains MacNaughton. “For example, broccoli microgreens have been shown to be 40 times more nutritionally dense than mature broccoli, so if you eat broccoli microgreens, you’re getting 40 times the nutrition. They’re very healthy, and clean, and fresh, and flavorful, so they make a great addition to home meal plans.”
For people who might not know where to begin, Spartanburg Microgreens has recently launched a new offering they call the Sparkle City Salad. “What we do is we take all of the more exotic microgreens that we use for restaurants that might not be offered on the retail side and combine them together into unique salads,” says MacNaughton. “It’s four personal-size salads, so about a week’s worth of salads for one person or two big salads for a family. It makes it easy for people to incorporate microgreens into their diet, and keeps things interesting because the salads are different every week. It gives you a great variety of flavor, color, and texture.”
And for home chefs wanting to dive in on their own, MacNaughton says that microgreens are easy to incorporate. Each microgreen has a different flavor, so if you determine your favorite microgreens, it’s easy to add them into everyday dishes you already enjoy that complement that flavor. “We put them in soups, we put them in sandwiches, we put them in stir fry and pasta sauce,” says MacNaughton. “It’s really as creative as you want to get with it.”
Mild microgreens like broccoli microgreens can also be added to sweet smoothies, as their flavor is mild enough so as not to be noticed at all alongside fruits like strawberries and bananas. “You throw the broccoli microgreens in here and it won’t make it taste like a green smoothie, but it gives you a healthy boost.”
To learn more about microgreens and try them out for yourself, visit @spartanburgmicrogreens on Facebook and Instagram, or shop online at Spartanburg Microgreens.
