ChefPax is an Austin microgreens farm built by a software engineer who got tired of produce that traveled 1,500 miles before it hit a plate. We grow hyperlocal, monitor with sensors, and ship within 24 hours of harvest.
Founder Story
I spent years building software systems — APIs, data pipelines, infrastructure that had to be reliable, observable, and improvable over time. When I started thinking seriously about food, I kept running into the same problem: the supply chain between farm and plate is opaque, slow, and fragile.
Most microgreens in grocery stores were grown weeks before they land on a shelf, then traveled through a regional distributor before a local store, then sat there until you bought them. By the time they reached a home kitchen, they had two or three days of quality left. A product that should be exceptional was being treated like a commodity.
ChefPax is the answer to that problem: a farm run with the same rigor I'd apply to a software system. Sensors. Data. Repeatable processes. Direct relationships with the people eating the food. No middlemen, no mystery about where things came from or how they were grown.
How We Grow
Every ChefPax tray is grown under a monitored, controlled environment. Not because we want to make farming complicated — but because consistency and quality require it.
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Controlled Grow Systems
Each grow shelf runs controlled light cycles and temperature ranges. No guessing — every parameter is set intentionally.
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Sensor Monitoring
Temperature, humidity, and lux sensors track conditions in real time. Alerts fire when anything drifts outside range.
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Data-Driven Production
Grow data informs planting schedules, harvest timing, and yield forecasts. Software connects what's growing to what's ordered.
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Continuous Improvement
Every tray feeds back into the system. What worked well gets repeated. What didn't gets adjusted. That's engineering applied to food.
The term "local" gets overused. For us, it means grown in Austin, delivered in Austin, to people we know by name. That has real structural advantages.
Shorter Supply Chains
Produce goes from our farm to your table in 24–48 hours, not days or weeks through a regional distribution hub.
Local Resilience
A local farm isn't subject to the same supply disruptions as national distribution. If something breaks, we can adapt quickly.
Closer Relationships
We know our customers. We grow what's actually needed. That feedback loop doesn't exist in commodity produce.
What We Grow
Microgreens aren't garnish. They're the most flavor-dense form a plant produces — harvested at peak expression before energy shifts to structural growth.
We grow 19+ varieties chosen specifically for culinary utility: flavor range, visual impact, and reliability across Austin's climate. Every crop is tested on real dishes before it earns a place in the lineup.
See All Varieties| Crop | Flavor Profile |
|---|---|
| Sunflower | Nutty, crunchy, lightly sweet |
| Rambo Radish | Peppery, sharp horseradish kick with vivid purple color |
| Pea Shoots | Sweet, fresh, clean — like spring in a leaf |
| Amaranth | Earthy with beet-like notes and striking magenta stems |
| Shiso | Aromatic, anise-like complexity — bridges Japanese and Italian flavor profiles |
For Chefs & Restaurants
Most farms sell you what they grew. We're building toward something different: a system where what we grow is shaped by what you actually need. That means recurring orders, usage data, and a feedback loop that reduces waste on both ends of the supply chain.
For a working kitchen, predictability matters as much as quality. If you can count on your microgreens arriving Tuesday and Friday, on spec, at the quantity you need — you can build them into the menu rather than treat them as an occasional luxury.
We're a small farm right now. But the data infrastructure we're building is designed to scale. Every chef account teaches the system something that makes the next harvest more accurate.
What a B2B relationship with ChefPax looks like
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Recurring par-level support for chef accounts
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Usage-informed inventory forecasting
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Predictable ordering rhythms for kitchens
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Less spoilage from over-ordering
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Better menu-to-harvest alignment
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Data-informed local supply relationships
Austin, TX
We sell direct: at the SFC Farmers Market at Republic Square, through our online shop, and in direct delivery for chef accounts. Every sale is a direct transaction between the farm and the person eating the food.
Austin's food community has been a natural fit. The restaurant scene here values provenance and flavor specificity. Home cooks here are curious and willing to try new ingredients. And the farmers market culture gives us a direct feedback channel that most farms never get.
We grow here because we live here. The goal isn't to ship microgreens across the country — it's to be a reliable, high-quality part of Austin's food system.
Find Us at the MarketGrown in Austin, harvested fresh, and delivered with the same care a software engineer puts into a system that has to work.
