One letter, one school division, one year-round local produce line.

I am writing to introduce IronRoost Farms, Inc. — a vertically integrated Virginia C-Corporation (SCC #12012225) headquartered at 2593 Cougar Lane, Locust Grove, Virginia — and to position our Central Virginia hydroponic microgreens line as a year-round local produce option for the Charlottesville City Schools (CCCPS) Food & Nutrition Services Farm to School program ahead of our first commercial harvest cycle in August–September 2026.

IronRoost is standing up a 2,000–3,500 sq ft indoor Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) facility in Central Virginia, with a planned Phase 1 product mix built around the four microgreen lines K–12 food-service buyers most commonly request. The facility is on track for a 7–10 day harvest cadence off 50–90 4-tier racks, with cold-chain dispatch from an on-site walk-in cooler and trace-back lot numbering (plant date, harvest date, lot ID) on every case. Year-1 volume is intentionally on the conservative end of the equipment baseline, and we are reaching out as a local producer that can commit, not a producer pitching a number it cannot yet hit.

CCCPS Farm to School is the second Phase 2 anchor beyond our RRS Foodservice outreach — the institutional/account channel that complements the distributor channel. K–12 food service is particularly well-suited to our harvest cadence for a practical reason: it is a year-round, calendar-aligned line that absorbs the weekly harvest without depending on restaurant menu volatility, seasonal specials, or one-off catering demand. For a small regional CEA producer, that steadiness is the difference between a Phase 2 line that compounds and one that stalls.

The goal of this letter is a short conversation and a structured reply: whether a 4-week trial delivery starting in our first commercial harvest window is a useful starting point for the FNS team, what per-line pricing the division needs to see before signing off, and which person on the Food & Nutrition Services side has the authority to confirm a pilot.

The Phase 1 commercial offering covers four microgreen lines: pea shoots, sunflower microgreens, radish microgreens, and mixed brassicas (a combination platter of kale, arugula, mustard, and broccoli rabe micro). For CCCPS nutrition-program goals, pea shoots and mixed brassicas are the lines that most cleanly fit the fresh-vegetable serving proposition per reimbursable meal and the harvest-of-the-month / salad-bar rotation — both lines are versatile across raw applications (salad bar, sandwich bar, wrap stations) and lightly cooked applications (warm grain bowls, breakfast egg scrambles, soup garnishes) without recipe modification.

The other two lines — sunflower and radish microgreens — round out the offering for sites that want a higher-flavor profile. If Food & Nutrition Services has a specific additional line that already has demonstrated pull-through in the division’s Harvest of the Month programming, that request will be folded into the Phase 2 queue. The Phase 4 and Phase 5 lines (basil, cilantro, amaranth) are in the rotation queue behind the primary four.

Our equipment baseline is a 2,000–3,500 sq ft indoor grow environment with 50–90 4-tier racks — roughly 800–1,440 standard 1020 trays of canopy at full fill. At a 7–10 day harvest cycle per tray, that baseline can produce approximately 500–900 lbs of finished cut microgreens per week depending on variety density.

For the first commercial cycle, we are committing to a conservative floor of 200–400 lbs per week across the four varieties, with a per-line indicative split built around what a single school division can realistically absorb (roughly 50–100 lbs/week each for pea shoots and mixed brassicas, 40–80 lbs/week each for sunflower and radish). That floor is sized to be meaningful for a K–12 produce line — a single elementary salad-bar rotation across the division consumes double-digit pounds per week per line — while still leaving headroom for the RRS Foodservice distributor channel and any additional institutional buyers we open through Phase 2.

The cadence and the floor are what CCCPS should plan around for Year 1. There is no volume commitment language here that conflicts with the school calendar: delivery windows are aligned to the academic year, and the trial schedule is structured so the FNS team can walk away after the 4-week pilot without a multi-ton commitment.

IronRoost’s CCCPS outreach is framed as a complement to, not a substitute for, the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) Farm to School program, including the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant Program. The federal program operates across planning, implementation, and state agency tracks, and prioritizes increasing the volume and variety of locally produced foods served in participating schools — a target that aligns with a regional Virginia Controlled Environment Agriculture producer that can supply year-round, single-state-of-origin microgreens.

Within that framework, IronRoost is positioned as a local-producer synergy, not a vendor list to be checked off mid-procurement. A CCCPS Farm to School grant application that lists IronRoost as a committed regional supplier strengthens both the proposal — supply-side commitment already secured for the grant term — and IronRoost’s own pull-through documentation, by establishing the institutional buyer on file ahead of the first harvest cycle. The parallel Virginia-side state program lane is the VDACS Specialty Crop Block Grant Program (SCBGP) 2027 cycle, which is tracked on this site under the SCBGP 2027 Pre-Application Skeleton page.

IronRoost does not represent, and this letter should not be read to imply, that any Farm to School grant has been awarded to CCCPS, that IronRoost is a pre-approved FNS supplier under any specific track, or that any dollar amount has been committed by either party. The alignment language here is intentional: a committed supplier strengthens a future application, but the application itself is the division’s to file and award decisions are USDA’s to make.

IronRoost is operating on the VDACS regulated-facility filing path. The cottage food exemption does not apply to microgreens — microgreens are classified as Time/Temperature Control for Safety (TCS) produce under the FDA Food Code, and the production floor and cold-chain dispatch have to meet regulated-produce standards, not cottage-food standards. For a school nutrition program, the TCS classification is the right framework to plan around: it sets the cold-chain expectation, the lot-trace expectation, and the documentation posture the division’s food safety plan will already be written to.

GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) pre-audit is in progress. HACCP plan development is underway concurrent with facility commissioning. Trace-back lot numbering — plant date, harvest date, and lot ID linked to each case — is already implemented in our harvest SOP. Cold-chain integrity from the harvest table through dispatch is documented; the walk-in cooler maintains ≤41°F pre-dispatch. IronRoost will provide Certificates of Analysis from an accredited lab for the first three harvest cycles and on request thereafter. The full third-party GAP audit is targeted for Q1 2027 once the first harvest cadence has demonstrated stable, repeatable volume.

This section is intentionally structured as a three-item reply prompt so the Food & Nutrition Services team can accept or counter in a single email. A reply that addresses all three items puts the next step — a formal trial supply proposal — on the same five-business-day turnaround regardless of total volume.

(1) Trial delivery schedule. A 4-week recurring delivery starting in our first commercial harvest window — mid-August through mid-September 2026. The suggested cadence is once-weekly refrigerated delivery on Wednesdays, 7 AM–12 PM drop window, with a minimum of 10 lbs per variety per drop. Flex to twice-weekly (adding a Monday drop) if FNS volume warrants. The 4-week pilot is structured so the division can renew, adjust, or close the line after the trial month without an open-ended commitment.

(2) Pricing sheet per line. Ex-farm pricing for the four lines, mirrored from the indicative pricing shared with our RRS Foodservice outreach so the two channels stay consistent: pea shoots $12–$14/lb; sunflower $10–$12/lb; radish $14–$16/lb; mixed brassicas $13–$15/lb. A 12-month first-supply pricing hold is in effect; the sheet will include a per-line volume tier, a per-line minimum order, and a labeled-pack spec sheet. Packed in labeled food-grade clamshells or bulk food-service flats per CCCPS FNS specification. Standard terms are net-30; net-15 is available if the division’s procurement cycle requires it.

(3) Single named decision-maker and best call window. A preferred decision-maker name on the Food & Nutrition Services side — ideally the Farm to School coordinator or the FNS director — with the best 20–30 minute call window in August 2026 for a buy-side conversation. IronRoost will reply within five business days with a formal trial supply proposal aligned to the division’s reimbursement / procurement calendar.

Thank you for the time. If a written reply has not been logged by the end of the third week of August, we will follow up by email to ironroost-farms@polsia.app. The first commercial harvest is a fixed date on our roadmap; the conversation is the variable. Whatever the answer, the message gets a same-week written response.