Increasing Profits: Hoffman Nursery fills the gap with Legacy Labor

In the spring of 2021, Hoffman Nursery explored hiring an H-2A firm to help them hire much needed workers. According to CEO David Hoffman, it was difficult finding enough people to do the work that needed to be done, especially after COVID.

“We were deciding whether or not we were going to be able to grow the business with the constraints that we had with labor,” David says. “Our team was doing it but they just didn’t have enough help.”

That’s where he says Legacy Labor was able to fill that gap.

That summer, he met David Judah, CEO/co-owner of Legacy Labor at Cultivate, the Columbus, Ohio trade show. The two men started discussing Hoffman Nursery’s needs and a partnership was formed.

“They’re easy to work with and they’re well organized,” David says. “We just appreciate what they’ve been able to do to help our business grow. They make sure that we can focus on our business and not on the labor.”

Hoffman says plant quality has increased dramatically since the nursery started working with Legacy Labor. Customers are happier because the plants look better and they’re arriving on schedule. Before partnering with Legacy Labor, he says they were four to six weeks behind, especially coming out of spring.

By the fall of 2021, Hoffman Nursery began working with Legacy to get everything set up for workers and bring H-2A workers to their base in Rougemont, North Carolina, for the 2022 season. In year one, they brought 16 workers. They’ve since increased to 35 workers.

“Before, we had a full-time HR person just trying to find people and that was hiring somebody that maybe lasted half a day,” David says. “Legacy is able to find their crew, bring them in and get everything set up, get them here and starting to work. They manage the logistics end of actually getting folks here in the visa process. They manage the transportation and the cars that are required to run the operation. If something happens to an employee, they take care of it. If something were to happen with any regulations, they would be here as soon as they could. Those are the things that are effortless and seamless that make it a weight off of our shoulders.”

Hoffman Nursery currently has three different houses for its H-2A employees. Legacy Labor handles all of the paperwork and visa requirements and makes sure the requested amount of help arrives. Hoffman has taken responsibility for the housing, so the nursery has to make sure it’s inspected and follows all the rules to be compliant for H-2A workers. Legacy Labor does handle housing as one of its services, for a fee, but Hoffman chose to handle that part of the process itself.

David says the additional labor Legacy has provided helped with several major projects that have expanded the nursery’s capabilities. Over the past few years, Hoffman has brought more stock production in-house and built a tissue culture lab. The lab has been operating since October 2024, and David hopes to have full scale production ready for spring 2026. Without the H-2A workers stocking plants in the fields, stabilizing production and improving shipping, the growth that will result from these changes would be a pipe dream.

“Legacy Labor has been a big part of that,” he says. “None of that would have been possible without their team.”