Biochar is rapidly gaining traction as a commercially viable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology that can be applied globally at various scales. However, the vast majority of published research studies have involved laboratory experiments conducted in an inert environment under well-controlled conditions of heating rate, maximum temperature and residence time. To expand the biochar industry within the next decade as a CDR platform, there is a need to understand differences between biochar produced under “ideal” laboratory conditions versus those generated using the same feedstocks in continuous, industrial scale systems. In the present work, biochar was produced from widely available organic waste feedstocks, including mixed cafeteria food waste, blended coffee grounds and chaff, grape pomace and wood pellets, using both a laboratory furnace operated in a nitrogen environment, and a continuously operated commercial system capable of processing up to ∼1 t/day of dry feedstock. High quality biochar (H:C < 0.7) was obtained for all feedstocks converted by both systems, however high variability in volatiles and decomposition rates was observed in the thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results for industrial scale biochar. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) showed similar morphologies and surface chemistries in both laboratory and industrial scale samples, in agreement with reported literature data. Based on this initial comparative assessment, we conclude that commercially available thermochemical systems have potential as localized organic waste valorization technologies to produce high quality biochar. We identified important control variables that have the greatest effect on the resulting biochar. Despite the reported differences between biochar materials derived from the same feedstock, key properties critical for soil amendment and remediation applications (i.e., H:C, surface area, %Corg, etc.) are reasonably consistent between laboratory and continuously fed equipment typical of commercial-scale systems. Thus, biochar materials obtained from well-controlled laboratory experiments conducted in a pure nitrogen atmosphere can be reasonably representative of biochar produced from the same feedstocks using industrial scale equipment.