If you’re not on the mushies you’re missing out, say business owners who watched sales explode during the pandemic.
Jessica Clarke is buzzing. Even over a fuzzy Zoom connection, she radiates energy, her skin glows and her laugh is long and loud. Whatever she’s on, I want some, so I ask what her vices are. “Lion’s Mane, Turkey Tail, Cordyceps, Chaga, Shiitake and Reishi,” she replies, before laughing at herself. “I sound like a crack addict.”
The only thing Clarke is addicted to is mushrooms. A few years ago, the Palmerston North-raised, London-based model was living a high-flying lifestyle, waking up in different cities every day and stumbling between studios, runways and photo shoots. “We’re always burning the candle at both ends … Xanax to go to sleep, 1,000 coffees to wake up,” she says. “The only real options out there for us were pharmaceuticals.”
After years of punishment, Clarke realised her body wasn’t coping with the demands she was placing on it. In New York, on a health kick, she tried a mushroom latte – a blend of steamed milk and mixed mushroom powders with zero caffeine – and liked the results. “I really felt the difference,” she says. “My skin was clearer. I just genuinely loved it.”
As Covid began spreading in 2020, Clarke returned to Aotearoa and reconnected with her best friend from high school. Emily Blanchett had been running a health food store in New York, had also returned home and had been on her own mushroom binge. Together the pair attempted to source mushroom supplies locally, but couldn’t find anyone selling the specific kinds of mixes they wanted.
A business was born. In April of 2021, Clarke and Blanchett launched Mother Made, a collection of mushroom powders and capsules designed to fuel customers through different parts of the day. At first, they thought it might not fly. “I didn’t think anyone would buy it,” admits Clarke, who quit her business diploma and used the money she saved to launch the company. “We bought way too many … all of our friends were going to to get mushrooms for their birthdays.”
But they quickly sold out. When they re-upped, they sold out again. Now, a little over a year on, they’ve sold out “five times over,” says Clarke. One of their most popular blends, AM, contains three different dried mushrooms and is designed to be added to morning drinks. “We’ve got Lion’s Mane in there for cognitive function, to switch on your brain, Cordyceps for even flowing energy [and] we’ve got Chaga for immunity,” says Clark. “I have that in my coffee every single morning.”
When The Spinoff checked their online store recently, some of their blends were once again sold out. The mushroom business is suddenly booming. People are switching on to the benefits of regular mushroom ingestion, says Clarke. “We broke even in the first four months,” she says. “We were lucky. We started … when there was a bit of a ‘shroom boom happening around the world.”
Right now, mushrooms seem to be on everyone’s minds. After two and a half years of Covid-inspired anxiety, people are looking for new ways to improve their health and immunity, seen in the surge in popularity enjoyed by bougie energy drinks to the rise of zero-alcohol beer.
Mushrooms, used in Asian medicine for thousands of years, are right on trend. A Lyttleton cafe reports 25% of the hot drinks it sells are mushroom-based. A Raglan company offering grow-your-own mushroom kits told The Spinoff they can’t keep up with demand. A Tauranga-based fitness instructor recently told Stuff.co.nz she’d “hooked” 13 of her workmates on mushroom-laced drinks.
Clarke says she still gets teased about what she does. “Everyone thinks we’re drug dealers and we’re selling Psilocybin (magic) mushrooms,” she laughs. But conversation quickly turns to questions about the benefits mushrooms can offer. She tells them: “It has a cumulative affect. Think of it like putting on armour. Each cup you have your body is more resilient to different stresses out there.”
With business booming, Clarke has put her modelling career on hold to focus on growing Mother Made. She and Blanchett are seeking investment to help launch in international markets. Things, she predicts, will only grow from here. “We’re planning on going global, baby,” she says. The Zoom connection’s glitchy, but she’s still glowing, still grinning. “We’re shooting for the stars.”
It’s not just mushroom powders taking off. At the start of the Covid pandemic, Emily Eldin and Sean Mills began foraging for field mushrooms in the paddocks around their Raglan home, then adding them to almost every meal. “It was a bonanza. We could fill up a bucket in 10 minutes,” says Mills, who’d add them to stir fries and soups. “Creamy mushrooms are still my favourite.”
When Eldin lost her job as a restaurant manager during the country’s first lockdown, the pair wondered if they could turn their hobby into a business. They began growing different species and selling them at farmers markets around Waikato and Cambridge. “By September (2020) we were at farmers markets. By October, we were both doing it full time,” says Mills, who was more than happy to quit his real estate career.
Now, thanks to their business Mushrooms by the Sea, fungi are everywhere around their home. Two bedrooms have been converted into incubation areas, and sterilisation is carried out in the laundry. A big shed out front is used for storage, a cabin is used for packing and they have a grow room where they’re harvesting and drying as many Pekepeke-Kiore – the Aotearoa version of Lion’s Mane – so they can keep up with their own jars of mushroom powders.
When I ask Mills what’s on his to-do list today, he lets out a lengthy sigh and declares: “Heaps.” Business has grown quickly. They’ve had to give up doing the farmers markets because they’re selling so many grow-your-own kits, which allow customers to cultivate their own mushroom farm at home. “You can get a crop going in 10 days,” he says. “It’s a very economical food source.”
How did it happen? Mills says he noticed a surge in interest and sales when the 2019 documentary Fantastic Fungi hit Netflix last year. “People are becoming more knowledgable of mushrooms,” he says, admitting they’ve never had to advertise their products. He used them too, weaning himself off a five-cup-a-day coffee habit by adding powdered mushrooms to his filter coffee. “I have better mood, focus and general energy throughout the day,” he claims.
While some of the claims I heard while researching this story – that mushrooms can cure cancer, and reverse the effects of long Covid – are unproven, there are plenty of experts that say mushrooms can, when used in the right way, be very good for you. American mycologist Paul Stamets is perhaps fungi’s biggest champion, infamous for claiming in 2011 that he helped cure his mother’s stage four breast cancer with high doses of Turkey Tail.
It’s not just health benefits that mushrooms are being used for. The Spinoff recently met biotechnologist Jess Chiang, who is using native fungi to create alternatives to plastic packaging. Fungi are being used to make acoustic panels and floor tiles and mushroom leather hats are on their way. Climate change? Mushrooms could even tackle that too. “The power of mushrooms to save the planet,” read a recent National Geographic headline.
When Koryn Hope named her Lyttelton cafe eight years ago, she thought Shroom Room had a nice ring to it. “We’re vegan, vegetarian,” she says, admitting that she had no idea any kind of ‘shroom boom was coming. “We wanted something that was a bit memorable and alternative to attract like-minded people.”
In 2020, Hope began offering three different powdered mushroom drinks: a Power Potion with Cordyceps, a Shroom Potion with Chaga, and a Bliss Potion with a combination of mushrooms and turmeric. “They’re caffeine-free, sugar-free,” she says. “People have them with whatever milk they like.”
They quickly took off, and now account for 25% of the cafe’s hot drink sales. “We sell more of them than tea, hot chocolate and chai,” she says. Hope also sells powders to customers and orders them on Mondays at the same time as her coffee beans. “I feel like I order heaps and before you know it we’ve run out,” she says. “I have trouble keeping up.”
Hope says her regulars – yes, some return for a mushroom fix once or twice a day – have many reasons for drinking them. “People are into boosting their immunity where they can,” she says. “One of our customers who buys the mushrooms … has long Covid. She’s taking a couple of different ones. They’re a long-term health solution – not an overnight one.”
Like Jess from Mother Made, Hope often has to educate her customers. “I have lots of people asking if they’ll feel different, if they’ll be hallucinating,” she says. “I tell them, ‘That’s not legal yet’.” Often they’re converted into regulars. “People are just becoming more aware of alternative good things for their health. They’re having really good results on mushrooms.”
But it’s not just those coming into her cafe looking for a quick mushie fix. Hope takes them herself and has noticed the benefits too. When she’s travelling, she even takes her mushroom powders with her in case she can’t get them elsewhere. “They’re very effective. It’s a nice, gentle thing to do,” she says. “I love them.”
