Windy City Mushroom spawns a taste for gourmet mushrooms

In a cavernous warehouse on Chicago’s South Side, Windy City Mushroom works to encourage Midwesterners — and people from all over the country — to eat more high-quality mushrooms. The young company’s mission is to put mushrooms on every plate in the country by growing them to be sustainable, affordable and delicious.

To accomplish that, Windy City Mushroom works to increase production and expand its distribution network to include several Chicago area farmers markets and a growing number of food retailers.

“In Europe and other parts of the world, people consume far more gourmet mushrooms than we do here in the U.S.,” said Scott Detterman, chief operating officer at Windy City Mushroom. “A big reason for that is that the supply of high-quality mushrooms has just not been available here. We saw a gap in the market and a giant opportunity.”

Along with fresh mushrooms, Windy City recently introduced its Fungitarian line, dishes featuring fully cooked mushrooms blended in a cooking pouch with sauces, such as marinara and taco.

“The product comes frozen, so you can just put it in a pan, and boom, you’ve got a healthy dinner that kids are familiar with,” Detterman said.

Room for growth

For founder Guy Furman, the opportunity in mushrooms sprouted in 2020. After starting the business in the Humboldt Park area of western Chicago, the company recently moved into its current space, a 50,000-square-foot warehouse in Chicago’s Ford City area.

The warehouse, once part of a factory that built engines for World War II-era bombers, is ideal for raising mushrooms.

“It works well for indoor farming because it has plenty of open space and very high ceilings,” Detterman says. “That gives us room to expand and increase our production.”

Windy City’s mushrooms are raised year-round in climate-controlled growing rooms. The growing process begins with bags filled with soybean hulls, wood pellets and water. The bags are specially designed to allow oxygen and carbon dioxide to exchange but keep out viruses, bacteria and other contaminants that can harm the growing process.

Once the bag is sterilized, workers inoculate it with a substance called grain spawn, which propagates mushroom cultures. In a couple of weeks, the inoculated bag is colonized with growing mushrooms and can be moved to a growing room.

A ventilation system in the rooms supplies plenty of fresh air and removes the carbon dioxide growing mushrooms produce. After a few weeks, the mushrooms bloom out and grow large enough to be hand-harvested.

“We’ve been able to automate some things, but there are still a lot of manual processes, such as harvesting,” Detterman said. “There’s just no way to do that with a machine.”

Windy City is working to boost mushroom production as it builds its distribution network to grocery chains and specialty food retailers in the Midwest and beyond.

It hopes to soon increase production beyond the current 4,500 to 6,000 pounds of mushrooms per week and add to its roster of 17 employees.

Focused fungi

After experimenting with a few varieties, Windy City narrowed its product offering to oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms.

“There is a lot of complexity to raising mushrooms, so it made sense to narrow it down so we can always have a consistent supply,” Detterman said.

Oyster mushrooms, which have a broad or oyster-shaped cap, have been popular with restaurants and consumers. And the lion’s mane variety is prized by many for its health benefits.

Once harvested, mushrooms generally stay fresh for 10 days to two weeks if they are kept refrigerated.

“They are a perishable product that has a relatively short shelf life, so timely distribution is very important,” Detterman said.

Mushrooms for all

In its early days, Windy City marketed primarily to Chicago-area restaurants looking for a supply of fresh, locally grown and affordable mushrooms to diversify their menus.

In 2022, Windy City began selling directly to the public at several Chicago area farmers markets, including Winnetka, Naperville and the Green City markets.

At farmers markets, Windy City representatives can interact directly with consumers, offering cooking suggestions and building the demand for their mushrooms.

In the past year, Windy City has expanded its focus to specialty food markets and grocery chains, such as Fresh Thyme. This helps the company sell both fresh mushrooms and Fungitarian products in stores year-round in Chicago area and beyond.

Windy City is also working with retailers to develop its packaging and pricing strategy to fit its customer base’s needs.

“We are very excited about the opportunities in these markets and moving into our next stage,” Detterman said.

Selling to grocery retailers has been both a teaching and learning process for the company.

“We’re basically developing the market as we grow as a company by helping retailers understand the value in offering our fresh mushrooms and Fungitarian products,” Detterman said. “We think mushrooms now are almost like avocados used to be. Avocados generally didn’t exist in stores before the 1990s, but now you see them everywhere. We think mushrooms will be like that.”

• This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visit ILFBpartners.com.