Moving from Production to Sales

After 10 weeks of setting up the growing environment and perfecting the growing methodology in the new facility, I have a decent grasps of the process and have confidence in my ability to scale up to about fifty to a hundred pounds of week, which should be sufficient to supply one or two farmers market worth of produce.

In the end, I didn't decided on a mix between two methods for growing mushrooms, both the bag method and the bucket method. Since I am bottled necked by only have two 25 quartz pressure cookers, using the bucket method allows me to double my inoculation capacity.

By doing so, I can prepare 80 pounds of dry substrate weekly (200 pounds hydrated) by preparing twelve, 10lb autoclavable bags and 4 buckets weekly. At around 100 - 150% BE for converting dry mass into mushroom, average 125% BE, my oyster mushrooms and lions mane will produce 100 lbs weekly using this method.

I plan on focusing on various oyster mushroom and lions mane strains in the beginning so as to specialize more quickly, then potentially branch out to other mushroom species maybe six months to a year from now.

Now that I have a plan, however, I need to pivot to the sales side. So I have been applying to various farmers markets in the area. I have applied to three of them so far, but not sure what the acceptance rate usually is and am not sure if I should be applying to significantly more at the moment.

I also need to think about all of the following, which I have still yet to figure out - packaging, climate controlled transportation, farmer's market displays, business cards, accepting credit card payments directly and all the related.

I wish that I could start focusing on the lab work (such as grain inoculation, agar technique, and strain collection sooner), but I have to develop a revenue stream to sustain myself for now.

I don't believe that I need to expand out to restaurants at the given moment - farmer's markets and local direct sales should be sufficient should I be able to gain entry into the markets, but at some point I should start giving out samples to restaurants.