Supper with Sylvia #16 ~ The Mushroom Guys

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Today on Supper with Sylvia, we're exploring the world of four-star mushrooms. A company started during the pandemic by two college friends on a mission to grow food that's better for people and the planet. They run an indoor urban mushroom farm using sustainable practices to grow seven gourmet mushroom varieties year-round in Chicagoland. Their business took off when Michelin star Alenia put their mushrooms on the menu, and now they're a favorite of

top chefs across Chicago. 4 Star Mushrooms is turning organic waste into culinary gold with the Zero Waste Carbon Negative Model. And now, home cooks can find their mushrooms at select grocery stores. You think you don't like mushrooms? You haven't tried these, so let's dig in and trust me, you'll never look at mushrooms the same way again.

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Okay, guys, so great to see you again. Let's see, I'm trying to think. I came out to visit you last year and we did such a great story. I love learning about your indoor urban farm. Tell everybody, and we're going to start with you, Joe, since you kind of started this whole thing. What is Four Star Mushrooms and how do you have an urban farm in the city and doing what you're doing? It's amazing. well, thank you. Yeah, so Four Star Mushrooms,

is an indoor urban farm. cultivate mushrooms, but we really consider ourselves a regenerative farm. Regenerative agriculture is really the pinnacle of sustainable agriculture. And the way that we're cultivating mushrooms here in Chicago is with a regenerative lens. So what we do is we take organic byproducts from different industries, mainly being red oak sawdust from bourbon barrel manufacturing.

and organic soybean hulls from organic agriculture. And we take those, we process them, and then we feed those to the mycelium, which eventually produces a mushroom. So we're taking byproducts from different industries. We're up kind of upcycling them to grow these nutrient rich protein dense superfoods. And then on the back end, our byproduct after the substrate is produced, generally two flushes of mushrooms is this really valuable soil amendment that we

then work back into community gardens, urban farms and greenhouses. unless you're actually there seeing it can be hard to picture what you're talking about, Joe. So Sean, I'm going to bring you in here and maybe give a little description because I didn't know what a substrate was before I came to visit you guys. I didn't know about this regenerative soil that you're using. So Sean, if you can paint a picture for our listeners, if they came to four star mushrooms, how do these mushrooms go?

grow? What does it look like? Yeah, absolutely. So there's kind of two distinct separate processes. We have our substrate production, which is where the actual substrate, the blocks, the bags are being formed. So that's that red oak sawdust, that soybean holes that Joe was talking about. So in part of the facility, you'll see this substrate actually being produced, being pasteurized, being inoculated.

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And then on the other side of the facility, you'll see really what you were probably most familiar with was the fruiting side, which is a lot of the bright lights, the grow rooms behind glass windows and glass doors. And really it's 17 different grow rooms that are all climate controlled of one another. And it's all built behind glass so that we can bring in the community. We can bring in our customers and really just show everyone exactly what we're doing.

So Joe, when you talk about regenerative farming, explain exactly what you're talking about, because the substrate is coming from materials that if you weren't using them, what would happen? Yeah, so a lot of times these materials and organic materials in general would go into landfills, which would then emit methane, which is a greenhouse gas, really potent greenhouse gas. Taking a step back, regenerative agriculture is really a form of agriculture that's

focused on soil health at its most basic level. And soil is our most valuable resource in the opinion of myself and Sean and really four star mushrooms. Regenerative agriculture has the potential to nourish humans through more nutrient dense food, restore our ecosystems through better farming practices, and also act as this major carbon sink for a lot of these

climate change issues that we're starting to see. So regenerative agriculture, in our opinion, is really the key to solving a lot of these problems. And because we grow on these byproducts, we're able to divert things that would maybe go to the landfill or go to other uses and really maximize their value. This year, we're starting to look at partnering with other local producers, such as breweries in our neighborhood.

We're in the Kinsey Industrial Corridor and we've got, I think, six or seven breweries right down the street from us. A lot of times these smaller breweries, they have a lot of spent brewers grain, which is a byproduct from their process. They have a lot of it, but not so much that they can get somebody to come and pick all of it up. So that's a really good example of that material going right to a landfill and emitting a lot of methane, especially if you have weekly production, right?

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So one of our goals this year is to be able to create a recipe where we're that spent brewer's grain and then upcycling that as one of the substrate components for our mushrooms. when I step into your facility, I see these racks and these rooms that are climate controlled and these beautiful mushrooms that are growing.

These are mushrooms that I'd never heard of before. Some of them, you when I go to the grocery store, I don't think I've seen your mushrooms until recently. Now that I go and I realize what you guys are doing, but they are at specialty stores. These are truly gourmet mushrooms. Tell me what types of mushrooms you grow and why those specific types. Yeah. So we're currently growing seven different varieties. We do blue oyster, black oyster, lion's mane.

chestnut, king trumpet, maitake and golden enoki. And I'd say over the past five years, we've probably done anywhere from 30 to 40 different varieties of mushrooms. These are kind of the seven that we've landed on for a variety of reasons. I'd say familiarity with our customer base, what our chefs have typically been asking for, as well as these are all strains that have been commercialized. They're strong.

high yielding and can be viable to produce at a commercial scale. I love the story of the two of you because Joe, you're a biology major. Sean, you're a business major. So my question to you, Joe, was why mushrooms?

That's a great question. It's one that we get asked a lot. So I think the kind of the insight back in 2018, 2019, really after listening to a podcast, which was really my personal introduction to mushroom and mushroom cultivation was that if we could design our facility correctly and our business correctly, we could use the mushroom cultivation process.

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to accelerate this transition to a regenerative food system. Because of the nature of growing mushrooms on these different byproducts and then having this really rich, valuable soil amendment as our byproduct, I was able to see that we could not only have a facility and a business that's growing these really high quality, premium, in-demand mushrooms, but also at the same time,

generating a whole lot of soil. And so I think that that's why mushrooms are really unique because they can, you know, it's not like growing leafy greens or micro greens indoors where you have just one product. We have this second byproduct that is just extremely valuable. And I think that, you know, in the long run, that's really going to be what is a different big differentiator for us as we're growing the business and starting to

get outside of just mushrooms, but moving into different crops as well. feel like your story is so interesting too, because you guys grew up together. You're friends. You go way back. You kind of went and did your own thing in college. Like I said, you had different majors, but your majors were complementary to each other. And so you've come back together. And I'm curious, how has this met your expectations? You have grown in a short amount of time. You started

right before the pandemic, which probably could have been the worst possible time to start anything, especially something that involves the restaurant industry. How have things been going? have been great. mean, I think any business startup is going to be challenging for the most part. We have had our fair share of challenges, to say the least. So, four-star got started.

in 2019, started growing mushrooms in September. And obviously the lockdown and COVID happened in March. At the time, we were only selling two chefs. so basically the rug was pulled out. But at the time, the company was really lean. so over those like couple of months, was it was it was challenging. But because we were lean, we were able to kind of weather that and move the mushrooms to other places. Simultaneously during that time,

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we developed a partnership and brought on Alinea as one of our customers because they were also going through, you know, they had a relatively big business that they had a lot of employees generally serving, you know, 140 people a night, something like that. So they had to pivot at the same time. so they actually started to do to go meals and they were doing thousands of to go meals per week.

during that time they were able to bring us on and basically take in all the mushrooms that we could grow, which really helped not only kind of weather that initial storm of the COVID lockdowns and the supply buildup that we were starting to have, but also it gave us an opportunity to cut our teeth with some of the best chefs in the world. And that really, I think it helped me personally see what was needed to be

like a world-class mushroom producer and vendor to these chefs who are world-class. And from there, that kind of helped us get our foot in the door in more restaurants because we had, you know, we had that precedent kind of set. And so from there, was, we were able to grow pretty substantially. And now we sell into a few hundred restaurants across Chicagoland.

So I'm going to back up a little because for people who don't know, you're being a little, a little shy about this, Joe here. We're talking to Lenny. Okay. Lenny is one of the most famous restaurants in the world, not let alone Chicago and nationally, chef Grant Atkins is known for his talents. former Charlie Trotter, a protege, iconic chef from Chicago who was also world renowned.

So here's two college guys, freshly graduated. They're shopping around these mushrooms. And Alidia, of all places, says yes. That had to be a game changer. Yeah, it was a pretty surreal moment. And I had been knocking on the door for a while, and timing wasn't right, and there was issues. And we just could never make it happen. But I like to just.

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Remind myself, remind our team, remind everybody that like the only reason that we are where we're at is because we have so many excellent chefs that have chosen to support us. You know, the chef that initially brought us in at Alinea, his name's James, he's no longer there, but he, you know, he really supported us and he made the decision that he wanted to help us. He believed in the products, he believed in the mission and

There are hundreds of chefs across Chicago that have done that as well. And they're directly making an impact on us achieving this mission of a regenerative food system. And so I want to make sure that everybody knows it's not lost on us. And we appreciate that so much because there's such amazing talent and so many hardworking chefs out there. And they really have the ability to support mission-driven companies with their menus.

And we also have to give you guys credit because your mushrooms are quality mushrooms. I've heard many chefs say they they haven't had the opportunity to cook with mushrooms like this until you came around and that they know when they get their mushrooms from you that it's going to meet the high standards that they already have because Alinea is, you know, three Michelin stars. You I believe you have other Michelin starred restaurants and then amazing restaurants in Chicago that you supply to.

And this is one of the things I love about this. And I talked to you about this, Sean, when I came out to do a TV interview with you. And here you are, both of you, doing something that is giving back to help our environment. But it's also giving back to you, Sean. You said to me you were looking for your why. Tell me about this. Yeah, absolutely. So I spent right out of college, I spent some time doing corporate banking at PNC Bank.

And I learned a ton about business. learned about how to scale a business appropriately, how to properly take on debt, things like that that ultimately would prove to be useful later down the line when we were scaling the business. But I really just, I found myself every day at work just kind of questioning, you know, what I was doing, why I was doing it. And I always knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, that I wanted to...

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to make an outsized difference in some sort of form or fashion. And COVID was really kind of the thing that had kicked that off and ended up being in the right place at the right time with the right opportunity for me and Joe to kind of combine forces and start to grow four star a little bit more aggressively. You guys are doing such a great job. Okay, so walk us through your facility.

We've already talked about the substrate and how the mushrooms grow, but let's talk a little bit about how tricky and how important it is to have these climate controlled rooms to grow the type of mushrooms that you're doing. Absolutely. Yeah. So the substrate really is the key of what we do here. That's like the base building block that if you don't have really quality substrate and mycelium, nothing else is going to matter.

But in order to create a really premium quality mushroom that is differentiated from a texture, a flavor perspective, and has really long shelf life, the growing environment, which we call the fruiting environment, which you can kind of see behind me, that is, it's really critical to have precise control over that environment 365 days a year. And so, you know, a lot of times you might think that because you're growing indoors, you don't have to worry about what the

outside climate is, but that's definitely not the case. You actually have to worry about it even more. So when it's, you know, we're really proud of our growing environments and the control that we have over our rooms. And so no matter if it's negative 10 degrees out or if it's 110 degrees out, we're able to maintain consistent environments throughout those ebbs and flows. And so the main things that we're controlling for in these rooms are first,

temperature. Second is CO2 versus oxygen. So mushrooms will inhale oxygen and exhale CO2, just like animals will. And so in order to make sure that they're happy and healthy, we need to have a really low level of CO2 and a lot of fresh air exchange. And then we also have to have the right amount of humidity. big part of the temperature component

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is the growth rate as well. And so we actually have made the conscious decision to grow fewer mushrooms because our timeframe takes actually about twice as long as a traditional, say like oyster mushroom producer. We do that because we grow at colder temperatures at higher oxygen. And what that does is it leads to a mushroom that has a really dense texture, a really dark cap.

And it allows the chefs that we work with to treat that mushroom more like a traditional protein. So many times I've heard chefs say that, you know, they get a mushroom in from a broadliner and they saute it and it just sautes into nothing. It almost disappears. And that's definitely not the case with our mushrooms because they have all this oxygen to grow a really dense mushroom. And then there's something about this cold temperature that we grow in that just leads to this really firm

really high quality long lasting mushroom. So how many days does it take for them to grow? So the first section of the growth cycle that incubation phase can take anywhere from on the fastest end two weeks on the longest end four weeks for the varieties that we grow. And then on the fruiting side it can take as fast as 12 days and as long as 21 days. Now a lot of people are familiar with shiitake mushrooms.

It's actually one that we do not cultivate. And the reason that we don't cultivate it is because that incubation phase, that first phase can take up to three months and the fruiting phase can take as fast as a week. So if we wanted to produce mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms every week, would have to produce those blocks every week for three months before we even got a mushroom. And the price for shiitake is really,

come down, think this actually might change with the new tariffs that are being put in place. the shiitake substrate is actually being shipped in from China and then fruited here. So basically, you can fruit shiitake mushrooms. And the dirty secret of it all is that a lot of times these are marked as product of the US and USDA certified organic, even though 100 % of the inputs are coming from overseas. And obviously,

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not really traceable.

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you know, getting it from another place. mean, everything that you are doing here is, is it happening locally? Yeah. So from every, everything from, from the industrial products that you're reusing, to how, it's planted, everything is done here so people can know that they're getting this 100 % mushroom that's locally grown in this urban farm. Yeah. So all of our material comes from the Midwest.

We work with the mill in Missouri that kind of sources these materials. Obviously, it's like kind of commodity scale from the materials that we're taking. But they're all, I mean, we really grow on two materials. It's red oak and organic soybeans, soybean hulls, and then mycelium. And so these are all 100 % product of the USA. wish that people could see these mushrooms because they are

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absolutely beautiful. And they're not like mushrooms that maybe you often see. And I think you brought up, and I want to talk about this, a lot of people say, my gosh, these are so pretty, but I don't know what to do with them. So what do you do with the mushrooms that we get from Four Star? What's the basic recipe or tip that you can give to our listeners? love the saute. I think the saute is the most versatile.

and mastering the saute technique really allows you to take those mushrooms and apply them to a wide variety of dishes. We're actually gonna be launching a recipe page on our website here very soon that has some chef-driven and chef-curated recipes and videos. I'll give you a quick breakdown of a saute though. So you basically wanna cut up mushrooms into uniform sizes. You wanna get your pan heated to medium heat.

put some neutral oil in once it's hot. And then before you add your mushrooms, you turn it up to high, add your mushrooms, you'll hear them start to sizzle, but you just let them sit. And so this is that caramelization process beginning. It's important to know that you don't want to salt the mushrooms at all before, you'll salt them at the end, but you don't want to salt them before. And so you'll throw the mushrooms in, kind of just let them saute, let them sit. And then,

as they start to brown on the one side, then you'll start to actually saute them, which is moving them around the pan, moving them around the hot pan basically. Once they're browned completely, then one of our favorite things to do is turn that heat back down to medium, add butter and fresh herbs and kind of saute in that butter. And from there, you basically just add salt to taste and then they're ready to go. fairly simple, right? Fairly simple, but

definitely different than, you know, cooking a vegetable or a traditional protein. there's a little bit of nuance, but once you get comfortable with that saute technique, the world is your oyster. Yeah. The world is your oyster, and you have those too. Okay, Sean, what's your goal for the future with this?

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We've got a lot of goals for the future, but really it's to build that sustainable food system that we've talked about. And so we want to continue to close the loop. We're sourcing all of these raw inputs and we want to continue to expand on that. We want to be able to source Christmas trees at Christmas time, pumpkins during Halloween, you name it, whatever that raw waste material, organic waste material is.

We want to have the ability at 4 Star to be able to process that and to be able to pull from a from a culture library, pull something that will be able to break down that substrate and then ultimately continue to keep growing these mushrooms. So closing the loop, we'd really like to we'd like to keep all of this spent substrate in a house, repurpose that into soil and start to grow additional crops, things like heirloom tomatoes.

really any other specialty crops that chefs are looking for and that we can kind of keep within this four-star brand umbrella. That's so interesting. The possibilities are endless. Are truffles in your future? Because that's kind of thought of often as the gold star of mushrooms, right? Yeah, there's a slew of mycorrhizal mushrooms that are kind of, they're always on the horizon for us. always

talking about them and ideating about them late night, but they are, they're very complicated varieties to grow. They grow in symbiosis with trees. So there's some sort of, there's some level of communication or nutrient sharing happening within, within the trees and the soil biology. But there is, there is tons of strides being made on that across, across the globe as we speak. So I think in the, in the coming five to 10 years, there's,

there's going to be more exciting, unique, rare mushrooms starting to be commercially cultivated. That's so great. Okay, Joe, I have to ask you this question because when I told people about you guys, you know, with the first question they asked me, come on guys, guess, do they grow hallucinogenic mushrooms? Is that your next thing? We got to talk about that. Joe, is that something people ask you guys? We do get that question quite a bit.

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I would say go talk to your local officials, put it on the ballot. It's obviously a very exciting area. think the medicinal benefits and the wellness benefits are understated and they're still very exciting. that's something that like, you we're not betting the farm on that happening anytime soon because we think that there's, you know, a world of mushrooms that are really interesting from a medicinal

perspective from a culinary perspective. then psilocybin is also extremely interesting from a mental health perspective and a happiness perspective. You know, I think growing psilocybin, one of the best analogies I've heard is growing psilocybin is similar to growing weed, whereas growing a lion's mane or a maitake mushroom is like growing an orchid.

So we're kind of starting at this more challenging level with these gourmet and choice culinary mushrooms. And so I think that when the time comes, I'm confident that we'll be able to do it. It's just kind of a matter of what that looks like because while it's insane, it still is a schedule one drug. right. What did you call the mushroom? What's it called? Psilocybin.

Scylla Sivan. Well, it seems like you guys are doing great with what you have. What do you want to say to people who say, I don't eat mushrooms, I don't like mushrooms. What do you want to say to them? And, know, and why should I bother to eat a mushroom or two? I'd say a good first place to start is these were two co-founders of a commercial mushroom company that

Neither of us liked mushrooms, neither of us ate mushrooms, and we both started growing mushrooms. So you can really change your perspective quickly once you get, once you have the right, the right types of mushrooms, the right cooking process to it. And once you just kind of open your mind a little bit. love that. I love that you both were not mushroom lovers. Same Joe, huh? Yeah, definitely not. Definitely not. And I think it's also interesting to note that

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Most of the time that people say that they don't like mushrooms, it's because they've had, know, mushrooms on a pizza, canned mushrooms, like bad texture mushrooms. And that's because almost all of the mushrooms that are produced, imported, and consumed in North America are one variety, one species, which is a gyracus. You know, everybody knows those as the white button, the baby bella, and the portabella. It's all the same species.

And so we kind of live in this mushroom monocrop where, you know, everybody thinks that this is what a mushroom is. And then they come into our facility and they see what a blue oyster is or a chestnut or a lion's mane. And then they either go to a grocery store and purchase them or they go to restaurant and have a chef cook them. like their perception is completely shifted, just like Sean and my perspective was shifted. What's your favorite mushroom now? What do you love to eat?

My favorite is probably to toss up between my talkie and lion's mane. I really love the my talkie texture and flavor. It's a really challenging mushroom to grow. And then I love the lion's mane for the same reasons. And it's also got these amazing nootropic benefits. So it's a medicinal mushroom, a really strong medicinal mushroom at the same time. about you, Sean? I think I have to stick with lion's mane. I've been saying that for a few years.

It still holds true. Yeah. It's a good hearty one, isn't it? Yeah. It's just so unique. It really is. I've seen it prepared like a breaded chicken sandwich. I've seen it prepared as if it's a steak. And each time I just am truly blown away at the texture and the flavor that it can produce. Okay. So for people who are listening, how can they get their hands on your mushrooms? Where is it available?

So you can go on our website. We have a link on our website that'll show you kind of a map of all the retailers that are carrying them right now. But throughout the city, there are some Mariano's, there are some Jewels in the suburbs, Agora Market, and some other independent retailers throughout the city. What about for people outside of Chicago? So pretty soon we're going to be in select

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with Metro markets in Milwaukee. And really in 2025, we're planning to grow a fair amount in the retail space, in the grocery space. So definitely keep up to date on that find mushrooms tab because you're going to see a lot more retail markets open up across Chicagoland as well as Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan. So there will definitely be opportunities to purchase four-star mushrooms.

And hopefully even more because how difficult is it to ship mushrooms, excuse me, cross country? It can be challenging. We find that the the number one inhibitor to quality mushroom at the store shelf is a quality mushroom in the grow room. So so having a really high quality mushroom harvested in the right packaging and then ship the correct way, you can get them relatively far. Now, all the mushrooms that we grow are also.

They're more fragile than a traditional button mushroom. And so we're really focused on first and foremost, Chicago, Chicagoland, and then expanding out from there. final words, what do want people to know? What do you want to say when it comes to kind of summing up what your mission is? So I guess my two cents would just be that, you know, four star mushrooms is at its core regenerative agriculture company. Our mission is to

is to help move along this transition to what we see as inevitable, but this transition to a regenerative food system. And I just really want to thank all the chefs that we work with because chefs have the unique power to vote with their dollars. And that makes a big difference for not only businesses like us, but all local producers that are trying to have an impact and trying to

produce nutrient-dense food locally for the community. So I just want to shout out all the chefs that we work with and the restaurants that support us. Yeah, you have some good ones. Sean, final words. Yeah, and just to echo what Joe said, all of our consumers as well. We're starting to kind of expand more and more into retail. each individual clamshell that we sell at the stores goes a long way for us in helping achieve our vision.

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When you choose to pick up a Four Star Mushroom product at the store, you're supporting our mission, you're supporting building a sustainable food system. And without supporting with that dollar, it's really impossible for producers like us to keep doing what we're doing. Well, best of luck. I get so excited when I go to a restaurant and I see the mushrooms and I always ask, where do you get your mushrooms from? And so many times of responses, Four Star.

And I love that these chefs are using it not only as a savory dish, but they're also using it in some of their sweet dishes. It's very versatile. So it's been really fun to see you guys grow and I can't wait to see where you go. So thank you so much for doing this and best of luck with everything. Thanks so much for having us. Thanks a lot, Silvio. It great to reconnect with you. Yeah, good to see you. This podcast is produced by Jane Stephens, Audio Engineering and Original Music by Donnie Cutting.

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