When Sh*! Hits the Fan, Grow Mushrooms on it.

*Note: Smallhold does not grow on Sh*!, our mushrooms eat wood.

This is not a post about uncertain times, about how to manage Zoom meetings, or about flattening the curve. This is about a newfound resiliency in our food system and a need for a new normal, that companies like Smallhold are building and delivering on every day. It’s about how a small team of motivated mushroom farmers came together to change how people think about produce during a global pandemic, and how everybody should look long and hard at where their food comes from.  

A quick note about us:

Smallhold is a distributed farming company breaking new ground with specialty mushrooms in retail and hospitality. We are NYC’s only certified organic farm of anything, and utilize proprietary technology to grow high quality mushrooms on-site inside restaurants, grocery stores, and centralized facilities in urban centers. We operate in the Northeast and are building infrastructure throughout the United States to bring hyperlocal production to your doorstep. 

Smallhold is an “essential” service, and we are here to grow you the best food you’ve ever tasted.  

Why mushrooms?  

Up until recently, a common question Adam and I would get from reporters, investors and others was, “Why mushrooms?” The answer is threefold:

• They’re more profitable than greens
• They’re healthier than most items in your refrigerator
• They’re extremely interesting to grow

Most importantly, though, they feed people. The 47 million newly jobless people in the United States might not put microgreens or parsley at the top of their home grocery delivery list this month, but mushrooms provide calories and nutrition, and can actually feed your family. They’re good for a side or a main, and honestly are just a very versatile produce.

Two weeks ago, our restaurant customers went on pause and our retail partners were inundated with demand. There was strain on our supply chain, concerns from our investors, and questions upon questions about what was happening in the world. We had existential questions to answer--are we necessary right now? What do our friends need right now? We realized quickly that, in the face of this crisis, one of the many things NYC needed was access to food.   

Over the course of two days we updated company protocols, created a home delivery and pickup pilot, and began executing on it. We maxed out our facilities, and continued to grow. The next day, our friends at The Meat Hook allowed us to park outside their store and sell mushrooms out of our van. We sold out within 3 hours.  

Fast forward 1 week, we’re selling out of mushrooms every delivery day, and are increasing production to meet consumer and retailer demand. We even managed to launch a new product line - mushroom grow kits. 

We haven’t had to let go of any staff members, and are still hiring (in case you’re looking).  

We opened up steep discounts (on already affordable produce) to anybody from the service industry, and we have people quite literally living off our mushrooms. In addition, we ramped up our help with existing partners like the Lower East Side Girls Club to produce meals for NYC.  

We decided to temporarily extend our “network” into the homes of our community with the fruiting blocks. We sell discounted substrate blocks to individuals citywide so they can grow at home, for themselves and their families. It’s been a week and we’re now seeing the fruits of our labor.  

The point isn’t to make more revenue--it’s to inspire people to think about their food, to expect fresh whenever possible, and to motivate them to take food supply into their own hands. In some respects, it’s like a small, modern Victory Garden (similar to “smallholding”) … of the fungal variety.  

This is in no way a permanent pivot (we refuse to use the word). This is a test to show how a technology enabled facility can be nimble and resilient in the face of a global pandemic, and can feed the world, one mushroom at a time. We’ve also developed a guide to help other small businesses run their own test. 

We actually never intended to sell our agricultural products as consumer goods, and it will probably never make up a significant chunk of our revenue stream, but each block can grow up to 4 pounds of mushrooms and it’s our way of providing cheap, efficient, nutrient-dense food to our friends who just lost their jobs at an affordable price. 

In detail, in case you were curious, this is what Smallhold did over the last 2 weeks.  

• Heightened food safety protocols at Smallhold - Smallhold is already certified GAP, FSMA compliant, and is audited by USDA, OSHA, and NOFA. Our protocol was already above and beyond what most farms are implementing now in response to Covid-19. This includes PPE, frequent temperature checks of staff, constant hand washing, constant sterilization of facility, limited visitors, and “social distancing”.
• Office staff working from home - Any workers that can work at home, have been for 3 weeks.  
• Community Popups at centralized locations - Smallhold worked with the Meat Hook to set up pop-up mushroom sales in front of their building in Williamsburg. The first popup was 1 day after our restaurant customers went on pause, and we sold all of their demand in 3 hours, neutralizing the potential loss, and keeping us from throwing away or donating our mushrooms to entities that don’t need them.  
• Home Delivery Campaign - We set up an online ordering system (NYC and Brooklyn delivery only) and opened up orders to any individual that wants to buy over $25 of mushrooms. After a single Instagram post we have over 500 new customers for this service, and have increasing orders by the day.  
• Steep discounts for service industry - Smallhold was born from the NYC restaurant community. Though we are building the farms of the future, we still will bleed for our restaurant friends, as everybody should be at this point. We offer a sliding scale, 20%+ discount (we’re already below any retail pricing) for our mushrooms, and give them away for free for people who can’t afford that. People need to eat.  
• Product Launch - We are selling our substrate blocks--an agricultural product for us, but apparently a fun hobby to folks sheltering in place--to people during the quarantine. We have sold over 100 blocks in our test, and all of them are now fruiting at home. We have distributed our farm into all of those households, and have empowered them to grow their own food in this time of need. It is reminiscent of the victory gardens program, which was a source of food and inspiration for people living through WWII. We have heard stories of families feeding themselves off of our blocks as the food they can afford at the moment. This isn’t a garnish on your dinner plate, this is real food for real people, grown by Smallhold.  

So many ask, what’s next? Smallhold is continuing on. We are deemed essential by the federal and state governments, and have a motivated team working on massive expansions in the Northeast and elsewhere in the US. 

Covid-19 hasn’t shaken us, it only inspires us to bring our supply chain and technology to cities around the world.  

If you want to eat or sell mushrooms, talk to me.