Anyone here with a sideline in mushroom growing?

Hi Folks,

I was wondering if anyone here has a profitable sideline growing gourmet mushrooms? I've been vaguely looking into it, and I think it could be viable in my area. We have a relatively high population density and population is generally fairly affluent. I can't see anyone in my local area doing it, which may mean that local restaurants may be keen to take them. More market research is needed.

But what I'm really after is any comments from someone who has transitioned from growing a few small bags on at home, into then making a regular (even if small!) income from it.

I've grown wine caps outdoors previously - I got a crop for home consumption, but they didn't look great for sale. I've got my first bag of oyster mushrooms fruiting indoors at the moment, from a kit I was given for Christmas. I've spent days going down the youtube rabbit hole, understand the outline of the various processes, and probably have a space I can work in. I'm considering scaling up to a couple of bags a week to see what the work flow and time demand looks like.

I am not pro yet but I am collecting about 5 labs of oyster mushrooms a week, working on fruiting chestnut and a good work flow through them. I also have wine cap I am playing with for outdoor grow and possibly remediation of Chinese privet we remove and chip at work as it is invasive. Instead of chipping and then spraying once any seeds in them sprout. Wine cap love it and will eat the seed and keep any big pieces from rooting. I am looking at tiger sawgill for another one to play with for food and remediation of certain things. I have a few local grows near me but this area is dense in population and there is room in the market for a few more growers. Also developing my land for a market garden and plan to go live on that in a 2 years pending how work goes. If I move up then I will probably not go pro and just keep the hobby level of gardening and other grows. Now what I do hobby wise is more than some  do because I usually can out a year's worth of many items like pasta sauce green beans salsa ect and have frozen and dehydrated items as well.

That brings me to one other thing, if you scale up buy do not have a buyer, dehydrate the mushies and sell that way. You could also just get good at making spawn, or ready to fruit blocks and sell those. You do not have to do it from lab to finished picked product. Even some of the big producers did not start like that, some still buy in spawn from outside sources. If you are around Va would love to collaborate with you. Good luck and keep growing 👍

Pounds not labs, auto correct got me

I’d strongly look at subscribing or at least looking at some of the classes GroCycle offers.   Their educational focus is teach how to start and grow a mushroom business.

I grow a decent amount of oyster, lions mane and chestnut mushrooms, but don’t grow for profit.  I have donated grow kits to two different organizations to sell, and they’ve done well.