California will be the new home of the agtech startup, introducing the wonder of mushrooms to more people. Mushrooms will start to hit retailer shelves in early May across Southern California, including Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego metropolitan areas.
LOS ANGELES, May 10, 2022–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Urban mushroom farmers Smallhold, pioneers in indoor agriculture technology, today announced the opening of a 34,000-sq. ft facility in Los Angeles County.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220510005682/en/
Smallhold at Erewhon in Studio City (Photo: Smallhold)
In early May, Smallhold will begin delivering locally grown, USDA Certified Organic specialty mushrooms to Southern California. This West Coast expansion, alongside existing farms in Brooklyn and Austin, furthers the five-year-old company’s mission to build a hyper-local solution to a broken global food supply chain.
Smallhold is entering the Southern California market by launching in over 90 stores, including Whole Foods, Erewhon, and Lassen’s. Southern California customers will also be able to order Smallhold mushrooms online via ecommerce players Good Eggs, Imperfect Foods and others. Acclaimed restaurant Kismet, known for celebrating fresh and vegetable-based Mediterranean-inspired dishes, is officially Smallhold's first culinary partner in Los Angeles.
"We're excited in our partnership with Smallhold whose value for quality and mission are in line with our stores," said Edward Palomo, Produce Director at Erewhon. "Smallhold has taken mushroom growing operations to a whole new level in being able to provide us and our customers with the highest quality and unique mushroom varieties available."
With the opening of this newest farm in Vernon, California–less than a mile outside of Downtown Los Angeles–Smallhold now operates four commercial farms across the US for a total footprint of over 75,000 sq. ft. Their goal is to not only to feed over 2 million people in 2022, but to use mushrooms to change the way people think about their environment, sustainability and biodiversity.
When COVID first took hold of the country in 2020, Smallhold was on the shelf in a single grocery store in Brooklyn, NY. Now, Smallhold can be found in approximately 400 retailers and restaurants, including Whole Foods, Safeway-Albertsons, Central Market, and top restaurants including Mena, 232 Bleeker, Hungry House, and Maison Yaki in New York City as well as Uchi, Comedor, and Intero in Austin. This growth has been driven by consumer demand for lower impact, cleaner, better for you produce that will help our society deal with the impacts of traditional agriculture and climate change.
"This is a huge step for Smallhold, a business we founded 5 years ago inside a shipping container under the Williamsburg Bridge," said Andrew Carter, CEO and Co-founder. "Having grown up in Los Angeles myself, it’s exciting to bring our mushrooms to my environmentally-conscious, culinary-focused hometown."
Increasing access, quality and variety of speciality mushrooms
National and regional retail partnerships continue to grow with partners including Erewhon, Lassens, Good Eggs and Imperfect Foods, along with an expansion of their existing partnership with Whole Foods Market in their 60 store South-Pacific region. Smallhold brings increased choice to consumers by growing harder to find mushroom varieties including organic Lion’s Mane, Blue Oyster, Yellow Oyster, King Oyster, and more. The average US mushroom case is dominated by button, crimini and portobellos, ignoring an entire kingdom (literally, fungi is a kingdom!) of texture, flavor, and nutrition.
By building hyper-urban farms in key regions and exclusively using compostable cardboard packaging, Smallhold reduces food miles traveled, improves mushroom quality, extends shelf life, all while drastically reducing carbon footprint, food waste, and plastic usage. This scalable approach to local, organic farming allows a wide array of specialty mushrooms to be grown, harvested and sold in meaningful quantities directly where consumers live. In comparison, 68% of mushrooms consumed in the US are grown and shipped from Pennsylvania. For Shiitake mushrooms, almost all are grown off logs originating outside of the US.
As a national brand with a local presence, Smallhold is carving out a new category opportunity for mushroom farming. With this latest opening, Smallhold is finally connecting the coasts with a truly national supply chain for specialty mushrooms that preserves shelf life.
"Educating and sparking curiosity about mushrooms is an integral part of our mission," said Andrew Carter, CEO and Co-founder. "We want people to ask where their food comes from, think about their diet, and reconnect with the planet. This means installing our Minifarms in unexpected places like The Standard Hotel, or having Smallhold mushrooms on the menu at places like Eleven Madison Park—all while concurrently placing locally grown packaged mushrooms in grocery stores across the nation. We want people to have multiple touchpoints and opportunities to taste delicious, quality mushrooms."
Commitment to Sustainable Growing and Local Agriculture with Applied Technology
Smallhold’s indoor farms use proprietary systems to create optimal conditions for mushroom growth while ensuring maximum efficiency of water and energy usage. Their patented system captures hundreds of thousands of data points per day, giving them the ability to imitate natural environments. This results in higher yields, lower resource use, and allows them to have a certified organic, hyperclean, efficient operation. Smallhold mushrooms also grow off byproducts from the lumber industry (mostly sawdust) and then 100% of spent substrate is composted or donated.
To date, Smallhold has composted over 2 million pounds of spent substrate. Their goal is to compost 8 million pounds by the end of the year. Additionally, the Smallhold Community Compost Program provides spent substrate for free to the public through partnerships with community growers, hobby mycologists, compost enterprises, farmers, ranchers, and others looking to celebrate fungi and build soil fertility through the power of mycelium.
In Los Angeles, Smallhold is part of a groundbreaking mycoremediation field study testing locally-adapted and sustainable solutions for brownfield (AKA contaminated site) cleanup in LA County. Led by PhD candidate Danielle Stevenson at the University of California and in partnership with the City of Los Angeles, the study has been using Smallhold’s spent substrate blocks since December 2021, monitoring effects at contaminated sites including a former rail yard, auto shop, metal shop, and others. The results of their work could reclaim contaminated land for future sustainable use and prove to have far reaching ramifications in the field of mycoremediation.
"We hope the findings from these studies will demonstrate the many benefits of integrating fungi into soil remediation and address knowledge gaps so that these sustainable approaches can be applied widely and create circular economies around contaminated site cleanup," said Danielle Stevenson, PhD candidate in Environmental Toxicology at the University of California, Riverside.
In Los Angeles County, Smallhold continues its practice of hiring locally, always paying above the living wage and partnering with regional non-profits and groups.
"The city of Vernon is very excited to help Smallhold expand its production of specialty mushrooms to the West Coast," said Carlos Fandino, Vernon City Manager. "We are happy to create an environment where businesses like Smallhold can thrive from being surrounded by a network of farming distributors and retail partners, many of whom are based here in Vernon."
Smallhold prioritizes understanding the unique needs of each community they operate within and listening to what people want to see from their local mushroom farm. This has resulted in remediation programs, educational tours, food donation programs, even artistic collaborations. Local organizations interested in utilizing substrate for community gardens, mycology education programs, permaculture projects or other partnership opportunities are encouraged to reach out to hello@smallhold.com.
About Smallhold
Smallhold’s growing network of organic mushroom farms is upending the traditional farming model with new technology and a sophisticated supply chain, increasing access to freshly harvested mushrooms around the country. Patented technology creates climate recipes that grow the best mushrooms you’ve ever tasted. And thanks to a unique distributed farming model, mushrooms are grown absurdly close to the end consumer.
Smallhold is based in Brooklyn, with operations in New York, Austin, Los Angeles, and beyond. We operate New York City and Los Angeles’ only USDA Certified Organic commercial mushroom farms—but it doesn't stop there. You can watch our mushrooms grow in onsite Minifarms inside restaurants, grocery stores, and nonprofits, or even on your own kitchen counter with one of our home grow kits, available at smallhold.com.
Since 2017, Smallhold has established itself as a leader in US specialty mushroom production with products found in top retailers like Whole Foods, Central Market, Safeway-Albertsons, FreshDirect, Imperfect Foods, and Misfits Market as well as some of the nation’s most exciting restaurant kitchens, including Mena, 232 Bleeker, Hungry House, and Maison Yaki in New York City as well as Uchi, Comedor, and Intero in Austin. Full list of stockists here.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220510005682/en/
Contacts
Caroline Chau
caroline@jacktaylorpr.com
646.637.4214
This ultra-quiet food processor is the perfect kitchen accessory for all your slicing and dicing needs, and it’s currently 50% off.
We talked to the farmers themselves, and here’s what they told us.
Food technology innovation, plant-based meat alternatives, increased concern for animal welfare, and the environmental impact of food choices are driving the future of the food market.
This thrifty way to make your fish go a little further can save the day flavour-wise, says Ann Maloney
“We are dreaming big. We don’t know what we’re capable of, we don’t know what the future holds. All we know is that we’re not going to fail."
Plus, tips on how to freeze them.
Is there any way it holds up in the modern day?
The ice cream section in any grocery store can be a pretty overwhelming place. You’ve got choices ranging from small, shockingly expensive pints all the way up to entire buckets at bargain prices. You’ll also see terms like “premium” and “super premium” slapped onto the packaging, labels that do more to confuse the consumer more than enlighten them. Deciphering the wide world of grocery store ice cream comes down to understanding one key concept: overrun.
Some are concerned that its plant-based estrogens may cause problems. Here’s what the science says.By Sally WadykaTofu, a staple in most Asian cultures, is a plant protein made from soybeans. The…
The best tips from budgeting and cooking experts who know how to make food spending more manageable.
Not sure if your eggs are still good? Here are a few ways to check. Plus, learn what the "packing date" is and how best to store eggs.
Crumbl Cookies is making its mark on New Jersey, opening a bakery in Holmdel, its third, on May 20.
Giada De Laurentiis got the day off from cooking for Mother's Day, so daughter Jade whipped up some boxed mac and cheese
Whether you plan to eat it tonight or a few days from now, asparagus needs to be stored properly to have the best flavor and texture.
No more DIY.
US Foods is the second-largest U.S. food-service distributor behind Sysco, holding 10% market share of the highly fragmented food-service distribution industry. US Foods distributes more than 400,000 food and nonfood products to the healthcare and hospitality industries (collectively 22% of 2021 sales), restaurants (61%), and education, government facilities, and grocers (17%). In addition to its delivery business, the firm has 80 cash and carry stores under the Chef’Store banner. After Sysco’s attempt to purchase US Foods failed to gain federal approval in 2015, US Foods entered the public market via an initial public offering.
Nothing will up the calorie count on an already-indulgent dish quite like macaroni and cheese — the trend of adding it, fried, on top of everything from burgers to pizza began when Jack in the Box launched deep-fried mac-and-cheese bites in 2008. A Yum brand, KFC, recently launched the Mac 'N Cheese Kentaco: a fried chicken breast is shaped into a taco, filled with the brand's macaroni and cheese and sprinkled with mozzarella and cheddar cheese for good measure. American fans of such a fried food are out of luck, however, as the dish is available only at KFC Singapore.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; we have all heard the saying before but is it really true? The answer to this age-old question is yes, breakfast can have a profound effect on our current and future well-being. Not only has breakfast been associated with a lower risk of weight gain but it is also associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease.In addition, it has been shown that the circadian rhythm and timing of meals have an important role in how food is digested, absorb
Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal tries out the latest snack team-up between Goldfish crackers and Old Bay seasoning.
Subway's footlong sandwiches are coming up short on a key ingredient—the meat. In fact, some of the chain's best-selling proteins are currently difficult to come by due to several converging pressures on the market.According to Restaurant Business, Subway operators are having a hard time keeping turkey and roast beef in stock. Even ham has been more challenging to source, pushing franchisees to look outside of the company's supply chain, including at places like Costco. The turkey shortages are
Planetworkshops
Tips for you and for world by mygreengrowers.com