Local couple Mia and Justin Nguyen have leveled up their backyard mushroom growing operation, Long Beach Mushrooms, with the opening of a new business space in Signal Hill.
“It feels good,” Justin said. “It actually makes things a little bit more complicated because not everything is in one place, and I’m like driving things, filling up my car. But it feels really good to do stuff like this, to welcome people to the space, show them where their mushrooms are grown.”
Their new grow room located at 1234 E. Burnett St. houses eight climate-controlled tents with seven different mushroom species growing inside, including blue oyster, black pearl king, chestnut, lion’s mane, golden enoki and more.
During an “open house” event, Long Beach Mushrooms offered tours of their grow room to the public.
“It’s actually pretty inspiring to learn about one possible way to take your vision from like literally your garage to the next level,” said Aaron Mangal, who took the tour.
They’ve been operating out of the space for around four months, and already have plans to move to an even larger space.
“The demand is there for us,” Justin said. “We’ve been doing really well in the community, the community has been super supportive. So we think there’s just room to grow more mushrooms.”
In their current location, Long Beach Mushrooms has already increased their mushroom production by at least four times what they were able to grow in their backyard, according to Justin.
When their eight climate controlled grow tents are operating at full capacity, each tent can produce between 50 to 250 pounds of mushrooms.
As Long Beach Mushrooms continues to grow and expand, Mia and Justin are adjusting to a more involved and complex business.
“It’s like as you exponentially grow there’s more problems [that] come up that you didn’t anticipate,” Justin said. “So we’re dealing with some stuff. We get knocked down every once in a while but we believe in the mission so we keep going.”
Long Beach Mushrooms has partnered with Black Dog Coffee Roasters in Signal Hill to create a new cold brew coffee, made with oats milk, pumpkin spice, and lion’s mane mushroom extract. The result is a full bodied beverage with a silky mouth feel.
The Nguyen’s have also developed prototype at-home grow kits, so their customers can grow their own mushrooms at home.
“Grow kits are really fun,” Justin said. “We picked certain specific strains that grow well on counter tops, that are pretty resilient, and don’t need a lot of environmental controls.”
Long Beach Mushrooms currently has grow kits for pink oyster, blue oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms.
Justin said the grow kits come with directions, which involve misting the mushrooms with water a few times, and produce fully-grown mushrooms within 10 days.
“I think it’s just a cool way for people to be hands-on with it,” Justin said. “Mushrooms are really exciting because they grow so fast. And then it’s also like a cool way to have people eat the freshest mushrooms possible.”
Grow kits offer consumers fresh mushrooms that can be eaten right after harvesting, in stark contrast to the vast majority of mushrooms found in grocery stores and supermarkets.
“I think that’s something that we don’t realize, [that] a lot of our mushrooms are shipped in from places like China and Canada and they’re days to weeks old by the time we get it,” Justin said. “And the difference between eating something that’s just grown and something that’s sat around for a while, it’s actually pretty significant, especially with mushrooms.”
Long Beach Mushrooms is located at 1234 E Burnett St. To keep with Long Beach Mushrooms, follow them on Instagram at @longbeachmushrooms.
