New Years Resolution for Your Business

The New Year is often about making personal resolutions for self-improvement. It’s also a good time, however, to evaluate your business practices for what needs to evolve. There are several aspects of growing mushrooms that work together to increase your odds of success. Chances are, a portion of yours are just waiting to be changed up and improved. 

Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets goes into detail about the importance of a quality strain library. High-quality strains yield larger and healthier mushrooms which are key for catching the eye of customers. For someone growing mushrooms as a hobby, it may not matter as much. However, if you’re running a mushroom business, the quality of your produce is an essential aspect to consider. 

We’re no strangers to struggling with affording upscale strains, especially when working on building up your customer base. However, the right strains have the ability to change everything. One of our most popular strains, the King Blue, is loved because, unlike regular blues, the stems hold the taste and texture of the caps. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a strong and gorgeous mushroom.

Buying extremely cheap strains may seem like a smart move upfront, but you’ll be paying for that decision for a long time to come with poorly performing mushrooms. We’ve gotten several of our customers just by giving them a sample of what we offer. The clusters of healthy, strong mushrooms that have a fair amount of heft to them are all it takes to get them to call back for more. 

Even similar strains have important differences to consider. Lion’s Mane and Comb Tooth are both Hericiums, but Comb Tooth holds on to the sweetness with less maintenance needed. However, Lion’s Mane has often soured for us when grown on masters mix. Pink and Gold Oysters were a considerable challenge for us until we found just the right strain. A majority of the strains we found would fall apart and lacked an enjoyable taste profile. Finding the right strains enabled us to grow a product that we feel is worthwhile.

We’ve made no secret of the multitude of ways we strive to save money, but when it comes to building a strain library, it’s worth it to make the initial investment. Andrew put in a lot of effort to find the right strains. The upfront expenditure of time and money paid for itself over time due to being able to clone and expand with them, as an extra bonus. If there’s only one move you are able to make this year to improve your business, it may be time to consider putting in the work to upgrade your strain library.