About us
Jon & Roya are an American-German husband and wife team raising two small kiddos, Noe and Augie in Salem, Oregon where Jon was born and raised. Jon’s background is in sustainability research and he worked as a researcher and lecturer at HafenCity University in Hamburg, Germany. Roya came from the world of marketing, working for many years in the beverage industry.
We started making our own mushroom teas in Germany in 2019 after we tried mushroom chai on a visit to the states and loved how it made us feel. Since we couldn’t find any local options in Germany at the time, we founded myco:chai – iterating the recipe until we found something that tasted good and still had the effects we were looking for: good clean energy without the crash. After moving back to Oregon we changed our name to Oregon Mushroom Growers and began growing our own mushrooms as well as connecting with local growers and foragers.
Because of our backgrounds and a love for the natural world, we aim to make everything we do at OMG as sustainable and resource efficient as possible. This means minimizing the use of single use plastic, using organic ingredients, reducing energy consumption through renewable energy, and reusing local waste byproducts as a growing medium for our mushrooms by gathering coffee chaff from our partners at the Gov Cup, wood shavings from our friends of 2 Old Farts Wood Art and local tree trimmers, and giving our spent blocks to local gardeners as soil amendment – creating a circular economy at a local scale.
Our aim is not to be the biggest, best-selling mushroom coffee on the market. Rather we want to create real and lasting connections with our community, grow slowly and soundly, and make a positive impact on the health and well-being of our community.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Will this keep me up at night?
A: Our Mushroom Chai has 1/6th the amount of caffeine as coffee, which comes mostly from the cacao powder. However cacao has ten times more Theobromine than it does caffeine, which boosts both mood and alertness with far fewer side effects than caffeine. Meaning no jitters and sleepless nights.
Q: Why is it so chunky? What’s that at the bottom of the cup?
A: This is a combination of the fact that mushrooms are made of chitin, which is a hard cell-wall that does not fully dissolve in water, and we don’t use additives that help keep the mushrooms suspended in the liquid. Therefore if the product is natural, some traces of the ground ingredients will sink to the bottom of the cup. But don’t worry, the hot-water should extract most of the beneficial compounds without the need to consume the grainy dregs at the bottom.
Q: Where do you get your ingredients, and are they organic?
A: We source our ingredients from an organic wholesaler out of California, who work directly with their suppliers from all over the world to ensure they are 100% organic and top quality. Even though our ingredients are almost all organic, we haven’t paid for an organic label, yet.
Q: Why is it so expensive?
A: Because we use as many high-quality organic ingredients as possible, the price is naturally higher. Our functional mushroom blend is the bulk of the price, and we use several times more mushrooms per serving than any of our competitors – at much less of a price. Furthermore, we use mushroom extract powder, which has been extracted with hot water – then evaporated to leave just the powder. This makes the mushroom powder more expensive, but also 4 times more potent than whole mushroom powder.
Q: Can I buy in bulk or only in 1 or 5 oz. bags?
A: We offer wholesale pricing. Contact us directly at oregonmushroomgrowers@gmail.com and we can work something out :).
Q: Where can I buy or pick-up your products?
We currently sell online and can ship anywhere in the United States and offer free local pick-up at our 700 High Street office during arranged pick-up times throughout the week. We also offer some of our products at the Governor’s Cup in downtown Salem, the Urban Grange Coffee & Bakery in West Salem and have weekly markets in the Salem and Portland areas.
Q: Do you also sell fresh mushrooms online?
We don’t currently, but plans are in the work to sell rotating mushroom flats through our website. If you want to place an order, don’t hesitate to contact us by phone or email and we can deliver mushrooms ($20 minimum order) anywhere in the Salem area. (We almost always have lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms, but contact us if you want something special).
