Superfood business that specialises in mushrooms takes off in lockdown

This Melbourne dad never could have imagined that his obsession with mushrooms would make him $1.4 million in just three months.

If you’d told Justin Snyder that his long-time obsession with mushrooms would make him $1.4 million in just three months, he would have laughed in your face.

But that’s exactly what happened to the Melbourne dad thanks to an unpredictable surge in demand since Covid-19 first hit around the world.

At the age of 20, Mr Snyder jetted off to India not knowing what to do with his life.

There, he fell in love with mushrooms – but not the magic kind.

He discovered Spirulina, a dried green algae that many consider to provide a rich source of protein and iron.

Returning to Australia, he landed a job but spent years thinking of mushrooms and struck out on his own to launch a super food company in 2012.

Now 37, his company made $1.5 million in sales in the 2020-2021 financial year, compared to just $230,000 the year before.

And since July, he’s raked in another $1.4 million, with the bulk of that just from August which brought in $482,000.

“The mushrooms have gone really crazy,” he told news.com.au.

He believes people care more about their health now that we’re in the midst of a global pandemic.

His mushroom obsession has become a multimillion dollar business.

“When the pandemic hit, that changed everyone’s idea of health and how important health was,” Mr Snyder said.

“Before the pandemic, health was only something you thought about when it was lacking.”

But now people are thinking about it pre-emptively, he explained.

The entrepreneur said he realised his good fortune after going to bed on the last day of July and logging onto his website the next day to see thousands of sales had gone through overnight.

At first Mr Snyder was scratching his head but then he realised a documentary about mushrooms had premiered on Netflix, causing widespread interest.

The documentary, called Fantastic Fungi, was released in 2019 but only made available on Netflix on July 31.

The film took 15 years to make as the director, Louie Schwartzberg, wanted multiple time lapses of mushrooms growing.

“It (the business) has just gone insane from there,” Mr Snyder said.

He launched Forest Super Foods in 2012.

Mr Snyder started Forest Super Foods in 2012.

He and a partner bootstrapped the company with just $600 each.

“The timing was uncanny,” he said, as just a few months later the superfood market began to explode.

Even with that, it took a while for the business to turn a profit.

“For a couple of years we weren’t taking any wages because we weren’t making enough,” he added.

Three years ago, he bought out his business partner for just a five figure payday – but now it’s turning over millions.

He has just two employees in his warehouse who have been packing all the orders.

Justin Snyder made nearly $500,000 in sales in a single month.

Before the pandemic hit, Mr Snyder sold his wares in Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines and Spain – of which he even had a wholesale deal for Spanish Costco outlets.

However, that all fell apart with the onset of Covid.

He doesn’t grow the mushrooms himself but has enlisted the help of an Australian farmer so it can be grown locally.

He mainly uses Lion’s Mane mushroom, Reishi mushroom and Turkey Tail mushroom in powder, tea bag and whole root forms among others.

The fact it is sold in Australia, with not as much pollution as China, is a big selling point for his Chinese customers, he said.

However, just as demand hit in August, his grower decided to try a new farming technique. Instead of receiving the much-needed 350 kilograms of mushroom, he was handed just 30kg.

Since then, he has also brought on two more farmers so that he’ll never run out of supply.

To scale up the business, Mr Snyder has created a public equity campaign where mushroom enthusiasts can buy shares in the company for as little as $250.

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Originally published as Superfood business that specialises in mushrooms takes off in lockdown