Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon & Roya Young.
Hi Jon & Roya, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
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 began 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. Like many others during Covid, we had plenty of time to play around with the idea of starting a business, so we whipped up some packaging, labels and started selling and gifting our “myco:chai” to our friends and our first four products were born.
On returning to the US, we moved to New Mexico in 2023 to help family with their business, meanwhile starting up our first farmer’s market in Silver City. There we fell in love with the communal aspect of farmer’s markets and the immediate feedback and connection with the community.
After moving back to Oregon in 2025, we founded Oregon Mushroom Growers and began growing our own mushrooms as well as connecting with local growers and foragers to sell at farmer’s markets and pop-ups. Our products can now be found at our local organic supermarket (LifeSource Natural Foods) and several cafes and small apothecary’s throughout the Willamette Valley.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Our journey began in Germany when we had no kids, began to build momentum when we started selling our tea and coffee at our first farmer’s market in Silver City, New Mexico as myco:chai with a 1 and 2-year old in tow, and now we are starting to hit our stride in Salem as Oregon Mushroom Growers.
Moving to another country, then another state with two little ones was a challenge that forced us to be efficient with our time in order to run the business and still spend enough quality time together as a family. Both of our little ones had medical issues that required surgery, and we moved to Salem to help Jon’s father who had to have spinal surgery. This required a lot of adaptability, especially from our kids who have lived in several different places during their short lives.
On the business side, our biggest challenge has been to learn how to cultivate gourmet and medicinal mushrooms from scratch by reading the works of Paul Stamets and gleaning as much information as possible from youtube channels. Every day brings a new challenge, whether it is learning bookkeeping, keeping 8-10 species of mushrooms in just the right environment to make them happy, or battling the elements at one of our 5 outdoor markets. The challenges make the successes that much more rewarding.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Oregon Mushroom Growers (OMG)?
We are a family-operated and owned business that sells organic mushroom teas and coffee, jerky, bread, pecans, tinctures and fresh gourmet mushrooms. What makes our business unique is our multi-cultural fusion of our German, American and Asian heritage evidenced in our German Power Bread, Asian-fusion style mushroom jerky and other rotating products we bring to the market every week. Almost all of our ingredients are organic and locally sourced, and we partner and collaborate with several local businesses: The Governor’s Cup (we use their locally roasted coffee in our coffee products, and they sell some of our products at their cafe – we also use the waste from their roasting process (chaff) to grow our mushrooms); Feral Grains Granola (they created a matcha granola blend with our mushroom matcha); Creativitee (screenprinted our amazing shirts and sweaters); and red mortar spices (we are currently collaborating on an umami mushroom seasoning blend). We also source our grains and raw ingredients mostly from Azure, an Oregon-based wholesaler.
This commitment to spending locally and partnering with our community is what we are most proud of and what sets us apart from other bigger brands. Furthermore, with professional backgrounds in sustainability and resource efficiency as well as marketing, we are focused on optimizing the growing process to use as little resources as possible with solar energy and minimizing the use of plastic. Our goal is to be a part of the circular economy, which means reducing waste and upcycling materials that would otherwise go to the landfill. For example, we use the sawdust from local craftsmen, the spent coffee beans and chaff from local cafes/roasters, and give our spent substrate blocks (a powerful soil amendment) to local gardeners.
We’ve also partnered with Level Up, a local non-profit, to work with youth from underrepresented communities to give them workforce training and mentoring. 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.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Our industry, specifically the functional mushroom business, is growing rapidly. According to Fortune Business Insights, the value of the functional mushroom market is expected to more than double by 2034 ($34 to $76 billion). In our own experience, we are finding more and more market customers seeking our more potent dual-extract functional mushroom tinctures for their health benefits rather than simply eating mushrooms as a gourmet experience. Gen Z is also highly interested in wellness trends and supplements, while older generations are seeking our lion’s mane tinctures to help with memory and brain health. Since we are a small business, we are able to adapt our products to fit the market and the feedback we get every week. We’re also excited to see more and more research coming from the scientific community to support the health benefits of our functional mushrooms. We think this is more than just a flash-in-the pan wellness trend, as these mushrooms have been used for millennia by many cultures for their medicinal and nutritional value and the west is finally starting to catch on. Furthermore, with the degradation of soil due to factory farming and monocrops, we believe teaching others to grow their own food on a small scale and improve soil quality at a local level can help in some small way to improve the health of our community and environment. We’re excited to see where the journey will take us, and thank the community for so much support.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://oregonmushroomgrowers.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oregon_mushroom_growers/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Oregon-Mushroom-Growers-OMG-61576353440464/
