Business mushrooms for man with roots in Paw Paw

A former Paw Paw resident has found his niche as an entrepreneur in a sustainable agriculture business, reports the Courier-Leader.

Alex Velez graduated from University of California at Berkeley in May of 2009. Right away, he and his business partner, Nikhil Arora, founded a 100 percent sustainable urban mushroom farm called BTTR (Back to the Roots, pronounced better). Excerpt:

"It's not work when you're loving what you're doing," said Velez, who puts in more than 100 hours working seven days per week.

BTTR grows gourmet oyster mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds, an idea that percolated for Velez and Arora in an ethics class at UC Berkeley.

During the lecture, they learned mushrooms grow well in hard woods and that the main component of hard woods is cellulose. Similarly, coffee has a lot of cellulose.

"We started brainstorming," said Velez.

According to Velez, getting the business under way took about six months of research. After successfully growing their first mushroom, they didn't waste any time.

"We went to Whole Foods with our mushroom in a little Ace Hardware bucket," he said.

The story goes on to say the natural and organic food giant quickly recognized BTTR's potential. Three weeks later Velez and Arora received an e-mail from the Whole Foods President for Northern California Floral and Produce Department. January marked BTTR's first major delivery of oyster mushrooms to Whole Foods Northern California stores — totaling 30 stores in all.

The story also reports BTTR has sold 7,500 pounds of mushrooms to date. Now Whole Foods is purchasing 500 pounds per week.

To find out about the celebrity chefs who are using the oyster mushrooms in their cooking read the rest of the story.

Source: Courier-Leader