Many mushroom entrepreneurs eventually reach an identical crossroads:
Do you become a mushroom farmer?
Or do you build the infrastructure that enables thousands of other people to grow mushrooms?
For Howard, founder of Booming Acres in Illinois, the answer turned out to be both.
Today, Booming Acres produces roughly 20,000 all-in-one mushroom grow bags every month while simultaneously operating a gourmet mushroom farm, supplying farmers markets, selling mushroom genetics, grain spawn, substrates, cultivation supplies, and educational resources. Yet the business didn't begin with venture capital or a detailed five-year plan; it started in a kitchen during the uncertainty of the COVID pandemic.
"I didn't really have a plan for this to turn into what it's become,” says Howard. “It was kind of a ‘right time, right place’ situation.”
Howard had previously worked in hotel management, an industry that suddenly ground to a halt during the pandemic. Looking for a productive outlet, he purchased used mushroom cultivation equipment and initially considered returning to growing mushrooms himself. Instead, he noticed a more scalable opportunity.
Rather than competing with every new mushroom farmer, why not supply them?
That single decision fundamentally shaped the company's trajectory.
Beginning with Etsy, Booming Acres sold cultivation supplies one order at a time. Instead of rushing to expand, Howard waited until each stage of the business naturally reached capacity before taking the next step. When Etsy plateaued, he launched a dedicated website. When production maxed out, he invested in additional equipment. When demand exceeded what he and a friend could handle, he hired his first employee. Only later did the company expand onto Amazon and eventually into a 6,500-square-foot production facility.
Booming Acres has sold 200,000 + all-in-one mushroom grow bags
Perhaps the most revealing lesson from Howard's journey is what didn't happen.
For roughly eighteen months, he paid himself nothing.
Every dollar generated by the business went directly back into equipment, inventory, additional space, and payroll. His first employee received a paycheck before he did. Even more remarkably, Booming Acres avoided debt entirely, purchasing equipment outright rather than relying on loans or credit cards.
"For the first year and a half... I never got paid. Everything that we earned immediately went back into the business,” he says.
That conservative philosophy appears to have created a resilient business capable of growing organically instead of being pressured by monthly debt obligations.
The company's product strategy follows the same logic.
Rather than offering dozens of experimental products, Booming Acres focused on perfecting a handful of core offerings. Their flagship all-in-one grow bag became the centerpiece of the business, with months of testing devoted to refining grain ratios, substrate recipes, hydration levels, and production consistency.
Howard's team doesn't simply manufacture products—they rely on those exact same products in their own farm.
The same grain recipes, substrate formulations, and liquid cultures sold to customers are also used to produce Booming Acres' gourmet mushrooms. That creates an unusually tight quality-control loop. If something goes wrong, the company discovers it immediately through its own cultivation before customers ever experience the issue.
It's a subtle but powerful business model: use your customers' products every day yourself.
The gourmet side of the business serves a different purpose.
Instead of chasing wholesale restaurant accounts from day one, Booming Acres built relationships through farmers markets, introducing consumers to approachable species like lion's mane, oyster, pioppino, and chestnut mushrooms. Howard believes education is just as important as production, particularly when many customers are trying gourmet mushrooms for the first time.
That educational mindset extends beyond the market booth. The company hosts cultivation classes, donates products to schools, publishes educational articles, and actively works to lower the barrier to entry for first-time growers.
For aspiring mushroom entrepreneurs, Howard's biggest takeaway is refreshingly practical.
Growing mushrooms is rarely the hardest part.
Selling them is.
Understanding your market, expanding only when demand justifies it, and reinvesting profits back into the business may not sound glamorous, but Booming Acres demonstrates that sustainable growth often beats explosive growth.
"You can't go into it expecting, 'I can grow all these mushrooms... they're going to be sold immediately and I'm going to be making thousands of dollars every day.' That's just not a realistic thing."
Sometimes the smartest way to build a mushroom company isn't by growing more mushrooms.
It's by helping thousands of other people grow theirs.
"I'd say for anybody that's interested in getting into the business—you've got to start slow and work within your means."
Listen to our full interview with Howard from Booming Acres:
