“I think in three years we could be a $5 million company. While home gardening is a multi-billion-dollar market, Thanhauser told the Greenlight judges that no one has yet to tap into it to introduce mushroom growing as a viable option for home gardeners. We are really taking mushroom growing into the 21st century,” he said.
#North spore mushrooms tv#
North Spore sells mushroom-growing kits, like these samples that Thanhauser brought on the TV show.Īfter Thanhauser’s pitch, Leonard asked him what differentiated North Spore from its competition. The company has invested in its e-commerce platform and its online sales of mushroom-growing supplies, including spawn, has increased year-to-date by 440%, according to Thanhauser. While the fresh-mushroom business is where the company got its start, and still represents a majority of the company’s revenue, Thanhauser said the company sees great potential in the scalability and profitability of selling mushroom spawn-the genetic material used to cultivate mushrooms. Today, North Spore sells its mushrooms to more than 75 restaurants and grocery stores in Maine, and works with specialty distributors in Boston, New York, and Seattle. They started off washing their equipment and mushrooms with a garden hose in the driveway, but within six weeks they had harvested their first mushrooms and were selling to restaurants in Portland. The friends started the business in a 500-square-foot garage in Westbrook with roughly $10,000 in startup capital. Thanhauser founded North Spore in 2014 with Jon Carver and Matt McInnis, two friends he met while at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. I worked hard on preparing for these pitches, but it is still a little hard to believe we won both.” “And this recognition is a great honor and a testament to how far we have come since our humble beginnings in a 500-square-foot garage in Westbrook. “This is an amazing windfall for us this capital will go a long way in helping us bring mushroom growing to the masses.” said Eliah Thanhauser, North Spore’s co-founder who represented the company in both pitching competitions. The mushroom farm is the first company to win both the LaunchPad and Greenlight Maine competitions in the three years that both have been held in June. The judges were Danielle Conway, dean of the University of Maine School of Law Kathie Leonard, CEO of Auburn Manufacturing and Mike Herrin, COO of Emera Maine.Įarlier this month, North Spore won Gorham Savings Bank’s Launchpad business-pitch competition and its $50,000 first-place prize. North Spore pitched on the final episode alongside two other Portland-based startups, Forager and Zootility. Three judges selected North Spore as the winner on the television show’s final episode, which you can watch on Greenlight Maine’s YouTube channel.
North Spore, the Westbrook-based mushroom farm, has won Greenlight Maine and its $100,000 top prize, just weeks after the company won the Launchpad business plan competition. ELiah Thanhauser, co-founder of North Spore, accepts the $100,000 prize for winning Greenlight Maine.
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