Incremental Improvements to Grow Your Mushroom Business, Shane O'Donnell

As someone who’s been navigating the transition from hobbyist to commercial mushroom cultivator for almost a decade, I’ve learned that success often comes down to a series of small, incremental improvements. It’s not about making giant leaps, but about making consistent, meaningful changes that compound over time. This article is about the next three changes I want to make to production and why I think. They are:

Reduce sterilizing time (Increase throughput, decrease energy costs)
Improve packaging (Increase retail sales, reduce labour)
Improve environmental controls (Increase yield, decrease crop loss, increase predictability)

Optimize the Sterilization Process

Sterilization is a considerable time and resource expense in mushroom cultivation, but there are likely ways to cut down on the time it takes without compromising quality. Two years ago, I built an atmospheric steam sterilizer for my bulk substrate. It’s been working beautifully, with very little unexpected hiccups. We run it at 100C for 24 hours before letting it cool in the lab. Cool down usually takes a day, so at the very most, we can do 3 batches per week if we produce on weekends.

I was flipping through The Mushroom Cultivator (Stamets and Chilton, 1983) when I saw a chart of sterilizing time for the bulk substrate. It showed that a substrate at 100C will sterilize in 10-12 hours.

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure where I got 24 hrs from initially. That being said, if I can cut the steam time by up to a half, that would mean we can reduce the energy cost by 50%, increase margins and get all of the production done within the work week, or increase overall output by mixing and steaming batches on the weekend.

I’ve learned that making changes, even no-brainer ones like this, usually has unforeseen impacts. Therefore, I will gradually decrease the steam time by 2 hours for each batch until I lose it to contamination. Then, I’ll increase the steam time by 30 minutes for each batch until it’s successful.

This has the potential for a significant increase in production speed and overall throughput and a decrease in costs.

Elevate My Packaging Game

High-quality packaging doesn’t just protect the product—it speaks to your customers before they even open it. The look and feel of packaging can convey professionalism, care, and attention to detail. It’s the first interaction people have with your mushrooms, and if you can make it memorable, you’re more likely to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers.

What works at a farmers market doesn’t necessarily work in retail. It’s easy to sell something when I can converse with someone face to face. It’s much harder to sell that same product if I can’t talk to them and it’s sitting on shelves, surrounded by hundreds of other products, all vying for attention.

I used to print our labels out on my black-and-white toner printer. This was useful early on since I changed my labels fairly frequently as I got feedback, improved the product and learned what customers wanted. It was cheap, and I could make small batches. The downside is that the quality was literally and figuratively lacklustre and would start smudging when rubbed.

I’ve recently upgraded to using separate, high-quality coloured ink labels on all my dried mushroom products, and I’ve noticed a difference in how customers perceive the value. I’ve also started buying UPC barcodes for the product to make them retail-ready. At the time of writing this, I’m using one label for five products with five checkboxes, and I check one of them with a pen to show which product it actually is. While that’s a definite improvement over the previous, and it’s great for testing out new SKUs, it’s just a stepping stone.

I’m aiming to move my mushrooms from a local stand to a broader retail presence, which means I’ll be investing in pre-printed custom packaging in early 2025 as I get into the rhythm of outbound marketing to retail outlets. This has the added benefit of removing the work of printing the labels myself and hand-sticking them onto the pouches.

Fine-Tune Environmental Controls

Humidity control is crucial for consistent, high-quality yields. Soon, I’ll tighten up my humidity controls even further by reducing the range of humidity swings and insulating the framed room where I house my two grow tents. Right now, the AC unit sits outside the room, which leads to daily temperature fluctuations. By moving it inside and fully insulating the room, I’ll create a more stable environment that will make it easier to manage temperature and humidity.

Once the room is insulated, I’ll also filter the air coming into this conditioning chamber to ensure a cleaner environment and reduce the risk of contamination. I’ll also increase the air exchanges inside the grow tents themselves, which will improve circulation and keep the conditions inside them much more consistent. It’s a series of relatively simple upgrades, but they should make a big impact on stabilizing the environment and improving my overall yields.

One of the biggest issues is that the oyster mushrooms seem to like it more humid, but the lion’s mane do not. I’ll need a better way to set a tent for a particular species. An even better would be a humidity program that adjusts humidity levels throughout a grow. For example, pinning oyster mushrooms tends to happen well at 95+ RH%, but can cause bacterial botch a few days into its main growth period. To increase shelf-life, the mushrooms should be harvested an hour or so after the humidity system has been turned off.

My monitoring and control system is built on Home Assistant and accessible on my phone. I’ll be able to configure all of the control changes there.

Wrapping Up

By focusing on these small but impactful improvements, I’m moving closer to running a streamlined, profitable mushroom cultivation business. If you’re still in the hobby stage and wondering how to make that leap, identify areas where small changes can have a big impact. This process doesn’t end. You just keep getting better. Whether shaving hours off your sterilization process, upgrading your packaging, or dialling in your environmental controls, these steps can help turn your passion into a sustainable business.

Hey there 👋🏼 I’m Shane, the founder and owner of Heartwood Mushrooms, a small gourmet mushroom cultivator in northern Ontario, Canada. I’ve been growing mushrooms for over 12 years and as Heartwood for 8. This is The Cap with Shane O’Donnell, a blog and podcast documenting my journey into building a mushroom business from $0 to $250,000 per year.

It started as a hobby growing mushrooms, a handful at a time in my closet. Now, I own and operate a 1200 sqft facility built on an empty patch of grass. This is where I share what I’ve learned as someone who made the jump from hobby to business. I’ve faced the same challenges and uncertainties that you might be experiencing, and I’m here to share my experiences so that you can make your fungi fantasies come true too.

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