We had the good fortune of connecting with Andrew Carter and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Andrew, how does your business help the community?
Smallhold’s mission is to change people’s minds about mushrooms. When people start to eat more mushrooms, they invariably eat a little less meat, might think critically about where their food is coming from, and can even fall down a rabbit hole into a bigger community of mushroom lovers. On a more basic level, mushrooms are one of the most sustainable, nutrient-dense foods you can grow. Our mushrooms grow on byproducts from the lumber industry (like sawdust), our farmers are paid living wages, and we invest in making our produce widely available, everywhere from grocery stores to restaurants to home grow kits.

What should our readers know about your business?
I was drawn to mushrooms because of their versatility and ability to nourish people, but also their mystery. What started as a shipping container under the Williamsburg Bridge has grown into a business with farms in LA, Austin, and Brooklyn, all bringing our mushrooms to over 400 retailers and restaurants. We are forward-looking, with a continued emphasis on sustainability, including composting 100% of our spent substrate. Our goal is to compost 8 million pounds of substrate by the end of the year.

It definitely has not been easy! The challenge I think with any business is finding and fulfilling customer demand. Because mushrooms are somewhat misunderstood, there is an education aspect in growing our business. When we decided to sell grow kits to consumers during the pandemic, that was a great entry point for educating people about the magic of mushrooms. Continued community outreach, education initiatives, and various entry points for people from all ages help with this. Luckily it’s stuff we enjoy doing, we can now prioritize it.

We are constantly learning and evolving as a business, but some of the biggest lessons I have learned along the way are the importance of placing people and community at the root of your mission. We pay all of our farmers living wages, are constantly expanding to new grocers and finding new partners. We’ve also learned that indoor farming is 80% plumbing and electrical engineering and 20% farming, so all the burgeoning indoor farmers out there should keep that in mind.

I think it’s important for the world to know, about me and about Smallhold, that there is a more sustainable future ahead of us. My hope as a business, and as a business owner, is to change the way that people see the food on their plates, and also change the way that people operate together. The more we work towards change, the more effective we will be.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
There is so much to do in my hometown of LA but I’ll keep it at 3. I find LA is a place that benefits from not planning at all, keep the schedule light and it’ll be a good time: Day 1: Drive (probably a long drive) to Winding Way Trail in Malibu, walk up to the falls, check out the view, and go to Neptune’s Net on the way back. Ideally on Sunday when all the motorcycles are out.
Day 2: Somehow get into the Magic Castle and befriend some magicians
Day 3: Keep it easy. Go visit Gjelina on the westside or sit on the LA river in Frog Town for a while.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
We owe a lot of our success to our urban ag and chef friends as well as our restaurant and grocery partners. All of the people at North Brooklyn Farms who allowed us to set up shop in a shipping container in their community greenspace under the Williamsburg Bridge back in 2017. Our first customers Tara Norvell and Bunker Vietnamese believed in us when Smallhold was just a concept and bought our very first mushrooms when we could only grow a pound at a time. Chef Angela Dimayuga has been a cheerleader from the start, as has Chef Greg Baxtrom, who let us do crazy stuff like install a Minifarm above his bar at Maison Yaki. Greene Grape in Fort Greene, Brooklyn was the first grocer to carry our first official, branded fresh mushrooms on shelf (and still do to this day!) followed by our partners at Whole Foods. I’m missing so many people here. It takes a village and we are very grateful to our community for the years of support. We’d be nowhere without them.

We’ve built a team where everyone from a farmer, to myself and my co-founder Adam, our sales team and beyond all play their part at Smallhold, which makes us successful as a unit. Hannah Shufro, in particular, is basically the 3rd partner in this endeavor. She was our first paid teammember, grew our first mushrooms, posted our first Instagram posts, and today runs the show at all our farms.

Website: https://www.smallhold.com/

Instagram: Smallhold’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smallhold/; My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/40kkm/

Linkedin: Smallhold’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/smallhold/; My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewbrentcarter/

Twitter: Smallhold’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/smallhold; My Twitter: https://twitter.com/40kkm

Facebook: Smallhold’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smallhold/

Other: Smallhold’s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@smallholdfarms

Image Credits
Smallhold

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