Students of the University of California, University of California Alex Velez and Nikil (AroraAlex Velez and Nikhil Arora) assembled his idea for a business in African women are committed to grow mushrooms on tea leaves. This idea was voiced by one of his lectures at the university, attended the enterprising American students. Friends found a promising business idea and organized his own company of mushroom cultivation on coffee grounds BTTR Ventures, whose name stands for "Back To The Roots," (Back to the roots).
Moreover, young entrepreneurs are selling not only the edible oyster mushroom, grown on the most ordinary coffee grounds, but the presets for growing mushrooms at home.
These ready-made kits for growing mushrooms is a primer, seeded spores, which germinate in a week. Within a month after opening their presets for the cultivation of mushrooms have appeared in 120 stores Peets Coffee & Tea, which is the main supplier of coffee grounds for the company BTTR Ventures.
Now the company that produces weekly up to 600 pounds of oyster mushrooms, are 6 laborers. Mushrooms are sold in local stores at a price of $ 12 per pound. The company is planning to increase capacity by half.
The idea of organizing business in the mushroom industry is not new. However, the approach of young entrepreneurs who have brought their business to a new level of environmentally friendly and cost-effective and affordable business, we can definitely be called innovative. And if the sum of the costs of traditional mushroom entrepreneur is the cost of seeds (mycelium) and the substrate, in this case, the value of the latter component can be significant savings.
In addition, the use of coffee grounds as a substrate makes this area of agriculture is quite suitable for the urban environment.