Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Neil Thenier. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Neil thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, one thing many business owners consider is donating a percentage of sales or profits to an organization or cause. We’d love to hear your thoughts and the story behind how and why you chose the cause or organization you donate to.

We chose to donate a percentage of each sale to One Tree Planted because of the mere fact that mushroom eat or in some way, shape, or form, rely on trees for their survival.

The thing that has always separated us from other mushroom extract brands is that we work with nature. Our products are made from sustaianbly wild harvested mushrooms and organically grown ingredients that we source within a forty mile radius of our headquarters.

Our relationship with the wild is unique. We don’t just take from the forest; we help it thrive by practicing sustainable foraging techniques.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Ever since my early twenties, I dreamt of starting my own business. I had many ideas over the years but none came to fruition. Until one day, I started a new job in Los Angeles and would chat with my coworker for hours about mushrooms. I would tell her about all of my foraging trips, culinary adventures, and medicinal mushroom extracts I would make. One day, I brought one in for her to try and she told me that this is what you need to base your company on. Right there, Forager’s Kingdom was born.

Over the years, I had tried so many different mushroom extracts only to be disappointed with poor quality and lack of sustainable practices. I found that most brands sourced their mushrooms from Asia where they have been notorious for their lack of air pollution laws and lack of transparency with third party testing. For products that were sourced from the US, I found their products contained mushroom mycelium in stead of fruiting bodies. Mycelium are the fungal roots of mushrooms grown on starches like oats or brown rice. These aren’t mushrooms at all and provide very little health benefit. As a forager, I couldn’t help but think everyone is doing this wrong. Why spend so much time, energy, money, and fossil fuels on growing things that nature already provides?

At Forager’s Kingdom we make mushroom extracts that are made from sustainably wild harvested mushrooms. Everything we use comes from a 40 mile radius of where we operate. Each of our products have unique health benefits and help people overcome chronic conditions. While they do lots good for the individual, they are also benefiting the planet. Foraging for food is an ancient practice done by our earliest ancestors. When done correctly, this interaction helps nature thrive by putting stress where stress is needed and by helping the proliferation of mushroom spores.

We also donate a portion of every sale to the non-profit, One Tree Planted. With every sale from our store, they’ll plant one tree in a forest in need. We feel this is a very special connection because mushrooms and fungi live off trees in one way or another. We want to make sure that they’ll be around indefinitely. We can help them, by always making sue they have food.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I wanted to treat my first business as a learning experience. I wanted to see what skills I had and lacked for success. My first amount of capital came from that years tax return. With $4,500 I started and LLC, opened a Shopify store, and bought initial raw materials to hit the ground running. After a year and half of hard work and tough learnings, that $4500 grew into $75,000 in sales. I knew I was onto something.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

From day one, our mission was to be vertically integrated. In order to be in control of our carbon footprint, in house production had to be the corner stone of our operation.

Starting out, I tested so many different extraction methods to see what gave the best yield at the best price with the best potency. When I had all that dialed in, production ran with ease. It allowed us to quickly launch new products and find efficiencies.

For almost a decade I worked in the production of health and wellness products so I already went through tough learning and how to find efficiencies. Keeping our production in house and limiting the number of contract manufacturers we worked with helped us grow quickly without having to be bogged down by middlemen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://foragerskingdom.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foragerskingdom
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/foragerskingdom
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/foragers-kingdom/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@foragerskingdom

Image Credits
Ash Edmonds- https://www.badashphoto.com/