About Four Star Mushrooms
Four Star Mushrooms is a small batch gourmet mushroom producer in Chicago. Our product is distributed to a limited Chicago restaurant clientele.
Four Star Mushrooms' values are centered on our customers and we strive to guarantee the highest quality and consistent gourmet mushrooms possible. Two distinct characteristics give Four Star Mushrooms a competitive advantage in growing the best gourmet mushrooms in Chicago:
1) Mushrooms Grown Indoors
Growing gourmet mushrooms in a controlled environment allows for a year long growing season, rather than just a few months. Further, we are able to dial in the climate within the grow room to provide our mushrooms with exactly what they need to produce full fruit bodies, which translates to tasty mushrooms for Chicago restaurants!
2) Mushrooms Made In Chicago
Producing gourmet mushrooms in the heart of Chicago guarantees “hyper-local” freshness to restaurants in and around the city, allowing restaurants to capitalize on the farm-to-table distinction. Four Star Mushrooms’ size allows us to have the flexibility to cater to specific needs of each individual restaurant. This means chefs receive day-of harvest deliveries at any time they desire.
Joe Weber - Founder
I started Four Star Mushrooms because I believe that creating sustainable agriculture systems will be our key to solving climate change and the global loss of biodiversity. While studying biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I became deeply curious about ecology and the degradation of our ecosystems. I began to understand that a lot of our environmental issues were rooted in the way we mass-produce food through industrial agriculture practices. Two realizations really changed the way I viewed things. 1: The average age of a supermarket apple is 14 months old, sitting in cold storage for the majority of this time. The antioxidant properties that apples are known for, polyphenols, begin to drop off after a few months in cold storage. 2: Monoculture agriculture, growing only one crop across hundreds or thousands of acres, is the largest cause of habitat loss and ecological degradation. Further, restoring degraded farmland to grasslands across the world has the potential to sequester 3 Gt of carbon per year, making it a viable solution to mitigate some impact of global climate change.
My solution to these issues is to decentralize food production and utilize the Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) industry in and around urban areas. In doing so we will create fresher, more nutritious, consistently higher yielding produce while decreasing our negative environmental footprint. I am pro-farmer and I appreciate their endless hard work. They are truly the backbone, not only of America, but of the world. Unfortunately, the average age of the typical US farmer is 58 and only going up. With fewer people entering the farming industry than the previous year, a new kind of farmer is necessary as we progress through the 21st century. This farmer is armed with knowledge of technology and data and how we can leverage these tools to increase our production while decreasing resource consumption.
My vision for the future is one in which we intelligently plan and restore environments at the ecosystem level. The green revolution gave us the great corn and soy fields that we live with today and I am thankful it did. However, as we move forward we need an approach that will allow us to grow while maintaining ecological integrity and I wholeheartedly believe that agriculture produced in and around major metropolitan areas, cleanly and in many instances indoors, is a solution that will reap positive outcomes on the environment, local entrepreneurs, and the surrounding community.
Benefits of Working with Four Star Mushrooms
Gourmet mushrooms are a delicate product and many varieties, including oyster mushrooms, have short shelf lives that are reduced by increased handling and decreased attention to detail. In working with Four Star Mushrooms, Chicago chefs and restaurants receive gourmet mushrooms that stay fresh longer. This is due in part to the fact that our gourmet mushrooms are typically only handled once before they reach our restaurant customers. All of our gourmet mushrooms are packaged with extreme care to reduce the risk of caps cracking and fruit bodies bruising, increasing their longevity. Further, we are capable of harvesting to meet the requirements of each specific restaurant. This means that Four Star Mushrooms is able to harvest at the optimal time and select for size preferences to meet the unique ingredient specifications of our chef partners.