Proven Culinary Food-As-Medicine, Indoor Agriculture Team Takes the Reins of Florida's Largest Indoor Specialty Gourmet Mushroom Farm; Jennifer Waxman and Peter Fedele Comment

MIAMI, FL - Ahead of National Mushroom Day on October 15 — Mastermind Mushrooms has taken the reins of Florida's largest gourmet mushroom facility, located in Miami, and now operates the site as Mastermind Mushrooms at Lion Farms under a strategic partnership with Lion Farms. Lion Farms is an organic regenerative agriculture farm. From a single Miami production base, the operation supplies freshly harvested gourmet mushrooms to Foodservice, Retail Grocery, Cruise Line, and Caribbean export buyers across Florida. Value-add, functional ingredients such as dried fruiting bodies and powders are available now for sampling, with scaled production to follow. Mastermind Mushrooms is currently on the shelves of a leading grocery retailers including Whole Foods Market (in select Florida locations) and is available through premier South Florida foodservice distributors.

Mastermind Mushrooms is Family-Owned and Operated. The team behind the transition are multi-decade leaders in the indoor agriculture sector and built and operated Florida's first large-scale indoor food production facility, through the indoor agriculture group, Seed2Source, founded by Jennifer Waxman, Adam Wright, and Jaime Giroux. That background is uncommon in specialty gourmet mushrooms, where most operations are built by small cultivators rather than by operators who have carried a large-scale facility through commercialization, third-party audits, and food safety certifications.

Scale is the second part of the story. With a 2-story production growing space in Phase 1 coupled with production volume available to supply and service the state of Florida (and beyond), the Miami facility is sized for demand that no single channel can absorb on its own. Foodservice draws on chef-driven specialty varieties at the freshness a kitchen needs; Retail Grocery draws on the consistent weekly case count a produce buyer can commit to; and Cruise Line and Export opportunities are supported by the quality and shelf life needed for specialty items not typically available in these distribution channels. Most gourmet mushroom growers in the Southeast are built to serve a single channel — this facility is built to serve all of them, simultaneously, with logistics and distribution support to distribution centers, direct store delivery, and the like.

"Florida has been importing gourmet mushroom product from out of the state of which loses its best days in a truck. Our Miami facility fixes that at scale, with year-round production (no seasons), and now it has an operating team that has done this before. The quality growing SOPs, succession schedules, food safety program, and the complete traceability — that is what lets a buyer count on the same case, the same week, every week. That is the difference between a farm and a supplier." — Jennifer Waxman, Co-Founder & CEO, Mastermind Mushrooms, Miami, FL

For Lion Farms, the partnership puts cultivation specialists in the grow rooms while the farm continues its regenerative land practices and education across the wider property. For Mastermind Mushrooms, it means starting from a facility already at commercial scale rather than from a construction schedule.

"We wanted this operation run by people who do this for a living, so that we could focus on agritourism, community education and outreach, as well as our regenerative agriculture, tropical fruit, and worm composting farm. Bringing in a team that we know and trust that has built and certified controlled environment production before was the right move for the farm and for our customers." — Peter Fedele, Founder, Lion Farms Regenerative Agriculture Farm, Miami, FL

Alongside its own production program, the facility offers contract growing for specific varieties, giving distributors, chefs, and retail buyers a route to unique varieties outside the standard lineup without carrying the cultivation risk themselves.

To learn more, read the full release here.