Texas Fungus grows more than 500 pounds of mushrooms weekly in Arlington and Fort Worth. The mushrooms are sold wholesale to hotels and restaurants. They also sell at farmers' markets in Fort Worth, Arlington, and Dallas.
Jordan Jent: "I was actually a chef for about 10 years. What so commonly happens in the restaurant industry, chefs get chewed up and spit out. Their intellectual property gets taken, and promises get made. And so a company I was with had a very similar situation. So I decided to leave the restaurant industry altogether."
"A friend of mine that was in the restaurant industry, he had given me one of those back to the roots, grow your own mushroom kits. And I did all the steps. It didn't work. I called the company. And I was like, "Hey, how do I do this?" And they're like, "Well, we don't have time to explain all of the mycology to you. So figure it out." And I was like, "OK, fine, I'm going to freaking learn it." And so, little by little, I started just kind of going down the rabbit hole. "
"I converted my garage and my townhome into a little operation. Then my landlord found out about it. He was like, "You can't operate a business out of here. You have 30 days." I found the cheapest place that I could operate a commercial operation out of. And Arlington was pretty cheap to rent at the time. I finally got the keys to it on Jan. 1, 2019, and I've been here ever since."
Read more at fortworthreport.org