Everyone in the mushroom business is familiar with dried mushrooms. Long-shelf life if well-stored. Hard and crumbly. Very strong umami flavor excellent for soup stocks and sauces. Dried mushrooms sometimes have subtle changes in texture or smell compared to their raw counterparts. A cheap way to process extra production and mushrooms whose quality isn’t sufficient for the fresh market. In Japan the blasé, cheap image of dried mushrooms, as a drab and matter-of-fact part of every grower’s day to day sales, is even stronger. MushWell is a small start-up run by Shinobu Shimizu, who also owns a major enoki growing facility and a company that freezes and process mushrooms for resale. It was the success of his frozen mushroom company that led Mr. Shimizu to look into the dried mushroom industry. MushWell’s epiphany was to eschew simply dehydrating then selling dried mushrooms for cooking-use. Instead, the company worked with an experienced partner in the food processing industry and unveiled a custom, entirely new product: mushroom flakes that can be eaten as is. The mushrooms are sterilized using a unique and patented process that preserves both the flavor and fragrance of mushrooms, while also making them safe to eat without further cooking.

Mr. Shimizu’s thought was “everyday mushrooms.” MushWell as a company took a radically different approach to dried mushrooms: what if eating more mushrooms was as simple as just sprinkling a spoonful of flakes onto your salad, soup, or rice. Rather than the typical dried mushrooms that require rehydration and then cooking, MushWell’s line of mushroom flakes, which is made up of shiitake, shimeji, maitake, enoki mushrooms and one of mixed flakes, are designed for direct consumption. Mr. Shimizu started with the hope that they would be a good product to replace salt and be useful as a nutritious and filling additive for people who don’t eat enough fiber or consume enough nutrients, such as elderly people or people who are dieting. Ten grams of mushroom flakes added to different parts of a meal are the equivalent to eating 100 grams of fresh mushrooms, but without any added hassle. With the same long shelf-life of dried mushrooms, there is no rush to use them, unlike with fresh mushrooms, which spoil in the fridge after a week or two.

MushWell is a great example of business daring. Taking a product everyone is doing in the same way, and revamping it into a brandable, custom-made product that has a unique use and creates a new way to consume mushrooms. Convenience is a powerful marketing tool_emdash_as is versatility, and MushWell’s flakes are a smart product that incorporates both, as they are instant-use and limited only by your imagination. No, seriously. I sat down at the MushWell headquarters to interview Mr. Shimizu, and in the middle of our interview we both ate a light multi-course lunch, testing out the different varieties of flake on each food. I had enoki and maitake flakes on my salad, and shimeji and shiitake flakes on my tomato pasta. As a fan of maitake, I tried it on everything, especially the cream of broccoli soup, and, at the instigation of Mr. Shimizu, even tried maitake flakes on vanilla custard! Maitake was, just as he said it would be, an amazing fit for dessert, particularly vanilla, bringing out the sweetness and distinctness of the flavor and the umami of the eggs all at the same time, with a texture and aftertaste nearly identical to roasted almond flakes. The meal made me realize that mushrooms can even be incorporated into desserts, and suddenly my mind was running wild with all the combinations and all the foods I imagined paired with the mushroom flakes_emdash_croissants, pizza, rocky road ice cream, mashed potatoes, even nachos. The genius of MushWell’s mushroom flakes is that they are a product that can be immediately, with no preparation or planning, be added to any dish, even takeout and pre-processed foods, like a little bottle of umami flavor.

A portable, lightweight product, which you can put in your bag alongside that bottle of hot sauce, to use on the go or at home. The possibilities intrigued me, even as I had initially been a bit underwhelmed with MushWell’s  marketing materials. Aside from a pitch that was a little too heavy in technical nutrition jargon (simplicity is both an art form and a virtue) the package design was hard-to-understand, because each mushroom was represented by a stylized abbreviation, similar to the periodic table. This, admittedly, gave the product a chic, high-tech look, but made it difficult to tell at a glance what each pack contained, especially for elderly consumers. Such flaws though, are common in the product-testing and pre-launch phases of new products, and when we sat down for the interview, Mr. Shimizu showcased a new package design, which was easier to understand and more straightforward, even as he sighed in regret that the initial design, (which was, to its credit, very fashionable and striking), was too difficult to understand. But as the expression goes, “the proof is in the pudding”, which was originally, even more aptly for this example, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” and the pleasant crunchiness (though the flakes do get soft as they absorb some moisture from the food), of the flakes, unassuming smell, and mild flavor all won me over. Without being heavy or overpowering, the flakes were able to bring out the existing flavors of whatever food they were added to; they had a synergistic effect to increase the richness of each thing I tried them with.

Subsequently, Mr. Shimizu and I discussed the possibilities. Mixing the mushroom flakes with spice, even making seasonal variants, like a pumpkin spice maitake flake for autumn use on sweet drinks and desserts, or a garlic salt shiitake flake mix. Launching an entirely new product comes with its share of difficulties, and MushWell has struggled to deal with confusion over what the product is and how to use it, as well as test users who felt the taste was too subtle and didn’t see any value in the nutritional appeal. Mr. Shimizu himself is in the midst of determining marketing strategies and how to build up word of mouth through SNS sources. The same as with growing mushrooms, developing a new mushroom product is only half the challenge; the other half is selling it. MushWell has had some setbacks. A Michelin-starred ramen shop in Tokyo tested it out (something the company hoped to transition into promotion material) only to say the product was too delicious and that it felt like a shortcut interfering with the very time-consuming and particular flavor that the restaurant was trying to create with its craft (similar to a 5-star steakhouse not wanting to use even a delicious steak sauce). But the company has some leads with a few big buyers and hope to slowly expand, working the health and diet food circuits and promoting itself as a good food to bring hiking or camping or to keep around for emergency rations. They already have some feelers from nursing homes looking for nutrient dense food additives. Mr. Shimizu has aims to sell abroad as well, taking an all-of-the-above approach to pitching the new product. MushWell proved to be a good case study looking at creative use of mushrooms, done with stylish branding and a very versatile product line.