Meet Grace & Milan Bronchella of Wonderlands Mushroom

Today we’d like to introduce you to Grace & Milan Bronchella. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Milan grew up in Croatia and during the war had to flee the country to Serbia where his family had to farm and live off the land as all the stores were closed. When he came to the United States at 12 years old he continued to keep an immaculate garden with his family. Grace and Milan met in 2008 and fell in love and are high school sweethearts today.

Milan became very interested in mushroom cultivation when he first discovered mycologist, Paul Stamets. He became inspired by his story and how his turkey tail mushrooms had cured his mother’s breast cancer. It was a rabbit hole from there. Milan purchased every book on mycology, read them cover to cover, and started growing his own blue oyster and lion’s mane mushroom out of his garage.

In the first year of cultivation, nothing was working and everything he tried became contaminated but knew he couldn’t give up hope, he wanted to share this incredible fungus with his family and friends so we could all reap the benefits of this incredible substance. Thankfully the mushroom community is so large and he began learning from youtube videos, where he discovered Mossy Creek Mushrooms in Tennessee.

After watching his videos on replay, Milan was still having contamination! He reached out to Mossy Creek Mushrooms and was given a five-day internship to learn under one of the most successful mushroom farms in the South. When he came back from his five-day trip everything took off, no more contamination, no more suspicion about what could be going wrong, Milan had found his groove.

He began growing so many mushrooms that we wanted to share the incredible health benefits with our community so we hit the ground running, visiting local restaurants and trying to obtain our first clients. Once we had one, we felt like we had made it! Then another and another. At that point, the garage was much too small and we knew we had to expand our growing capabilities.

We found a perfect warehouse and now are operating out of 1600 square feet! Grace’s background is in sales, and restaurants, and also is studying for her MBA. With our combined skills, we decided to quit our day jobs and finally take initiative in building something of our own. Our mushroom farm isn’t just a trend for us, to us, it means so much more. It’s a place where our retired parents can join, we can give our nieces and nephews their first jobs, even our own children one day.

Wonderlands Mushrooms is the future for our family. We are currently selling to restaurants in the downtown Salt Lake City area and are also featured in multiple local markets as well. We are excited to continue growing our company and sharing the deeply beneficial gourmet mushrooms with our community.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Starting a business is never easy. We first had issues with contamination as mentioned previously. The biggest issue we’ve had thus far is client retention. Some of our clients have gone out of business during the brutal summer months for restaurants, or we’ve found that some restaurants just don’t have the budget for gourmet mushrooms.

Another challenge is getting some of the bigger distribution companies or markets to work with us, we’re still trying to make our presence known in the community. There is an obvious advantage to working with local farms like ours, as opposed to transporting food, which costs more for the consumer, in price and nutritional value.

But we will continue knocking on doors and bringing samples, meeting chefs, talking to restaurants, and spending the time to network, and for Grace, this is her favorite part. The incredible people we meet on a daily basis talking about mushrooms are so rewarding. We have also begun to emphasize individual consumption rather than solely relying on restaurant consumption.

Bringing us to another struggle, many people don’t know how to cook with mushrooms. We are going to begin hosting cooking classes at one of our local markets to teach our community how versatile mushrooms are and the amazing ways they can be used in vegan households. Even with the struggles along the way, we see opportunity in every hurdle we encounter.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Wonderlands Mushroom Co.?
What really sets us apart from others is our mentality to work, we don’t stop. We are working evenings, and weekends. Even when we are home we are still working, posting on Instagram, researching restaurants to visit, or on the computer doing our accounting after midnight.

It is a true two-person team Milan does all of the cultivation, and design of our logo or website. Grace is the accountant, sales director, and marketing personnel. Together we are a powerhouse couple with creativity and business education.

What matters most to you? Why?
What matters most to us is sharing gourmet mushrooms with our community, and bringing education to individuals about the power mushrooms have for our health. If society as a whole truly understood the importance mushrooms have on our health, we would all be consuming them every day.

Mushrooms have proven abilities to fight cancer, regulate our metabolisms, treat depression and anxiety, help fight age-related diseases such as dementia, and are packed with antioxidants.. just to name a few. Mushrooms are incredibly underrated and expanding our communities knowledge of the benefits of this incredible fungi is extremely important to us. For a crash course on Fungi, check out Fantastic Fungi on Netflix!

Pricing:

• Oyster Mushrooms – $11.00/ pound
• Lions Mane Mushrooms – $12.00/ pound
• Chestnuts Mushrooms – $12.00/ pound
• Pioppino Mushrooms – $12.00/ pound
• Turkey Tail Mushrooms – $13.00/ pound

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wonderlandsmushrooms.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderlandsmushrooms/