Press

As Back to the Roots spreads from coast to coast, they continue to promote sustainability, healthy communities and green development, inspiring people to grow food at home. Nikhil and Alejandro began their journey growing mushrooms in the dark.  In creating a viable and successful business, they have the opportunity to help bring the issues that matter to them - and some delicious food - to light.

Your Mid-Week Treat... within two weeks, you'll have a pound and a half of oyster mushrooms, ready for stir-frying.

We love seeing kids get excited about growing their own food - we want growing mushrooms through this kit to be such an exciting and inspirational experience that they forever are interested in food, how it grows, and question where the rest of the food they eat is coming from!

Can an urban mushroom company save the world?

Viva la Mushrooms! Well, here we are just nine days after my initial start of the mushroom experiment. Voilà, success! Here are the pearl mushroom payoff shots. Back to the Roots Mushrooms weren't kidding when they said it was simple. AND fast.

One company is having a lot of success with their campaign is Back to the Roots (BTTR). It is using crowdfunding to bring a new product to market.

If we want to increase the number of people who are growing their own food, we need products like this that make the movement palatable to many.

Much like with their mushroom kits, the aquaponic garden offers a way for people to edge back toward growing their own food...

I think this product is a homerun. Two very important aspects make this a great item: first is that the product has a long stable shelf life and secondly the results are predictable to the day. The latter makes this an ideal gift or part of your upcoming mushroom event or dinner... Imagine being able to start the kits prior to your event and-right on time-you have gorgeous centerprieces for each table that can be taken home by guests or cooked up right on the spots!

Shopping for a fun guy? Consider the mushroom garde from Back to the Roots. The grow-your-own kit comes with "soil" made of recycled coffee grouns (the company is on track to save 1 million pounds of caffeinated refuse from landfills this year), and the packaging box doubles as the vase.

In California, two entrepreneurs saw an opportunity in the mounds of coffee grounds thrown out each day by cafes in their own neighborhood. They now run a thriving business based on reusing waste.

The 3-year-old company is now raising money through Kickstarter for another sustainable product that they want to be able to offer to home cooks.

Sometimes, shitake happens. That was the case for Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, who cast aside corporate ambitions to become mushroom farmers—and then to make mushroom farmers of the masses.

There is an unassuming warehouse on an industrial street in Oakland, California that has some surprising contents. Behind the large rolling door are rows of thousands of plastic sacks filled with fungi...

If you're a little paranoid that a cataclysmic climate event is around the corner, you're going to watn to be prepared. Put these items on your wishlist and you can survive whatever is coming.

Give yummy gifts to the food lovers in your life, with just a couple clicks. All of these delicious products are American-made and available by mail order. You might even want to send yourself some!

We loved the idea of raising a bunch of mushrooms right inside your home, and bonus points went to Back to the Roots for making their mushroom soil with recycled coffee grounds...

Sometimes finding all your holiday gifts in big-box stores can leave you feeling a little empty inside, which is why we prefer to buy local products whenever possible!

What's Your Favorite New Product? Mushroom Garden lets users grow up to 1 pound of pearl oyster mushrooms right out of the box...

Our food editors' picks include salty-sweet cookies and an ingredient you can grow yourself. In 10 days, harvest oyster mushrooms for sauteeing (and amaze the kids with the science of spores) with this grow-at-home mushroom kit.

Two Young Entrepreneurs Get Their Hands Dirty With Urban Farming

Back to the Roots is a company that has grown almost as fast as their mushrooms... While the oysters looked delicate, they were quite thick and very meaty in texture. I cooked them simply by tearing them into pieces and slicing the stems. They were fried in a bit of olive oil, a small clove of sliced garlic, salt, and pepper.

Foodie Hub Kick-Starts One West Oakland Neighborhood

Arguably the best strategy is piecing together money from a variety of competitions... Since BTTR was founded in 2009, the company has won roughly $130,000 in more than two dozen different competitions.

Oakland updates its past as food production center

Food and lifestyle expert Sissy Biggers shows off the unique snacks from the 2012 Fancy Food Show in NYC, including pickled figs, pistachio butter and habanero chips.

Follow a few simple directions and in just 10 days, Voila! You will have harvested a quarter-pound of loveley oyster mushrooms to saute and enjoy with your holiday guests. Add them to a stir fry or chicken dish for wonderful flavor.

These Bay-area accidental gardeners have made growing gourmet mushrooms as easy as opening a box of mac 'n' cheese. As a bonus, the mushrooms grow on recycled coffee grounds in a biodegradable box.

A creative twist on the window bix herb garden, this DIY kit includes everything you need to grow 1½ pounds of oyster mushrooms.

Want your own crop of specialty mushrooms? Try an easy-to-use mushroom kit, which lets you grow mushrooms in a nicely contained indoor box.

A vendor at the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim demostrates the Grow Your Own Mushroom Garden product. The company markets oyster mushroom spores packed in a carton of recycled coffee grounds.

Million-Dollar Eco Heroes: producing local fresh food from urban waste has resulted in the re-use of one million pounds of used coffee grounds that otherwise would have decomposed to produce tons of methan gas in the atmosphere.

Homesteanding fathers can harvest... with the Back to the Roots Mushroom Garden, a nifty kit that fits on the kitchen windowsill.

One Man's Waste is Another Man's Mushroom...?

Be on the look out for Back to the Roots job openings on Justmeans!

It's the perfect tool to aid my daughter's understanding of sustainability... The kids LOVED watering them and how they taste.

Grow mushrooms indoors: Didn't get around to planting a garden? It's not too late with easy-to-use mushroom kits. 

What do you get when you combine the enthusiasm and drive of youth with an awesome idea that uses recycled materials in a totally sustainable way? Gourmet mushrooms grown in coffee grounds that taste absolutely delicious, of course! (pg 19)

In this unmarked, nondescript West Oakland warehouse, the roasty-toasty aroma of coffee percolates throughout every corner. Thanks to the gruption, determintation and ingenuity of two youthful University of California at Berkeley graduates, this is the place where moutains of discarded coffee grounds from morning lattes and evening espressors are resurrected into a new life with a socially conscious mission.

If you don't trust yourself to forage wild mushrooms, cultivate your own. Grow pearl oyster mushrooms in this little brown box and harvest for delicious meals. November 2011 issue, pg 73

Inspired by the idea of producing fresh local food from what was an urban waste stream, Back to the Roots has since grown to create the Grow-Your-Own Mushroom kit...

Curious what a just-plucked oyster mushroom tastes like? It takes only 10 days to grow your own... fungi flourish. No they won't have a coffee aftertaste-just a fresh, woodsy flavor and chewy texture that pair perfectly with pasta.

But the show stopper for everyone was Back-To-The-Root – a grow-it-yourself garden of pearl oyster mushrooms.

10 Generation Next entrepreneurs to watch

MillerCoors CEO Leo Kiely (center) congratulates Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez of BTTR Ventures on winning $50,000 grant for the best business plan of the 2010 MUES competition.

All you do is mist the prepackaged boxed garden planted in used coffee grounds rather than soil, and before you know it, you're harvesting multiple crops of fresh, organic mushrooms.

Back to the Roots founders Nikhil Arora and Alex Velez make an appearance on NBC's Last Call with Carson Daly!

Back to the Roots 1 year in business recap by the BBC since the BBC/Newsweek World Challenge.

If it is possible for a fungus growing operations to be fancy, this is it.

America's Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs 2010.

Berkeley Grads Break into Green Business with 'Shrooms-in-a-Box.

The mushrooms that form fairy rings in the frong lawn are a magical sight, but we dare not toss them in a stir-fry unless we're certain they're safe to eat. You can produce gourmet fungi with the Grow Your Own Mushroom Garden kit... which uses recycled coffee grounds for "soil."

See Back to the Roots featured on Univision!

Back to the Roots represents a larger message that goes beyond food sourcing.

Just more than a year later, BTTR mushrooms and growing kits are featured on the shelves of 30 Whole Foods Market Inc. stores in Northern California and a wider rollout is in the works.

US coffee recycling project, BTTR Ventures, has been selected as a finalist in World Challenge 09

Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25

At the smallest level, there were Arora and Velez, who recycle the rich, dark coffee grounds in place of wood shavings and sawdust used by some mushroom growers.

They were savory, tender, with a smooth texture. No coffee taste was detected.

"the mushroom kits are a vehicle to realizing Back to the Root's larger vision: a hands-on product that creates jobs, gets people to connect with food by growing their own and brings together the community."

Why Good Causes Need Great Design

An easy-to-grow mushroom garden might just give your tomatoes a run for their money. It's the good kind of fungus among us. 

Turning Waste into Wages: Using Recycled Coffee Grounds to Grow Gourmet Mushrooms.

Listen to Dining Around with Gene Burns interview with Back to the Roots (July 2, hour 3)!

When two good-looking 23-year-olds give up careers in investment banking to grow mushrooms, oysters and shiitakes aren't the first fungi one imagines.

Launched on Earth Day last year, the company has won a steady stream of awards for its innovative, socially conscious, green business.

Designed to sit discreetly on your counter – until it starts to bloom with giant pinheads, of course-

 Financial Times- Germany

Watch out for... Nikhil Arora of Back to the Roots, CNN's Money's list of 10 young entrepreneurs to watch out for.

Back to the Roots has transformed into a unique company focused on bringing sustainable grow-at-home products into households across the country.

Hey Kids, Grow Your Own! (Mushroom Garden, That Is)