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Garber on Business: B.C. Company's Business Mushrooms at SIAL

Guest post by: Anne Garber

Article Overview: A B.C entrepreneur visits world-famed SIAL Food Show in Paris and finds a market -- a BIG market -- for his discards!

Garber on Business: B.C. Company's Business Mushrooms at SIAL

David Lee Kwen Seeks the prized matsutake, which can fetch up to $110 US per kilogram -- but he also collects shiitake, enoki and chanterelles.

Most people go to Whistler to ski. David Lee Kwen goes there looking for wild mushrooms.

Specifically, he seeks the wily matsutake, prized by the Japanese as an aphrodisiac, selling in Tokyo for up to $110 US a kilo.

At that price, it has to be grade-one quality, with a long stem and a closed bud, resembling -- at least to some eyes -- a certain male appendage. Five lesser matsutake grades command correspondingly lower prices, and, depending on supply and demand, the price can drop to $15 a kilo.

But since October, 2002, when Kwen exhibited for the first time at one of the world's biggest food trade fairs in Paris, SIAL, demand for his product has, well, mushroomed.

"It's too bad supply is so low, or I could retired this year, I guess." He jokes, noting that British Columbia's long hot summer was not overly generous to inventory.

"It's like the stock market," he says. "Every day it changes."

Mostly the graph is heading up.

Your mutual funds may be taking a pounding, but Kwen's Richmond-based Misty Mountain Industries Ltd. is expected to gross $3 million this year.

"It's a growing business, " he notes. "We have come a long way since we opened in 1997."

Kwen received $4,000 in federal funding from the Department of Agriculture to staff a booth at the Canadian pavilion in Paris for the mega-food-show SIAL, and spent $10,000 of his own money. It was a good investment, he says.

"I decided it was time to open up new markets," he confided to me on opening day.

"We already export to Europe, but we want to expand our customer base. I can make some good contacts with other companies. I also want to find new ways to sell B.C. mushrooms, and if I can do that, I will go home very satisfied."

Five days later as the show was winding down, he said: "I discovered a very big market in Germany for chanterelle mushrooms in brine. Basically, German buyers will take any amount of brined chanterelles I can supply -- they buy by the container-full."

Vancouver-based restaurant marketing consultant Cate Simpson confirms there is a "huge niche" for specialist food producers who able to provide "consistent and reliable supply."

She said Misty Mountain sells to Rocky Mountaineer Railtours which features wild mushroom soup on the menu of its popular tourist train.

"If you are a restaurant chef, you can shop every day if necessary buying small amounts here and there," Simpson said. " but if you're cooking for 700 to 900 people and you need exotic products to work with, you can't jump off the train in Kamloops and go shopping. You can't even write your menu unless you have a consistent supplier."

Misty Mountain's portfolio includes most of the exotic varieties beloved of chefs and bon vivants worldwide, but commercially unavailable here until recently.

He has enoke, oyster, cremini, and portobello' he has shiitake (which grows wild on rotted oak logs, but can be commercially grown on oak sawdust bales.)

He has chanterelle (both black and yellowfoot), Black trumpet, cauliflower and lobster (not actually a mushroom, but a parasitic fungus)' he has morel and porcini and hedgehog (which has little spines under its cap and a downy stem.)

While most of his suppliers are right here in BC -- notably the Queen Charlotte Islands, around Terrace and on Vancouver Island -- suppliers from the Yukon to the Mexican border line up to do business with him.

"The world is our oyster now," He says. "Mushrooms grow everywhere. All you have to do is pick them."

He exports not only to Japan -- and soon Hong Kong -- but to Switzerland, France, Holland and Germany where he will go next year to attend the world's biggest food fair in Cologne. "Germany is mushroom country," he says, relishing the opportunity to compete in the big league.

But while business is booming, so is international competition from China, Korea, Japan and recently Turkey. He is currently looking for joint venture partners.

Kwen, whose parents emigrated to Canada from Trinidad & Tobago in 1969 and settled in Vancouver, says he has always had a passion for mushrooms. He received a degree in cell biology from UBC and then took a food processing course at BCIT. However, he failed in his first attempt to sell wild mushrooms. "It was an idea before its time," he says.

After working for a while in a lab in Aldergrove testing compost for Money's Mushrooms, Kwen tried again, this time with financing from a silent partner. Apparently, the timing was better.

He personally checks out new sources of supply to make sure the pickers know what they are doing. Mushrooms are air-freighted to Richmond where they are rechecked and graded for quality before being sold to wholesalers. The product line includes fresh, dried and frozen mushrooms, also wild fiddlehead greens, wild berries and sea asparagus.

"We have a large customer base, especially for wild mushrooms," Kwen says. "We can sell as much as we can get."

His personal favourite is the porcini, which he says has the texture of filet mignon and a wonderful nutty flavour.

He saut�s porcinis until tender in olive oil, adding a little balsamic vinegar, sugar and soy sauce. Then he cools them in the fridge, cuts them into pieces, and serves as an appetizer.

"This mushroom has a nice, earthy smell," he adds. "It makes you feel you are outside in the woods."

Contact info: Entrepreneur David Lee Kwen is the owner of Misty Mountain Specialties -- 604-273-8299; fax: 604-273-8124

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Article Tags: british columbia, c mushrooms, chanterelles, customer base, david lee, department of agriculture, enoki, food show, food trade, industries ltd, kwen, long hot summer, male appendage, matsutake, misty mountain, opening day, sial, stock market, trade fairs, wild mushrooms



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