Osotrari Washington serves Kerrion King a hot chocolate at BeShroomed. Photo: Nick Hagen
When James ‘Osotrari’ Washington opened BeShroomed Farms on his hometown’s east side, some folks close to his business said mushroom coffee was an idea for the suburbs.
But the born-and-bred Detroiter with over 25 years of mushroom experience was determined to bring his love for all things fungi and his passion for sharing the health benefits of medicinal or “functional mushrooms” to his neighbors and fellow residents.
“There’s never been anything like this in Detroit,” Washington says about his indoor farm, cafe, and product manufacturing space. “So if I have an original template, instead of following somebody else, like opening up a Coney Island or something like that, why not do my original thing? I’ve always been under the impression that [in Detroit] we should have nice things.”
Two and a half years after opening on Harper Avenue in East English Village, BeShroomed is expanding its offerings and infrastructure to meet its customers’ demands. The small business has moved its indoor farm to a nearby location to create space for increased product packaging and fresh-food preparation at its cafe.
Washington is also preparing to open a second location in Jackson, MI, in partnership with friend Clarence Love, a former NFL safety living in Atlanta who played ball at Jackson High School and on the Jackson Citizen Patriot Dream Team. The new space will offer more seating and live jazz and spoken-word nights, but will maintain the same focus on educating and exciting folks about functional mushroom coffee and products, and on hiring from the local community, says Washington. The business’s farming enterprise will remain in Detroit.
At his Detroit cafe, Washington focuses on providing his customers with those “nice things,” mainly mushroom-infused coffee, hot chocolate, tea, and cold brew, along with mushroom powder capsules, fresh fruit bodies for cooking, and mushroom grow kits. Each feature one or a blend of the shrooms Washington refers to as “The Trinity”: lion’s mane, turkey tail, and reishi.
Mushroom coffee for sale. Photo: Nick Hage
Mushroom supplements on sale. Photo: Nick Hagen
The cafe also sells mushroom-infused baked goods and handmade chocolates, and will soon have mushroom gummies and bottled hot sauce. Recently, it began offering a hot breakfast menu including French toast sticks and truffle hash browns. A lunch expansion is in the works, with options such as lion’s mane steaks, King Oyster chicken fingers, truffle fries, and more.
Currently, Washington ships his proprietary Trinity Mushroom Coffee to customers across the country, and he envisions his product line expanding to reach grocery shelves and office break rooms. He’s in talks with a growing commercial customer base interested in stocking his mushroom beverages in Keurig form, he says, and plans to make K-Cups available soon.
Washington pours mushroom coffee. Photo Nick Hagen
Mushroom popularity takes good soil, potent spores, and customer education
BeShroomed Farms is part of a rapidly growing market that highlights the health benefits of medicinal mushrooms and creates functional products that tap into those benefits. What was considered a niche market even a handful of years ago is becoming more mainstream, as across the country nutritionists, registered dietitians, and mycologists like Washington uphold certain mushrooms’ ability to boost the immune system and reduce stress (reishi), fight cancer and promote gut health (turkey tail), and support brain health and focus (lion’s mane).
“We have a lot of different species of mushrooms we don’t even know how powerful they are medicinally yet, and what they treat,” Washington says. “There’s a lot of research still being done. I’m in meetings every month with the National Institute of Health, and there’s always a scientist or medical doctor lecturing—case studies and information being tossed back and forth. I’m on the cusp of what’s happening, as far as how the government is taking this seriously.”
In Detroit, mushroom businesses are slowly populating. During the pandemic, husband-and-wife team Wendy and Dominique Da’Cruz launched the Mushroom Angel Company to bring healthier eating to their family and others. Today, the small-batch company operates out of a 1,800-square-foot Eastern Market food production facility, creating mushroom-first functional foods highlighting gourmet mushrooms like portobello.
In Midtown, The Mushroom Hub is an everything mushroom and truffle boutique specializing in cultivated & ethically foraged fungi, that sells fresh gourmet and functional mushrooms, prepackaged foods, and wellness items. The health food store, opened in 2022 by mushroom farmer Denis Vidma, is a second location of the Windsor-based company and farm.
LEFT: BeShroomed is becoming a favorite stop for Eastside neighbors.
RIGHT: A reishi mushroom. Photos: Nick Hagen
Washington says BeShroomed can typically produce the quantity of functional, edible, and gourmet mushrooms it requires. Still, if the demand gets on top of him, he supplements locally, sourcing from The Mushroom Hub or other farmers he knows personally who share his ethical growing standards: all organic, no chemicals.
There’s still a lot of stigma and confusion around mushrooms due to the psychedelic properties of some varieties, and the fact that some unlicensed establishments are offering those to the public, he says. Education about medicinal mushrooms remains key to growth in popularity.
Customer relationships grow knowledge of the health benefits of mushrooms
One-on-one interactions with his customers and word-of-mouth have been the backbone of BeShroomed’s business growth over the last two and a half years.
Last spring, summer, and fall, he held mushroom foraging and identification classes to show enthusiasts how to find medicinal mushrooms locally in the wild, and has been building a waitlist of folks interested in mushroom grow classes, but is looking for a larger space to host. To reach folks virtually, he’s been working with a marketing company to create a series of educational videos about BeShroomed, which he shares on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Washington’s vision for mushrooms as part of Detroiters’ everyday wellness routine also includes the challenge of producing high-quality, handmade, tasty products people will come back for again and again.
“In Detroit, things can be functionally good for you, but if it doesn’t taste good, nobody here is rocking with it,” he says. “So I worked hard on the products and made sure they actually tasted good to appease Detroiters. I know if you can pass their taste test, you got everybody else.”
Kerrion King, a Beshroomed customer who lives in Eastpointe, says she was initially skeptical of mushroom products but curious to learn more and eager to support a local Black-owned business in the city. A friend and Detroit small business owner brought her to the cafe for her first visit. Today, the shop’s Trinity coffee is her go-to several times a week, and she says the shop’s dark chocolate bars are “literally a 10 out of 10.”
Kerrion King is now a regular customer at BeShroomed, where she stops several times a week; Owner Osotrari Washington is behind the counter. Photo: Nick Hagen
But on that first visit, she wasn’t so sure. King had concerns about consuming mushroom coffee and had lots of questions for Washington, who says that’s a typical interaction he has daily. Helping people understand the difference between mind-altering “magic” mushrooms and medicinal ones that are healthy and safe for all ages is another challenge to his business.
“I was like, ‘Is it going to make me hallucinate? Or am I going to be high?’ Because I’m only used to hearing the negative outcomes of consuming mushroom products,” says Kiing. “I literally had so many questions that [Washington] was able to answer. He explained about each mushroom in the coffee and its different health benefits. [And] when my physical body, when I saw the benefits of it, I was like, Oh, yeah, I’m gonna be back, and I’ll be back consistently.”
A caregiver and med passer at an independent living facility, King is studying to be a nurse. She says the Trinity blend coffee is key to her long study nights, as it clears her mind and energizes her without making her feel anxious or jittery, unlike other caffeinated coffees she’s tried.
“It literally makes me tune in to whatever I’m doing—work, school, or homework—I’ll come up there and sit for a few hours and do my schoolwork. How it affects my cognitive ability, my focus, I definitely can tell the difference.”
Washington says he hears testimonials like this every day— parents who say their child is having an easier time sitting and focusing at school on the mornings when they’ve stopped in for the lion’s mane hot chocolate; professional people sharing about the clarity they feel and their productivity after drinking the coffee; and people whose doctors recommend them get on lion’s mane because they have had a recent stroke, seizure, or brain injury. Some customers, mainly males, he says, have shared that their bellies are flattening and that bowel movements are improving with turkey tail supplements.
Washington behind the coumter at BeShroomed. Photo: Nick Hagen
“I hear it all because this is a no judgment zone,” he says. “As adults, a lot of people have things that plague them, and not talking about it ain’t fixing it. Some of us have to be mature so we can point each other in the right direction.”
Unity on the block builds among business owners
Talking with Washington, it’s easy to see he enjoys interacting with people and doesn’t mind answering the same questions about mushrooms over and over again. His energy abounds.
During his time on Harper, that energy and love for meeting new people have been key to fostering unity on the corridor. When he set up shop, he noticed how active the corridor from Cadieux to Whittier is, with many operating businesses and very few abandoned buildings. Yet, he says, everyone was functioning in a silo with no solidarity.
Just recently, Washington, along with a few other longtime business owners on the block, formed the Harper Business Association.
“I’ve been trying to wrangle all the businesses together, stop the individual rat race, you know, combine our wheels so that we can clean up the area,” he says.
Kerrion King unwraps some mushroom chocolate. Photo: Nick Hagen
Kerrion King is a regular at BeShroomed in Detroit. Photo: Nick Hagen
In January 2025, BeShroomed suffered a break-in that caused thousands of dollars in damage and forced Washington to temporarily close its doors. The community responded by raising $3,000 in support through the business’s GoFundMe page. “It’s been a battle getting Harper going, but I’m for the battle because I don’t live in the suburbs, far away,” he says. “I live here. I support here. This is also my neighborhood.”
Delroy Thomas, owner of First Place Lounge, who has worked alongside Washington to form the association, has been a business owner on Harper Avenue since 2011. Throughout the years, he’s collaborated with the East English Village Neighborhood Association, the 5th Precinct, and the Detroit City Council to help make the corridor a safe and connected community for its elders, young people, and businesses. He’s excited by Washington’s youth and shared vision, and says the association is focusing on cleaning up and uniting the corridor from the United States Postal Office east of Cadieux to Whittier Avenue.
“We also talk about, as the opportunity comes, to clean up Harper all the way to downtown. That’s what our vision is,” Thomas says. “But right now, we have to focus on a block first. I think what Or [Washington] is doing is fantastic. What he has brought to the table is that younger energy. And he took it on and said, “Okay, it’s time for us to start the association.” I said, ‘You take the baton, and I’m right behind you.’”
Every business owner, from the barbershop to the grocery store, is a member of the association, Washington says. He’s excited to see what will happen when they are all working and standing together. Each has something to offer the local community. And it’s the community that keeps him going.
“I like talking to people, meeting all the people that come in in the mornings. They enjoy coming to pick up the product, but they also come in to see you, too,” he says. “The fire department folks in the morning, the city workers, the plant workers, I enjoy them. They count on you to get their days going, and we’re going to be here.”
Resilient Neighborhoods is a reporting and engagement series examining how Detroit residents and community development organizations work together to strengthen local neighborhoods. It’s made possible with funding from The Kresge Foundation.
