BTTR Ventures (UC Berkeley)

BTTR stands for “Back to the Roots”, a phrase that encompasses their business model of transforming one of the largest urban waste streams in America – the tons of coffee ground waste generated daily – into a highly-demanded, nutritious, and valuable food product: gourmet mushrooms. Not only has this initiative created a healthy food source, but it has also provided urban jobs, prevented thousands of tons of valuable substrate from being dumped into landfills, and donated a substantial amount of its mushrooms, soil amendment and kits back into the communities from which the coffee ground waste originated. Scaling up efforts for BTTR will go towards their sustainable business for a Whole Foods national rollout of mushroom kits, efforts to diversify their raw material (soy and barley), invest in an industrial
autoclave, hire more employees, and to overall push the urban gardening and growing your own food movement.