Found Treasure: Santa Cruz Fungi Popsicles

September 15, 2023 – This startup operation’s almost too cool to be true, which feels appropriate for a new popsicle company, and proves timely during one of the hottest months of the year.

Note its flavors—Key Lion’s Mane Pie, Cordy Creamsicle and Tremella Lematcha among them. 

Scope its fundamentals: health-focused and organic ingredients only, with compostable packaging and no GMOs, dairy, gluten or preservatives. 

Soak up its sweet backstory (a personal health/COVID restart for a young Boulder Creek couple), the cute props (mushroom umbrella and overalls), the eco ambitions (mushroom healing kits for bees and mushroom classes for the masses).

Yes, Santa Cruz Fungi has much to recommend it. 

Matisse Selman, who owns and manages the Extra Kitchen startup incubator where SCF crafts its goods, puts a nice bow on it.

“I have such a good feeling about what they’re doing, in part because it’s so Santa Cruz,” he says. “They’re knowledgeable about what they’re creating, they’re biohacking things like lion’s mane that regrows brain cells, and it’s fun—who doesn’t love popsicles?”

Truth be told, S.C. Fungi had me at mushrooms. 

I’m a card-carrying believer in mycelium’s power to reimagine health challenges to mental, gut, environmental and umami situations. 

Then I tried the Verve Chagaccino on the cliffs of Pleasure Point and was impressed by the creaminess of the cashew-coconut milk base and the approachable humility of Paul himself. 

So I was all in with Santa Cruz Fungi mushroom popsicles before I heard how it came to be.

The TLDR version goes like this: Paul Lazazzera was burnt out thanks to the demands of teaching while navigating autoimmune/GI issues. 

He was hit with an inflection point courtesy of COVID and the wildfires that razed the Boulder Creek hills where they live. 

His wife Katie endorsed his plan to go into something that better fit his passions and a healthier lifestyle. 

“Let’s do it,” she remembers thinking. “Why not? He was—and is—super-passionate about it. ‘What do we need?’ ‘What do we do?’ ‘What’s your plan?’”

He started growing mushrooms: oyster varieties, reishi, pioppino, chestnut, lion’s mane. 

He got into making gluten- and dairy-free mousses with them, then freezing said mousses so they wouldn’t expire so soon. 

“From the first time we froze them, one of those light bulbs went off,” he says. 

In other words, there’s so much to like here it inspires a search for a flaw. 

The closest I could come was the $7 price tag for each stick. 

But that holds up well in the face of $6 for a venti pumpkin spice frappuccino at Starbucks, especially with all the benefits of the helpful mushroom boosts and local sourcing with the likes of Monte Verde Farm, Cliff McFarlin Family Farms and Sea to Sky Farm.

Besides, if you need another something to adore, they make turkey tail mushroom-flavored pupscicles, because dogs love them and the T-tails have suggested cancer-preventive properties for canines. 

Dogs like their three rescue chihuahua mutts—Minnow (the dachshund blend), Fuzz (the Pomeranian mix) and Penny (the wirehair terrier combo)—like them so much the Lazazzeras have to be strategic when it’s treat time.

“It’s a little bit of a problem,” Paul says. “We have to separate them when we give them popsicles.”

While SC Fungi is working on retail partners (which will require some scaling of their handmade operation), the partner pair has a strong roster of pop-ups that introduce them to larger audiences. 

Coming up: Verve Coffee Palo Alto, 11am-5pm Sept. 16; Midtown Block Party Santa Cruz, a certified Found Treasure, 5-9pm Sept. 22 and 29; and Aptos New Leaf, 2-6pm Sept. 30.  

They also have a new seasonal flavor, landing Sept. 22, in porcini pumpkin pie, a savvy soul’s antidote to the satanic creations that are pumpkin-spiced frappuccinos. 

On top of that, SCF also hosts a mushroom class at Mountain Feed in Ben Lomond come Oct. 7. 

The class illuminates anything guests would want to know around growing oyster mushrooms in a bucket, which show out within 10-14 days of setting it up. 

“It’s aimed at making it super easy,” Paul says. “The best part is that you see the fruits of your labor quickly.”

Peeks into SCF’s specific fungi future keep coming. 

For one, it has all the materials to eventually introduce DIY save-the-bees mushroom kits crafted around an extraction of two mushrooms—tinder conk and reishi—to protect the pollinators from deformed wing virus and Lake Sinai virus. 

On top of that, Katie just gave up her mainstream career to focus on the mushrooming business full time.

“It’s important to me, in making this big leap to work for myself—which is kind of scary—to have what we do align with our values, from environment-friendliness to ingredients,” she says. “We’re not going to make money off something that’s not good for people.”

She adds that she feels most energized in this new mission making creative decisions without higher-up oversight and with live-action interactions in the field.

“It is so fun to get real-time feedback at pop-ups,” she says. “To see people who are so curious, and so open, and how stoked they are when they try it.” 

In case you needed additional reasons to dig what Santa Cruz Fungi is doing. 

SC Fungi completes an intriguing trifecta for greater Santa Cruz, which can claim the coolest retail mushroom store (and Found Treasure-grade grilled cheese) in Far West Fungi, and the most clever mushroom lab/farm in MycoSci. 

More at SCF’s Instagram page and scfungi.com.