Lindsay Goodstein and Charlotte Cruze believe mushrooms are misunderstood. Their goal with their new chocolate company? To educate consumers about what’s edible, adaptogenic and psychedelic.
Mushrooms are having their moment and no one realizes that more – or has spent more time analyzing them – than Goodstein and Cruze, the founder and co-founder behind California-based Alice Mushrooms. They spent two years formulating their first chocolates: Brainstorm (for sharp focus) and Nightcap (for deep sleep). The two debuted in Oct. 2022.
Alice, they explain on their website, is designed to walk you through the rabbit hole and “indulge your inquisitiveness and your hunger.”
That’s because their chocolates incorporate organic, fruiting-body mushrooms with nootropics and adaptogens to deliver instant gratification, such as phosphatidylserine (a cabbage-derived fatty acid for mental clarity) and guarana (the Brazilian superfood berry for energy).
Long story short: These safe, effective consumables – which are kosher, gluten-free, vegan and dairy-free – pair long-term benefits with immediate boosts to cognitive functioning. And the two have the science to back it up.
Goodstein, for example, left a successful career in pharmaceuticals to pursue a business of more natural solutions to common health struggles, while Cruze studied food at NYU, learning about the flaws within our food systems. Through Alice, they’ve joined forces to combat inadequate access to high quality foods, a lack of transparency about what’s in our food and how it’s made, and an industry that prioritizes profit above everything else.
They are passionate about using the highest quality, purest ingredients in their products, including artisanal chocolate that’s organic and vegan. What’s more, they source potent organic mushrooms from a woman-owned conglomerate of farms who obsessively lab test everything they use for purity and safety.
Reishi, the mother mushroom for stress-relief, is featured in Nightcap, while Brainstorm contains Lion’s Mane, the mushroom of the mind and Cordyceps for energy and stamina. By pushing back against the idea of having the lowest bottom line possible, Goodstein and Cruze want to support their suppliers’ business, hoping that by doing this their suppliers will grow and thrive so that they can produce at scale and lower their prices. Their hope is to inspire better business practices across the food industry, as well as making mushrooms accessible to everyone.
One of their main goals is to provide education about why and how their mushrooms work, so customers can understand exactly what they are putting into their bodies, empowering them to explore the vast world of mushrooms. Through their education efforts they want to remove the long-standing stigma around mushrooms and change the cultural perception, helping people understand that mushrooms have a long history of ceremonial usage in indigenous communities.
Although Brainstorm and Nightcap are made with functional mushrooms, they believe in the potential for psilocybin mushrooms to help heal trauma, so Alice donates a portion of their profits to the Hope Project, an organization that connects female veterans to psychedelic healing journeys. Alice is also a founding member of the Microdosing Collective, which advocates for a future in which these medicines are accessible to everyone that needs them, and once regulations allow, they intend to provide the first legal psilocybin mushroom chocolate.
The two are also big into developing other products so stay tuned, or as they say on their website, stay “curiouser and curiouser.”
AUTHOR
Ashley is a writer and teacher living in Florida. When she isn't reading or writing, you can find her in the kitchen experimenting with a new recipe, on the yoga mat in downward dog, or lost out in nature with her family.
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