Side StrEATS is a multimedia series by Long Beach Post staff that aims to highlight unique food businesses across the city. To contact us, email Visuals Editor Thomas R. Cordova at [email protected].
Justin Nguyen, an assistant principal at a Compton charter school, was chaperoning a field trip for his students to a Northern California farm when he understood the importance of communities building a connection to the foods they consume.
For many of the students, visiting the farm was their first experience leaving Compton, Nguyen said. There, the kids learned to compost, take care of livestock and stayed in yurts while getting to forget, just for a moment, the reality of their lives back home.
“When we get home, a lot of that inspiration kind of leaves them because, you know, they look around and nothing looks like the farm anymore,” Nguyen said. “They’re back in their real-world environment, which you know, they’re not worried about their food, they’re worried about safety, money, a roof over their heads, staying out of dangerous situations.”
While at the farm, one student’s actions, in particular, showed Nguyen that life could be different for not only his students but for millions of underprivileged people in California who don’t have access to sustainable food sources.
He remembers a student from a neighborhood in Athens Park, one of the tougher Los Angeles areas with several associated gangs, who suddenly broke character the morning after getting to the farm. While every other student was getting breakfast, he asked Nguyen to accompany him to the garden because he wanted to pick flowers to put in his tea.
“That kind of sparked something in me like, ‘Oh yeah, kids are connected to their food, when they can be, after these other needs are met,'” Nguyen said.
Now, Nguyen carries that connection through his and his wife’s side hustle as the owners of Long Beach Mushrooms, a local, urban farm that specializes in gourmet mushrooms.
“I don’t think the farm starts without being at this school,” Nguyen said.
But Nguyen’s journey to becoming a mushroom farmer goes all the way back to his grandparents who moved from Vietnam to the United States. He recalls them using their backyard to grow food, including fruits such as watermelons.
Although he was embarrassed about it for some time as a kid, he soon realized there was a bond between food and the people who grow it.
After moving from Santa Ana to Long Beach where his wife Mia lived, Nguyen experienced his first farmer’s market where he questioned why there were so many fruits and vegetables that weren’t available at any local grocery store. In growing his own food, he understood that it wasn’t convenient for farmers to mass-produce certain foods that don’t ship well or have short shelf lives, such as gourmet mushrooms.
“If you’re growing a gold oyster mushroom and you try to package it, it’s gonna crumble, it’s gonna break apart,” Nguyen said. “And then your finished product is going to be a bunch of crumbled bits of mushroom.”
Instead, Nguyen saw the value of the farmer’s markets, which allowed him to share his delicacies with several communities that otherwise would never experience the variety of mushrooms life has to offer.
His dreams of farming mushrooms started during the pandemic when Nguyen would grow the vegetable out in his garage. Neighbors were already familiar with Nguyen’s front yard, which boasts raised beds for cultivating their own food, along with a small fruit orchard. After growing his first batch of mushrooms, Nguyen thought they were so delicious that he needed to share them with family and friends.
Eventually, neighbors were coming to Nguyen’s house, asking where they could buy the gourmet mushrooms. The product even became so popular, that demand for his mushrooms grew and top chefs in the city, such as the late Janice Dig Cabaysa, were seeking his product.
At the start, Nguyen just wanted to grow 50 pounds of mushrooms each week, enough to sell at one farmer’s market. But he had to move out of his garage and into a bigger space now that his operation consists of several teams selling 250 pounds of mushrooms every week at six farmer’s markets across Los Angeles County.
“I love mushrooms because it forces us to eat locally and I think that’s how you’re supposed to eat anyways,” said Nguyen, who is aiming to double his mushroom growth soon. “There’s some spiritual aspect about eating stuff where it’s grown.”
While working as the assistant principal at the Compton charter school during the day, Nguyen continues to inspire growth, sharing with students all the different careers they can one day pursue outside of what they see in their regular lives.
Nguyen recalls asking his students what they thought a farmer looked like. They mentioned tractors, cornfields and overalls, he said.
“What would you think if I told you, I wear Crocs, I listen to Vince Staples, and I work in air conditioning, and I’m a farmer,” Nguyen asked them.
He showed them the numbers and they were taken aback by how much money a farmer could make by providing a product that was in high demand. Nguyen said he hopes to inspire them to become entrepreneurs and encourage more urban agriculture, offering one student a spot this summer for a paid internship working with Long Beach Mushrooms.
“It is a super rewarding job,” Nguyen said about working as an assistant principal. “It’s a place that it’s allowed me to, legitimately say I’ve tried with every student. It might not work all the time, but I can sit there and say I tried.”
