April’s High Street Hero: Forest Fungi
Forest Fungi is one of the rare places in Devon where gourmet mushrooms are organically grown and readily available to buy and eat. The owner Scott Marshall along with his fiancé Becca Bond have carved out their own little niche in Dawlish Warren’s seaside town, thriving all year round as a culinary hotspot for all fungi enthusiasts. Scott shares his experiences of how he opened Forest Fungi out of an abandoned greenhouse, how he’s found success in the various arms of his business, and the challenges he’s faced maintaining the farm shop. How have your interests in wild mushrooms led you to opening Forest Fungi in 2013? My interest started with the medicinal side of fungi. I was starting to get interested in foraging wild mushrooms as there was a lot of beautiful woodland where we are near Haldon and Exeter. Then I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had a very rough time with chemo. Through further research, I found out shiitake mushrooms, one of our most popular mushrooms we grow, were a great way of rebuilding immunity. However, the only place you could really get them was from a supermarket. It happened that someone had grown shiitake at