⌖ Today's pit board Golden Oyster 4 lb fresh $7.58 donated Reishi 3 lb fresh Shiitake 2 lb fresh $0.24 donated Nameko 2 lb fresh $1.65 donated Pink Oyster 1 lb fresh $3.78 donated Turkey Tail 1 lb fresh Lion's Mane between harvests $18.78 donated Lion's Mane between harvests $18.78 donated Blue Oyster between harvests $14.13 donated Chestnut between harvests $6.96 donated Elm Oyster between harvests $5.70 donated Pink Oyster between harvests $3.78 donated Pink Oyster between harvests $3.78 donated Pink Oyster between harvests $3.78 donated Snow Oyster between harvests $2.11 donated Italian Oyster between harvests $1.10 donated Pioppino between harvests $0.30 donated Gurnee, IL · Naturally Grown ⌖ Today's pit board Golden Oyster 4 lb fresh $7.58 donated Reishi 3 lb fresh Shiitake 2 lb fresh $0.24 donated Nameko 2 lb fresh $1.65 donated Pink Oyster 1 lb fresh $3.78 donated Turkey Tail 1 lb fresh Lion's Mane between harvests $18.78 donated Lion's Mane between harvests $18.78 donated Blue Oyster between harvests $14.13 donated Chestnut between harvests $6.96 donated Elm Oyster between harvests $5.70 donated Pink Oyster between harvests $3.78 donated Pink Oyster between harvests $3.78 donated Pink Oyster between harvests $3.78 donated Snow Oyster between harvests $2.11 donated Italian Oyster between harvests $1.10 donated Pioppino between harvests $0.30 donated Gurnee, IL · Naturally Grown

An investment in sustainable food

Local food, accountable food.

MotorSpores began with a simple goal: build sustainable local food sources while giving back to our community. We've pledged 10% of every sale to selected charities improving lives across Lake and Cook County, IL. Partnering with these organizations ensures real support reaches the people who need it most. When you order from MotorSpores, you're getting the freshest culinary and functional mushrooms delivered to your door, and making a difference close to home.

Pink oyster mushroom fruiting from a substrate block, with the MotorSpores nameplate at the base.
Pink oyster, mid-flush. Pleurotus djamor.

"We want to be that motor, a driving force for individual well-being, powered by community."

The Facility

Inside the farm.

Our 1,700 sq. ft. facility houses multiple AI-controlled rooms supporting every stage of mushroom growth. With a dedicated on-site kitchen, we package mushrooms fresh within minutes of harvest, or freeze-dry and dehydrate them to preserve their full nutritional and compound potential. Dehydrated mushrooms are used for culinary applications, while freeze-dried mushrooms become the base for our powders and tinctures, blended with botanicals chosen to enhance each mushroom's natural benefits. MotorSpores follows strict quality and sterilization standards to ensure our products and facility meet the highest standards at every step.

Inoculation room. Stainless workbench stacked with substrate blocks and grain-spawn carts.
Inoculation room. Every batch begins here. Grain spawn mixed into sterile substrate, sealed, dated.
Industrial vertical autoclave alongside a Harvest Right freeze dryer in a clean room.
Sterilization + preservation. A 200-liter autoclave for in-house grain and substrate sterilization. On the right, our freeze dryer to retain the maximum potency in our tinctures and powders.
Wire shelving filled with colonizing spawn bags and grain jars in low light.
The colonization room. 21 to 120 days of patience, depending on species. Temperature, humidity, and fresh-air exchange are managed by our automation stack.
Extraction bench with soxhlets, heating mantles, and vacuum equipment for tincture work.
The extraction bench. Dual-extraction setup for functional tinctures. Coming soon to the catalog alongside powders.

The Process

From our substrate to your kitchen.

Four stages, roughly a month each cycle. We log every batch and every harvest so the trail is honest from cap to crate.

  1. 01
    Substrate bags loaded inside a vertical autoclave chamber.

    Sterilize

    Hardwood pellets, soybean hulls, and oat bran go into the autoclave at high temperatures until the substrate is clean. No contaminants, no shortcuts. This is the foundation everything else rides on.

  2. 02
    A single sealed bag of grain spawn. Sterilized rice or rye colonized with mushroom mycelium.

    Spawn

    Sterile grain spawn (oats, rice, rye, millet) gets inoculated with the culture we want. From here, the bag becomes a little factory for whichever species we're growing.

  3. 03
    White pearl oyster mushrooms fruiting outward from a substrate block.

    Colonize & fruit

    Inoculated substrate moves to the colonization room until the bag is fully white with mycelium. Then it's into the fruiting chamber: high humidity, controlled CO2, soft light. The caps emerge within days.

  4. 04
    A green crate filled with bright golden oyster mushrooms just harvested.

    Harvest & deliver

    Cut at peak. Inside the 35-mile Fresh Delivery Zone, you eat them within 24 hours of harvest, hand-delivered or picked up at a farmers market. Beyond the zone, we pack and ship same-week.

The Catalog

Eighteen species. One farm.

A rotating roster of gourmet and functional varieties. Every one is cut the week you eat it. Below: a few favorites from recent flushes.

Golden oyster mushrooms in a tight yellow cluster.
Golden oyster
Pink oyster mushrooms rosetting from a block.
Pink oyster
A hand-held cluster of pearl-white elm oyster mushrooms.
Elm oyster
A massive cluster of white oyster mushrooms shot from above.
Snow oyster
Blue-grey oyster mushroom cluster held aloft.
Blue oyster
A cascading white Lion's Mane cluster, like a frozen waterfall of soft spines.
Lion's Mane

Browse the full grid →

The 10% engine

Every pound funds a cause.

Every species on the grid is paired with a non-profit partner, and we are always looking for entities that want to adopt our mushrooms as their cause champions. 10% of every pound routes to that cause. We publish the full ledger on the Impact page so you can see exactly what your dinner funded.

The pairings aren't accidental. Lion's Mane and other nootropic species point at brain-health causes. Reishi and Turkey Tail (the immune-support side of the catalog) point at cancer research. Cordyceps and the high-energy species fund veteran reintegration work. It's the most honest matching we could come up with, and we revisit it regularly as we grow our support for more local charities.

Jose Rivera in a MotorSpores lab coat, hairnet, and N95 mask, photographed in the lab.
Jose Rivera · founder & operator.

Who runs it

One owner. One promise.

The farm is owner-operated. Jose Rivera leads cultivation and operations, drawing on a 25-year track record in operations management, marketing and digital business development. His passion for science and sustainability drove him to pursue the idea of an urban mushroom farm. He founded CalyxBox LLC in 2021 to launch brands like MotorSpores and TurboBatch, the automated platform built to manage mushroom farm operations. Jose still actively leads eCommerce and omnichannel strategies in the private sector, but MotorSpores remains a personal priority and hands-on focus.

If you have a question, an email lands on his desk. Reach out anytime.

For the record

What we're not.

  • Not a distributor.

    Everything we sell, we grew. No reselling, no aggregation, no broker chain.

  • Not a wellness brand.

    We make food. We don't make medical claims. Reishi and Turkey Tail are sold as culinary ingredients with an FDA-careful note in the kitchen.

  • The mushrooms at the store.

    Most store-bought mushrooms are cultivated in manure. At MotorSpores, we grow ours exclusively on organic grains and wood, producing high-quality mushrooms at an affordable price, without bringing any animal by-products into your kitchen.

Ready to cook?

Shop the harvest → See the impact ledger