Our names are: Stephanie Moyal and Jake Mellman—and we’re cousins.

Our stomping ground is: Both of us live in Los Angeles.

We’re known for being: Steph: Co-founder, adventurous, ambitious, dedicated.

Jake: Co-founder, adventurous, funny, storyteller. 

I'm talking about: Troop (named for the technical term for a group of mushrooms).

Troop offers three different mushroom gummy products: 

- Supertroop, our hero product, is strawberry passionfruit flavor and combines six medicinal mushrooms: lion’s mane, chaga, cordyceps, turkey tail, maitake and reishi.

- Lion’s Mane for a brain boost in peach mango.

- Reishi for de-stressing in a mixed berry flavor.

You can find it at: trytroop.com.

Before we launched this, we were:

Jake: Steph was working at a boutique hotel company in LA doing operations and I cofounded a digital marketing agency. The skills that we both learned in our previous careers have helped us pursue our dream and create Troop.

Our interest was sparked when:

Steph: We began learning about all of the incredible benefits of mushrooms during COVID. We had been hearing whispers of their benefits and how they have truly helped people, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that we had the opportunity to dive headfirst into the research. Jake had gotten into a serious ski accident and shattered his leg, and I offered to move in and help take care of him. We had so much time on our hands and decided to immerse ourselves in our newfound passion.

What inspired us to start this was:  

Jake: We truly fell in love with mushrooms, but there wasn’t a form factor that was appealing to us. We would look at our pills and simply not take them, and tinctures require coffee or another strong drink to drown out the taste. We believe that you don’t have to sacrifice anything to be healthy, and being healthy can also be delicious. A gummy seemed like the natural product for us to create as we love gummies and wanted to be able to look forward to taking our Troop.

The idea behind it is: 

Steph: Our missions is to make mushrooms approachable and offer them in a delicious way. 

What makes it different is: 

Steph: We believe that being a gummy is a huge differentiator, but not only that, our gummies are truly delicious. We worked tirelessly to create the tastiest gummy we’ve ever tasted. We also made sure to use the best quality mushrooms we could find. All of our mushrooms are sustainably cultivated in the US. We only use fruiting body, dual extracted mushrooms and test them for efficacy and quality.  

Our secret ingredient is: 

Jake: Our premium quality mushroom extractions and our delicious flavor. You can’t beat it.

My favorite lesser-known detail is: 

Jake: A lot people don’t notice that we embossed our gummies with a mushroom on the face of the gummy. We did this to further build trust with our customers. When they see a mushroom embossed on the gummy, they will know they can trust this is the highest quality mushroom supplement on the market. 

It’s especially important to boost our health right now because:

Steph: Being health-conscious has never been at the forefront of people’s minds like it is today. COVID gave people the opportunity to be more mindful and pay better attention to themselves. We have seen an amazing shift in people seeking preventative measures to maintain and optimize their health. We believe nature, especially mushrooms, hold many of the answers that we’re looking for.  

My favorite new ritual for self-care is:

Steph: it’s not new, but I’m really enjoying getting back into meditation, journaling and yoga. It’s incredible how amazing you feel after committing to a routine.

Jake: Meditation and therapy. Tackling difficult life and personal issues head on, and knowing the mushrooms always have my back.