Our names are: Erica and Zoe.
Our stomping ground is: Brooklyn, NY.
We’re known for being: Co-founders—asking you to get on board with weird healthy stuff since 2007, first with BluePrint Juice Cleanse, then with our podcast and now with the wonderful world of fungi.
We’re talking about: Our functional mushroom brand, Earth & Star.
You can find it at: Amazon, Erewhon, earthandstar.com.
Before we launched this, we were: We started our wellness and entrepreneurial journey together in 2007 when we launched our cold pressed juice brand, BluePrint Cleanse. Our vision was to provide a tool for people to gently detox by swapping their normal daily diet for a few days of nutrient-dense pressed juice. But that was just the beginning of our passion for inspiring preventative health, using food as medicine. Juicing isn't a one-stop solution to achieving optimal health; it’s about tuning into how your body is best in balance and using what works, thus beginning our journey towards the world of functional foods. People embraced the Cleanse because we made it easy and delicious to reap the healing powers of plants. The business saw explosive growth and we were acquired in less than five years.
Our interest was sparked when: A few years ago, we both had been regularly taking functional mushroom supplements for different reasons and started comparing notes on their effectiveness, for improving focus and concentration, promoting better sleep and definitely for their amazing immune support. The more research we did, the more it showed the incredible potential of the massive fungi kingdom. It's mind blowing how simple yet powerful they are medicinally.
What inspired us to start this was: The brands we were using were good, but not great. Everything that existed in this space at the time came in a pill or powder form that required some effort to consume and ultimately wasn't delicious. There’s still not a lot of transparency in this category and people really don’t understand what they’re consuming. We thought, everyone can benefit from functional mushrooms. Why not make them a bit more approachable, easier to consume and actually taste good?
The idea behind it is: We founded Earth & Star in the Summer of 2020 with the guiding mission of providing the powerful benefits of functional mushrooms and adaptogens in a way that could seamlessly incorporate into our daily routines.
What makes it different is: We use 100% fruiting bodies, no mycelium. Rather than adding a new supplement or vitamin to our regimen, Earth & Star’s oat milk, plant-based RTD lattes, ground coffee, chocolates, gummies and tinctures serve as a effortless integration to supercharge our daily life through the products we’re already using habitually (coffee, matcha, chocolate, etc.).
Our favorite lesser-known detail is: Mushrooms share more DNA with humans than they do with plants! Also, the chaga mushroom has one thousand times more antioxidants than blueberries and pomegranates combined.