---
title: Wholesale order management for specialty mushroom growers
Metadescription: No mushroom-native software takes a chef's order - Mycro, Kinoko and Gros.farm all track production. What a specialty grower needs instead.
author: Dan Edwards
author_role: Founder
author_url: https://danedwardsdeveloper.com
author_linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-edwards-developer
published: 2026-11-04
---

Token estimate: ~3,500

# Wholesale order management for specialty mushroom growers

No software built for mushroom growers takes an order from a chef. Mycro, Kinoko, Gros.farm and Ardent Seller all track blocks, flushes, contamination and cost per pound, and Mycro's own site still lists wholesale orders as coming rather than built. The ordering half of the job belongs to general wholesale ordering software, and what a specialty grower needs from it is specific - a catalogue that is whatever fruited this week, a price per customer, a cutoff on each delivery day, and a case billed on the weight that reached the scale rather than the weight ordered. [Order management software for microgreens growers](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/software-for-microgreens-growers) covers the same ordering problem for the other indoor crop.

By **[Dan Edwards](https://wholesalehandler.com/about)**, Founder.

## No mushroom software takes a chef's order

Mycro is the closest thing to a mushroom-native business tool, and what it has built is the grow side: a batch log from inoculation to final flush, contamination tracking by step, strain and substrate, yield and biological efficiency, cost per block and per pound, a harvest calendar and a culture library. Wholesale orders - standing restaurant and market orders, pack lists, invoices - are still listed as coming. The two paid plans that would carry them are not on sale either: Mycro's own pricing page says the monthly Grower and Farm plans are not open yet and the figures against them are targets that may change.

The rest of the mushroom-native field is production software too.

-   **Kinoko** tracks blocks, room temperature, CO2 and humidity, worker scheduling and QR labels. No ordering, no buyer portal, no price lists, no invoices.
-   **Gros.farm** manages growing-room cycles from filling to final flush, with harvest recorded by flush.
-   **Ardent Seller** does substrate recipes, spawn-to-harvest traceability and cost of goods per pound.
-   **MycoHub** and **MycoFile** are grow logs, one of them offline-first with no cloud and no accounts.

**Greens & Shrooms** spans microgreens and mushrooms and does carry order management, but what it holds is the grower's own order book and delivery route rather than a screen a buyer places an order on.

The one platform a specialty mushroom grower is on record selling chefs through has since gone. Cornell Small Farms wrote up Shibumi Farm supplying New York and New Jersey kitchens through FarmersWeb; Full Harvest acquired FarmersWeb in November 2022, and its site is no longer online. Software directories still carry a listing for it, with a monthly price.

So the tool that takes a chef's order is a general wholesale ordering portal. [Order management software for fresh produce wholesalers](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/order-management-software-for-fresh-produce-wholesalers) sets out what that category does.

## This week's catalogue is whatever fruited

A fixed catalogue with fixed quantities describes a business that plans its output. Cornell Small Farms puts log-grown shiitake at 7 to 10 days from shocking to picking, slower in cold weather, yielding a quarter to half a pound per log per flush - so which species is ready, and how much of it, is read off the room rather than set in advance.

Growers publish that as a weekly list. KC Mushroom Co. in Kansas runs an availability table headed "Updated weekly. Seasonal items subject to grow room conditions", each variety carrying its own status. Fungi Valley in Los Angeles publishes what is "now fruiting" and builds a standing order around the harvest.

In Wholesale Handler that list is the catalogue, with availability set on each product.

-   A product can be marked unavailable between two dates, or until further notice, with a reason - weather delay, limited stock, discontinued or other - and a note the chef sees.
-   Stock counting is per product, so a species can be set to the pounds that came off the racks and stops being orderable at zero, while a line left untracked takes any quantity.
-   The product list filters to what can be sold today, with a count beside each filter and the reason on every unavailable row.
-   The chef's order form groups the same catalogue into available now, out of stock, out of season with the date it returns, and unavailable.

## A season is the wrong setting for a flush

A season in Wholesale Handler is a start and end date carrying no year, so it repeats annually without being re-entered, and one product can hold several. That fits a crop with a calendar. It misdescribes a flush: a species that is off this week because the room did not fruit is not out of season, and marking it seasonal promises the same gap next year. The dated availability window and the stock count are the two settings that describe a week. [How to manage seasonal availability for wholesale produce](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/manage-seasonal-availability-wholesale-produce) covers the calendar half.

## Species, grade and dried are separate products

Each species is a product with its own unit and its own price. Four Star Mushrooms in Chicago grows seven year-round - lion's mane, chestnut, blue oyster, black oyster, king trumpet, maitake and golden enoki. In Cornell's January 2021 grower survey, direct buyers paid an average of US$17.22 a pound for lion's mane against US$14.18 for oyster, with wholesale buyers paying 73% of the direct price on average across all species.

Grade is a separate line again, because grade is decided at the pick rather than in the grow room. Cornell's harvesting guidance is that "it is not the size of the mushroom that determines when it is picked, but its growth progress" - a cap that has flattened out is over-ripe and worth less. A price list holds one price per product, so two grades of one species are two products.

Dried is a third kind of line. Drying preserves mushrooms up to a year, so a dried line is not ordered against a delivery date the way a fresh pick is, and it carries its own price per unit with no relation to the fresh rate.

Each product records the unit it is actually sold in - by the piece, as a named single such as a flat or a punnet, or as a pack of a set number - with the wording the chef will see previewed as it is set up. Mycopia ships 6 lb foodservice flats including mixed flats holding several varieties, and a mixed flat is one named single at one price rather than six lines.

## Billing the weight that went on the scale

A picked case rarely hits the ordered weight, and the loss keeps running after the pick. Cornell quotes a grower on it: "What we harvest and what we sell can be quite different depending on how long they are refrigerated." That is the catch-weight problem, and it is one of three pricing modes.

| Priced by | How the order is placed |
| --- | --- |
| Unit | A fixed price for the selling unit - a piece, a flat, a case |
| Weight | The chef enters the weight they want, priced per kilogram or per pound |
| Catch weight | Ordered by count at a typical price, billed on the weight picked |

On a catch-weight line the chef orders two flats and sees a typical price worked out from a typical weight, so they know roughly what is coming. At pick the real weight of each line is recorded, and the order's subtotal, tax, delivery charge and total re-settle to it. That settled figure is what reaches the invoice, where the line reads as the weight sent against the per-kilogram or per-pound rate rather than as a flat case price. A weight-priced line takes a figure to two decimal places of the major unit and settles at order time instead.

## A cutoff on each delivery day

Short shelf life makes the deadline a commercial term rather than an administrative one. Cornell's guidance is to get a pick into refrigeration within an hour, and a properly timed pick lasts a week or more at 36 to 38°F where an over-ripe one lasts a few days. The windows growers run are correspondingly tight: KC Mushroom Co. takes orders until Wednesday afternoon for Friday delivery, and Mycopia takes a call until 11:00 am Pacific and is in the kitchen by 10:30 the next morning.

Each delivery day carries its own cutoff, set as a lead time before that day, so a Friday run can close Wednesday afternoon while a Tuesday run stays open until Monday night. The offset is signed, so same-day ordering is allowed where the pick can take it. Accepted days, the cutoff on each of them, how far ahead an order can be placed, a minimum spend and a delivery charge are bundled into an order profile, and every customer is assigned one - which is how a chef two hours out gets Wednesday and Thursday only while the city run stays daily. A date the chef cannot order for says which rule closed it: not a delivery day, a holiday, cutoff passed, or not open yet, plus any line the grower adds.

The minimum is a spend rather than a weight. A grower running KC's floor of five pounds with varieties mixed freely sets it as the money five pounds comes to.

## Turning the week's orders into a pick list

Every order for a delivery date totals by product, with the number of orders behind each total, and each day is marked open or closed so a grower knows before picking anything whether the totals can still move. Opening a day gives the per-customer lines for packing beside the totals for picking, plus a note only the grower sees. A printable sheet lays out quantity by product with a tick box per line. Packing slips carry the customer, the delivery date and each line's name, SKU, pack unit and quantity, and no prices. [How to turn wholesale orders into a production list before you start baking](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/how-to-turn-wholesale-orders-into-a-production-list) covers the same read for a baker.

## A chef with no email address

A customer can be set up as fully managed - no email address, no portal, nothing sent to them - which is the mode for a chef who orders by phone. The grower places those orders and is not held to the rules a chef would be: any delivery date, a total under the minimum spend, and an order that leaves stock untouched where the goods have already gone out, with every rule set aside named back at the review step. The same record upgrades to a sign-in later without losing its order history.

An order arriving as a text message is re-typed by the grower. Wholesale Handler does not parse a text into an order. [How to stop taking bakery orders on WhatsApp](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/how-to-stop-taking-bakery-orders-on-whatsapp) makes the case against running the order book through a messaging thread, and [How to get restaurant customers to order produce online instead of phoning](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/get-restaurant-customers-to-order-fresh-produce-online) covers moving a chef onto the portal.

## Limits worth knowing before signing up

-   **A short weight or a substitute at pick is not recorded.** When a species does not fruit, there is no way to send a different one against the line and have the change reach the chef and the invoice. It is on the [roadmap](https://wholesalehandler.com/roadmap).
-   **What a standing order does instead.** Every line is re-checked and re-priced when the order is created at the cutoff rather than when the schedule was saved, and a product that is out of season or unavailable that day is left off the order while the customer is emailed which line went and when it returns.
-   **Fixed multiples are not enforced.** A product carries a unit label and a pack size, but an order that is not a whole number of cases is not refused as it is placed. On the roadmap.
-   **A price list holds one price per product**, so a lower rate at twenty pounds means a second list rather than a tier. [How to charge different prices to different wholesale customers](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/how-to-charge-different-prices-to-different-wholesale-customers) covers how the lists derive from each other.
-   **Delivery runs are not routed or tracked.** The box gets a packing slip, not a route.

## What it costs

The Pro plan is US$109 a month and holds up to 50 customers and 500 products, with no per-user charge and no contract. It is free up to three customers, and the whole app is usable before signing up, on a demo account already holding products, customers, orders and invoices.

## Q&A

**Q: Can a chef ask to be told when a species is available again?**
A: Yes, two ways. A chef can subscribe to a one-off email that arrives the moment a product is back in stock, or on the day it comes back into season. They can also subscribe to a weekly Monday email listing what is coming into season and what is about to go out, which is not sent at all on a week with nothing to report.

**Q: Can two chefs pay different prices for the same species?**
A: Yes. Every customer buys from exactly one price list, and a list can be set as a percentage of the default list with individual prices overridden on top. Each price on the detail page says whether it is still derived from that percentage or has been edited into a permanent override.

**Q: What happens to a standing order in a week the farm is closed?**
A: It does not place. The customer is emailed as soon as the closure is saved rather than on the day it arrives, so a shutdown declared in June is known about in June, and the email offers the delivery days either side of it that their order profile allows. Choosing one opens an order already holding that standing order's items for the new date.