Cogumelos Cultivados

Klaas Zwart and Francien Nijhof, Dutch, have seen a business opportunity in Shiitake mushroom production. It was the late 1990s, when this fungus species was still unknown, including for chefs.
A graduate of Environmental Engineering, Klaas Zwart arrived with his wife, Francien Nijhof, in 1996, in the village of Arganil, located in the interior of the country and belonging to the district of Coimbra, where they began to rebuild a house just bought by both. "During the first five years we noticed that at the end of the first rains in the autumn the Portuguese went to the forest looking for mushrooms," says Klaas Zwart. After learning about the red pine mushroom - a well-known species of mushrooms - "we saw a business opportunity there," he says.
Because of this, they had to move to a new house. They went to Tábua, a village located in the region of Beira Alta. It was there that they bought the current house, with a cellar, used to produce the Shiitake mushrooms, a variety originally from the Asian-east, but that, at the time, wasn’t known in the zone.
The next step was to get customers in Lisbon. "The first customers were the organic stores because they are looking for variety and new things. Then we talked to several chefs. There were a lot of people who said, 'Oh, no, Shiitake never, it's too strong, it's not going to happen.' But later, "the ball started rolling," because "chefs always want something new."
However, Klaas Zwart was confronted with another question, that of the bureaucracy. "It was difficult in terms of paperwork because we are producing fungi and there is no legislation for fungi in Portugal." Legalized the business, Cogumelos Cultivados, Lda., Currently with ten employees also has the BIO Certificate, HACCP (Hazards Analysis and Critical Control Points) and are addressing the Global GAP certification.