MADISON, Wis. — When people think of hunting, they don’t always associate it with mushrooms.

But searching for morels and other unique mushrooms attract thousands of people to wooded areas of Wisconsin every spring.

While others’ love for fungi might stop there, Madison resident Andrew Griffin has taken his a step further. He opened his own urban indoor mushroom growing business called MicroMyco, located in a small office space on Madison’s east side.

Griffin has no background in agriculture. His college degree is in economics.

“Being on the producer side of the food economy is always something that I’ve been very interested in, and mushrooms are a great way to fit that in an urban setting,” Griffin said.

With many different varieties, he tracks each mushroom throughout the growing process. Griffin has developed his own system, mastering the different temperatures and mix of nutrients they need.

“It doesn’t work perfectly all the time,” he said. “Moving things around and figuring out where things do work is part of the process, for sure. Figuring out how to grow the most amount of mushrooms in a limited space.”

So far, he’s been doing well. He delivers about 200 pounds of mushrooms a week to Madison area restaurants and farmer’s markets.

“Really, the mushrooms speak for themselves,” Griffin said. “I don’t do much advertising at all. Almost all of my clientele has come from word of mouth, which is really cool.”

Meggan Hass is the kitchen director at Settle Down Tavern in Madison, which has been a client of Griffin’s for about a year.

“Working with Andrew I actually get much higher quality mushrooms than I’m able to get from even other highly respected vendors in the area,” Hass said.

Hass’ goal is to always source ingredients close to home.

“Number one, it’s just in line with our philosophy of trying to support our community and we want to work with food that’s real and grown as locally as possible,” Hass said.

In addition to supplying the restaurants with his mushrooms, Griffin also spends his time educating the community. He gives regular tours of his micro-mushroom farm, sharing the health and environmental benefits.

“The ways that mushrooms are integrated into our lives is always exciting for people to see. And to see it be done in a space like this at a scale that most people are familiar with, there are a lot of folks that are interested in checking it out,” he said.

As his work keeps growing, he’s searching to move into a bigger space in the city.

 “I think the appetite for mushrooms is not even close to being filled, so I could be growing 10 times as much as I am now, and I think people would still want more,” Griffin said.