S8 Ep14: Chocolate and Mushrooms: A Sweet Combination for Better Sleep, Focus and Beyond with Charlotte Cruze
“For functional mushrooms, you need to take a medicinal dose daily for about three weeks to feel something. They do not work instantly. That's a big gap in the market that people don't understand.” —Charlotte Cruze
When it comes to wellness, some pairings just make perfect sense. Mushrooms and chocolate may seem an unlikely match made in hedonistic heaven, but their union holds untapped potential.
Mushrooms have long been prized for their healing properties across cultures. Science now shows their ability to boost brain health, energy levels, and more. Chocolate, too, has benefits, with flavonoids that uplift mood and antioxidants aplenty. By melding mushrooms' functional powers with chocolate's feel-good compounds, a new generation of treats could emerge.
This episode explores the exciting world of functional mushroom chocolate with Charlotte Cruze, the Co-Founder and COO of Alice Mushrooms, a company pioneering the use of functional mushrooms in delicious chocolate formulations. With a master's degree in Food Studies from NYU and over 10 years in the consumer food industry, she is dedicated to educating people about evidence-backed natural wellness solutions. Through her leadership of Alice, Charlotte is helping more individuals harness the profound benefits of functional foods like mushrooms in an enjoyable and effective way.
Listen in as Charlotte provides an overview of Alice's three flagship mushroom chocolate products, their thoughtful formulation process to deliver both instant and long-term benefits, and tips for taking the chocolates throughout the day. Justine and Charlotte also discuss partner dynamics in business and the importance of complementing each other's skills, the role of education in spreading awareness of functional mushrooms' profound effects, as well as real customer success stories demonstrating the life-changing impacts of mushrooms.
Connect with Charlotte:
Charlotte Cruze is the co-founder and COO of Alice Mushrooms, a pioneering company crafting functional mushroom chocolates. She holds a master's degree in Food Studies from NYU and has over 10 years of experience in the consumer food industry.
Prior to founding Alice, Charlotte worked on early-stage food brands and developed a passion for food's role in wellness. She is an advocate for natural, whole-food solutions and believes in food's power to profoundly impact lives.
Under Charlotte's leadership, Alice has launched three flagship mushroom chocolate SKUs focused on energy, sleep, and arousal. She oversees formulation, operations, and education initiatives. Charlotte is dedicated to spreading awareness of functional mushrooms' benefits through delicious products and informative content.
When not running Alice, Charlotte enjoys yoga, long-distance cycling, and learning about new functional foods. She finds fulfillment in empowering others to feel their best through high-quality nutrition.
Episode Highlights:
03:14 Mushroom-Infused Chocolate
08:26 Different Chocolates for Different Feelings
13:23 Chocolate as a Functional Food
17:17 Formulating Functional Mushroom Products
21:13 The Benefits of Functional Mushroom
Tweets:
Forget the forest— find your fungi fix in truffle-like treats. Listen in as @jreichman and Alice Mushrooms CoFounder, Charlotte Cruze share the profound benefits of functional mushroom chocolates— from improved sleep, focus, and happiness. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season8 #AliceMushrooms #DecadentMushroomChocolates #FunctionalMushroom #naturalremedies #foodinnovation #womeninbusiness
Inspirational Quotes:
03:01 “I was trying to figure out what made me feel good, so I can help other people feel good.” —Charlotte Cruze
04:01 “You get so many more nutrients from food than you can from a capsule, a power, or a pill because your body is meant to digest food and it's meant to take nutrients from food.” —Charlotte Cruze
06:28 “Indulge, don't endure.” —Charlotte Cruze
07:11 “[Business partnership] is like marriage. You spend a lot of time with this person and you have to have the same ethos or values as you're building a business.” —Justine Reichman
08:39 “Go with your gut. That is going to tell you more than anything.” —Charlotte Cruze
08:44 “Get honest with yourself about what you're good at and what you want someone else to get good at. And then look for that.” —Charlotte Cruze
14:03 “We want to do a few things and do them really well.” —Charlotte Cruze
19:09 “For functional mushrooms, you need to take a medicinal dose daily for about three weeks to feel something. They do not work instantly. That's a big gap in the market that people don't understand.” —Charlotte Cruze
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today is Charlotte. Charlotte is the Co-Founder of Alice. And for those not familiar with Alice, here you go, we're gonna be talking about mushrooms and chocolate.
Charlotte, welcome. Thanks for joining.
Charlotte Cruze: Thank you so much for having me.
Justine Reichman: It's a pleasure. I've been looking forward to this conversation before I got your product. And then even more so when I did get your product. So if you could just introduce yourself, your position, and a little bit about what you do?
Charlotte Cruze: I'm Charlotte Cruze. I am Co-Founder and COO at Alice Mushrooms. We make functional mushroom chocolates. So we have chocolates for energy and focus, one for sleep, and we just launched one for pleasure and arousal.
Justine Reichman: Awesome, we will get into all of those. So if you're listening, stay tuned because there's a lot to cover here. I'm curious, what is your specialty and background?
Charlotte Cruze: My background is kind of all over the place. I started my career in media. So originally started in broadcast journalism, then went into branded partnerships at different digital publishers, and then really moved into the food space by going back to grad school at NYU and getting a master's in Food Studies, and then working on early stage consumer food brands.
Justine Reichman: Wow. And why in particular did you go back to school for food studies?
Charlotte Cruze: I realized through all my time in the media that the stories I like telling most were about food. I really wanted to kind of pare back what I was doing to serve something I felt to be so essential to the human experience and do as much good as I could. And to me, that became food. So I started applying to jobs in the food space. I think anyone who's tried to have a career pivot can definitely relate that it's difficult. And a lot of people don't really give you the time of day. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna go back to school and study this, and really show my commitment, and kickstart my career in the food space.
Justine Reichman: That's amazing. I know that many people are innovating in this space and you went to food studies school, and you got your masters there. I'm wondering, what was the story? Or what was it that inspired you to take that master's interest in food, and focus on functional food and in particular mushrooms?
“I was trying to figure out what made me feel good, so I can help other people feel good.” —Charlotte Cruze
Charlotte Cruze: Like I said, I was really trying to pare back my life to what was the most essential and what I could work on and have the biggest impact on. And in my time in the media, I was just starting to feel a little bit unfulfilled. I joke that I couldn't come up with another campaign to sell a watch to a guy on Wall Street. I had kind of maxed out on that. I was trying to figure out what made sense for me. And at that time, I did a lot of searching, I did my yoga teacher training, and I got into really long distance biking. I was trying to figure out what made me feel good so I can help other people feel good. And as I mentioned earlier, I was working on a lot of stories about people in the food space and my media job at the time, and something really just clicked for me. I was like, it's food. I think this is the most essential thing to how we all feel, and what makes us feel good. And it's something that gets really overlooked. When I went back to grad school, people were like, you can get a masters in food. And it's such a funny cognitive dissonance because you can get a master's in literature, but food is the most integral part of our lives and people are like, you can study them.
Justine Reichman: Food is super interesting and motivating for you. But why mushrooms, and why in particular in functional food?
Charlotte Cruze: Mushrooms kind of found me. I would say that I have always really been into different ways to feel good, functional mushrooms in particular. And why functional food? I think that's a whole conversation that I would love to have, which is essentially that you get so many more nutrients from food than you can from a capsule, a powder, a pill because your body is meant to digest food. And it's meant to take nutrients from food. So when you look at bioavailability, the bioavailability on a chocolate supplement like ours is anywhere between 80 to 90%. Whereas a pill, you're closer to like 7 to 13%. So that's something why functional food is so important to me because it's how we're supposed to get our nutrients, and how our bodies understand it. And mushrooms, like I said, they found me.
Justine Reichman: Tell us how they find you?
Charlotte Cruze: I grew up honestly, what we call a microphobia, which is that I really didn't like mushrooms. I was a really, really picky eater. And it wasn't until I really started working in food that all of a sudden I became really fascinated by mushrooms. I started working on an on demand meal kit service in the city that used organic, really beautifully sourced ingredients. And we had a huge emphasis on mushrooms. The more I was exposed to them, the more I was like, these are the most beautiful, incredible, I can't say plants like fungi that it's just ingredients that you can use. And I got really interested in them, started eating them. And then quickly found out about the rest of the benefits. At that time, my business partner found me, and her background was in pharmaceuticals. She had been looking for natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals, and that's how she stumbled upon mushrooms. And then our paths crossed. And yeah, now here we are.
Justine Reichman: What role did chocolate play for you in this? Because I see Alice Mushrooms, Alice Mushroom Chocolates, right? We've talked a lot about fungi. We've talked a lot about mushrooms, and you're interested in that. So how did you connect the chocolate with the mushrooms?
“Indulge, don't endure.” —Charlotte Cruze
Charlotte Cruze: Like I said, career picky eater over here. And Lindsay and I, we want things to feel good. And we want things to feel indulgent. We want to give people a joyful experience. And functional mushrooms, there's a reason we don't eat them in a culinary setting because they don't taste very good. And so when you look at a lot of the supplements, powders, pills, tinctures, none of them taste very good. It's a lot of really bitter. Sometimes we always say to ourselves, indulge, don't endure. Because we felt like we were enduring a lot of these supplements. So chocolate became this answer of, how do we make this joyful? How do we make this an experience that someone wants to look forward to? How do we make this something we want to eat? And the answer just kept becoming chocolate.
Justine Reichman: Did you try a lot of other things before you settled on chocolates? I don't want to say settled because it sounds like it's settled, but before you chose chocolate.
Charlotte Cruze: No, it was always chocolate since day one. The business was Lindsay's original concept. She knew from the second one that it was going to be chocolate.
Justine Reichman: And so you guys met through being in the same world. How did you guys decide to become partners? Because I know, it's like a marriage, right? You spend a lot of time with this person, you have to have the same ethos or values as you're building a business. So what were some of the things that popped out to you to make you guys decide, or you decide that she is the perfect fit to be your better half in your work life, or whatever they call it these days.
Charlotte Cruze: Totally. It was just a feeling, our story of how we met is a little bit unique. I'm based in New York, she's based in LA, and we met in 2021. So it was still very much COVID timing. We met over the phone because a mutual friend was like, I think you guys might be right for each other. She knew we were both looking for a similar kind of person, put us on a text thread, we got on the phone and kind of the rest was history. One of those things where she told me her idea, and I immediately was taken with it. The two of us got along really well. We're kind of different halves of the same brain. We took it slow at first. It probably took us four or five months until we were like, okay, we're partners now. But we just started working together and got there. I think it's been one of the best partnerships I've ever had.
“[Business partnership] is like marriage. You spend a lot of time with this person and you have to have the same ethos or values as you're building a business.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: What would you say to somebody looking for a co-founder, recommendations or things to look for.
Charlotte Cruze: One, go with your gut. That is going to tell you more than anything. Two, really get honest with yourself about what you're good at and what you want someone else to get good at. And then look for that. Because they think Lindsey and I, there's a lot that we share, but there's a lot that she really excels and that I don't, and vice versa. And that is what makes you really powerful business partners. I think not looking for someone that is so similar to you because that can just create an echo chamber. I think when Lindsey and I disagree on something, that's the magic of our partnership because it always pushes you to be better. And you don't want someone that thinks the exact same way as you.
Justine Reichman: It allows you to question why you're making that decision, to think a little deeper about it. I often find that by articulating exactly how I feel, it clarifies it for myself as well. And if I can communicate it effectively to you, then I've really honed in on what I'm trying to communicate. If I can't communicate it to you effectively, you don't have to agree, but I need you to understand. Then it's a success. And from there, I think it's easier for people to come together and make the best choice for the situation.
Charlotte Cruze: Absolutely.
Justine Reichman: As you're going through this process and you're coming up with these, just for those watching the videocasts, we have mushroom chocolates for focus and energy. We have mushroom chocolates for arousal and pleasure. We're gonna have to talk about that one because that sounds fun. And then we have mushrooms for deep sleep. Well, I actually think that was a very good order that I called them out. Even if it was unintentional. So tell me, do you take this in the morning when you get up? When is your first mushroom chocolate for focus and energy?
Charlotte Cruze: For me personally, it's kind of around 11:00 AM. But a lot of people take them at different times. I think the idea with it is, you can take it first thing in the morning as a way to kickstart your day. You can take it with your coffee whenever you do that, or you can take it around 3:00 o'clock. We have a bunch of recipes, and we've done some collaborations with coffee shops where we do Mocha, a double shot of espresso. They're really delicious.
Justine Reichman: That's great. Can you share one of those recipes for us so that we can share them with our listeners and viewers?
Charlotte Cruze: Absolutely.
Justine Reichman: Now that I see these three different kinds, how did you come up with these three different iterations? What inspired that?
Charlotte Cruze: So we launched with Brainstorm and Nightcap. Brainstorm for focus and energy. Nightcap, our sleep chocolate. And it was really because when Lindsay started formulating in her kitchen, she was formulating for the things she was struggling with at the time. So trying to figure out how she could get more focused and how she could sleep better. This was also right at the pandemic where all of us were like, our brains are fried. We needed help, and no one was sleeping well. So that's really how it started. And we locked in on those first two formulations and ran with them. And then after we launched, we knew as we were looking forward, what's the next thing and everything that comes out of Alice will be tied to a feeling that's really important to us. We don't want to have your classic supplement that maybe just functions like a multivitamin that you can't feel. We want to take you somewhere with all of our products so we just knew that the next one would be arousal and pleasure. So we formulated it for a year, and then launched it in January.
Justine Reichman: So as you were testing these and going through them, tell me what you felt because you came up with this formula in the end, but I'm sure that you came up with a variety of other formulas for it. So what was that process like for you? What did you experience?
Charlotte Cruze: It really is fascinating. I think our formulation process is unique. We are food, so taste is incredibly important. And a lot of the ingredients we're working with don't taste right. Or they taste like dirt, or whatever it is so we had to formulate both for efficacy and flavor. So a lot of our formulation is like chewing up, spitting it out, trying a bunch of things and finding that really great middle ground where, okay, this works,, and it tastes good. And that's why our formulation process takes so long. I think there's a lot of different ways to create these feelings that we're working with. So it's about finding the perfect blend for us.
Justine Reichman: So as you're coming up with these, and as you're tasting and spit it again, you're thinking about all the different feelings. What are your next feelings that you think you're going to spearhead within this group?
Charlotte Cruze: We're being a little tight lipped about it for now. But we do have a bunch of really exciting ones up our sleeves that we're beginning to formulate now.
Justine Reichman: What are you hoping to launch?
Charlotte Cruze: I'd say the next one will come within the next year. That's exciting.
Justine Reichman: So how many skews do you hope to have within the year?
Charlotte Cruze: I really don't want to drop more than one core skew each year. We don't want to turn into a pharmacy. We want to do a few things and do them really well. Our formulation process takes a long time, and that's because we're incredibly intentional about it. This year, it's dropping one more core skew. We've got fun. We can do a lot with flavor, and we can do a lot with limited edition drops that have some special elements to them. But in terms of these core formulations, only one a year.
Justine Reichman: I think that's great. You're not saturating the brand so it allows you to continue to grow, learn more, do more research and as a functional food. You can often eat functional foods at a doctor's office, and they will recommend them. And even sometimes, you'll get insurance to pay for them. I'm wondering where you see Alice fitting in, and what role does research play in this? And are you having conversations with doctors, offering this as a functional food through many of these alternative, holistic and functional doctors?
Charlotte Cruze: Yeah, I love that. In terms of what role research plays, we do a lot of research on our formulation process to make sure everything we're using is research back. If it's something that hasn't proven to be effective or just as anecdotally effective, we don't use it. So that's step one. And that comes from a team of MDs and PhDs who helped us with all of that. In terms of working with doctors offices, that's not a line that we have sought out. That being said, we have a lot of doctors offices and different MDs who've reached out to us so that they can offer it at their practices. It's been a really cool thing to have people reaching out to us, and we love that. It's a really great potential line of business for us and a way to reach more people. It's just not something we want to sleep tapped into consciously at this point.
Justine Reichman: I'll say what made me think of it is back in New York, my doctor, I used to go to Dr. (inaudible) on West 57. I don't know if that's still his location, but he was a functional doctor. He was very integrative. I think he was double board certified at multiple hospitals. And when you would go in, it was not a pharmacy that sells medication, but things that were compounded, maybe like a thyroid medication, but also functional foods. And so they give you different functional foods, different supplements and things. So as I'm sitting here and we're talking about Alice, and we're talking about these chocolates, and we're talking about the impact that they're having, and the niche that they fit into, to me, I could see it on the shelves.
Charlotte Cruze: We're in a lot of health food stores, niche health food stores, natural grocers, those types of places. We aren't at Lifetime, but I need to not go knock on that door.
Justine Reichman: Knock on their door. There's that pharmacy that starts with a G, I forget what it was called, it was on 6th Avenue right near your house. Below 23rd, but above 18th on the west side of the street. That's the best I can do, 6th Avenue. I think it has big greens, and they used to have one on the east side. Anyway, I used to go there all the time. And then there's one on 1st Avenue that I love. I used to buy all my stuff between 20th and 21st on 2nd Avenue. They are awesome. They used to have a naturopath in there and everything.
Charlotte Cruze: I love that. I'll go walk up the street and a little bit when I walk my dog.
Justine Reichman: And when you find the owner, tell him. When I first moved to California, I used to call them and have everything delivered from catalogs. I realized that might not be the best idea. I'm a relationship person. I have a trustworthy person. I trusted them for their recommendations. I trusted them for everything that they did. I've been going there for years, given that I grew up in New York City. Right now, I'm trying to remember the name of the pharmacy on the 22nd. And second, you know that I'm trying to do this as we speak. It's called ProHealth Pharmacy. ProHealth. It's at 385 2nd Avenue. The people are amazing. The store has good products, you can trust them. And they're really great. They always make sure that they look at contract indications. But then they can also tell you about all the different things. So I think I don't know if they'd be interested in that.
Charlotte Cruze: Yeah, absolutely.
Justine Reichman: I digress. I get a little nostalgic when I talk about New York.
Charlotte Cruze: I love it.
Justine Reichman: I have a little nostalgia, but I'm very happy. You're going to be bringing on a fourth skew for this year to add to everybody else except for you guys. What do you think is the most revolutionary part of Alice and what you're building?
“For functional mushrooms, you need to take a medicinal dose daily for about three weeks to feel something. They do not work instantly. That's a big gap in the market that people don't understand.” —Charlotte Cruze
Charlotte Cruze: Yeah, I think it's the way we formulate. So what a lot of people don't realize is that for functional mushrooms, you need to take a medicinal dose daily for about three weeks to feel something. They do not work instantly. That is a huge education gap in the market. A lot of people try a functional mushroom product. It may not taste very good. They force it down for three days. They're like, I don't feel anything, and that goes right in the trash.
Justine Reichman: Let's just use your product for a second. Focus and energy, right? You have a package here. There's little squares on it. Nobody can see except for me because I'm the only one here, but what is a dose? Is it one square? Is it the whole thing?
Charlotte Cruze: One square.
Justine Reichman: That's good.
Charlotte Cruze: I actually haven't had mine yet today.
Justine Reichman: We're gonna have the mushrooms together. There we go. Thank you for joining me.
Charlotte Cruze: Thank you for prompting it. Functional mushrooms, they don't work instantly. I think that's a big gap in the market that people don't understand. I love instant gratification. So it's really difficult to take something every day for three or four weeks, and then get the gratification or see the results. So the way we formulated it was for people like us who love instant gratification, so people need to take functional mushrooms daily for about three to four weeks to start feeling the effects. And the effects are incredible. But that's a long time to wait. And my business partner, Lindsay and I love instant gratification. So we formulated the products so that you would get these long term benefits, obviously from the mushrooms. But we added in nootropics, herbal supplements, minerals to give you an instant feeling. So it's formulated both for instant gratification and long term benefit. So that's really our magic that we've been able to formulate for the short and long term, and in a way that tastes really good.
Justine Reichman: That's amazing. I know you mentioned education, the lack of education around this, and how people are uninformed. What role does education play for you as you build your brand and want to cast a broader reach, and get more people to know what you're doing?
Charlotte Cruze: Education plays a major role. I think it's our biggest uphill battle right now. We've got functional mushrooms, which a lot of people don't even understand what a functional mushroom is. You say functional mushrooms and people think psychedelic. Honestly, that's one of the first things. We're honestly feeling so much inbound, will this make me trip? Will this make me feel like a drug test? Is this legal? And we are fighting that battle to educate people about functional mushrooms because they really are such a profoundly impactful class of mushrooms that there's just no education about. There's also a lot of microphobia, right? Where people see a mushroom out in the woods and they kick it to kill it. Well, something you were taught as a kid for some reason, and it's like mushrooms are bad. We're trying to educate people about all of the good they can do. So it's more mushrooms for lack of a better way.
Justine Reichman: Where are you sharing this information so people can learn more about these functional mushrooms?
Charlotte Cruze: Yeah, we do a lot. Well, on our website, this was kind of my pet project. When we launched, I built out a glossary on our website and essentially took every word that could be confusing in the functional mushroom space. Because the other thing is there's all these new words. And if you don't know what these words mean, you're up the creek without a paddle. So we wanted to break down what all of these words meant, and in a really entertaining, quick, easy to digest way. So we built a glossary on our website. If you go to our website, right in the header, it says glossary, and you can go in there and read about what all of this does. So we love that, and we just have so much education all over our site. But on top of that, we do a lot on social media, and then we have a pretty robust email program. I would say about once a week, we're sending out an educational email about, what is Cordyceps mushrooms? Why does it work? And here are the studies behind it. And even outside of the mushrooms, why is magnesium so good for sleep? And when it's paired in the Nightcap formula, what does it do? Because we really want to arm people with education about what they're putting in their bodies, and why they're doing it.
Justine Reichman: Do you have any stories from folks that have integrated these mushrooms into their daily routine where they've seen such drastic results, or amazing results, or a life changing that you could maybe share?
Charlotte Cruze: We get so many. Honestly, there was one woman a few months ago who really moved me almost to tears. A few years ago, she struggled or suffered a brain aneurysm, and she was in the hospital. She almost died, and some incredible doctors saved her life. But since a brain aneurysm, she's just struggled with so many different complications from serious fatigue to brain fog, to even just drooling and different things that have just made her life really difficult. And she emailed us because she found Brainstorm and she said that we've given her her life back. Even some of the physical symptoms have evaded, and that's really in my mind because of the mushrooms and Brainstorm. Lion's Mane helps regrow brain cells, connect new neural pathways. It's incredible for staving off neuro degeneration. I see a direct correlation there. And also cortisol helps your body use oxygen more efficiently. Your blood uses oxygen more efficiently, which helps your body recover faster, work harder and longer. So that's a really big one. I got an email the other day from someone on the postcard who has chronic insomnia. And this person was telling me that not being able to sleep and getting up to go save people's lives, he's a Coast Guard, that's not ideal. They told me that now they're sleeping better than they have ever in their life, and they're able to literally go save other people's lives better.
Justine Reichman: That's amazing. Charlotte, thank you so much for sharing your story, what you're working on, the insight as well as the education and the information so that other people can make more informed choices and maybe even try and integrate this into their daily routine, whether it's for deep sleep, or focus, or arousal, which we really didn't talk about. But maybe you could share a story about that for our newsletter that we cut, include a lot of your educational tips and maybe your recipe so that we can continue to have this conversation and educate people, help you spread the word.
Charlotte Cruze: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
