Today marks a major milestone for us at M2 Ingredients. We’re proud to officially open the M2 Center of Innovation, a state-of-the-art food, beverage, and supplement R&D application lab designed to accelerate innovation and raise the bar for functional mushroom product development.
As the largest vertically integrated functional mushroom grower and ingredient supplier in the Western Hemisphere, we’ve spent years working side by side with brands navigating the real-world challenges of formulation, scale-up, and commercialization. The M2 Center of Innovation was built to directly address those challenges and to give our partners the infrastructure and expertise they need to move faster and with greater confidence.
The Center brings together the most experienced functional mushroom R&D teams in the industry within a purpose-built facility that supports development across formats including RTDs, ready-to-mix powders, gummies, capsules, shots, bars, and more. This is not just an application lab—it’s an extension of how we think about ingredient innovation from the ground up.
As our CEO Jeff Rogers puts it, this is a major step forward not just for M2, but for the entire functional mushroom industry. For too long, brands have been forced to choose between ingredient suppliers and true innovation partners. The M2 Center of Innovation eliminates that tradeoff by combining deep scientific rigor with real-world formulation and application expertise. Our goal is to be a powerful asset for our partner brands and a catalyst for faster, more confident innovation.
What truly sets this Center apart is how deeply integrated it is with our cultivation, processing, and scientific research teams. Because we control the full supply chain, we can address common formulation challenges—such as solubility, suspension, flavor pairing, and sensory performance—at the ingredient level, not as an afterthought.
The Center of Innovation is led by Jay Schmalz, our R&D Innovation Manager, and supported by our in-house team of food scientists, formulation experts, and researchers who collectively bring decades of experience developing functional foods, beverages, and supplements for leading consumer brands.
For our Founder, Dr. Sandra Carter, the launch represents a defining moment for the category. This Center reflects the infrastructure the functional mushroom space has been missing. It’s designed to help brands move beyond concepts and into market-ready products that deliver on both efficacy and experience. We believe it will fundamentally change how functional mushroom products are developed and commercialized.
Our Chief Science Officer, Julie Daoust, helped shape the Center based on her own experience leading R&D and innovation teams on the consumer brand side earlier in her career. As she often says, this is the partner she always wished she had—a team that understands ingredient science, formulation realities, scale-up challenges, and commercialization timelines all at once. The M2 Center of Innovation allows brands to innovate without building a full internal R&D infrastructure, while still delivering products that truly work.
The M2 Center of Innovation is now open, and we’re actively collaborating with food, beverage, and supplement brand partners who are ready to bring the next generation of functional mushroom products to market.
About M2 Ingredients
At M2 Ingredients, we’re leading the future of functional mushrooms as the most clinically supported functional mushroom ingredient supplier for food, beverage, and supplement brands. We are vertically integrated, organically growing and producing our ingredients in Southern California, and backed by the industry’s largest scientific and R&D team. We partner with brands to create products backed by real science and credible claims.
