Alice Mushrooms has secured $8 million in an oversubscribed series A round, $3 million more than the functional mushroom-infused chocolate maker’s target for it.
NewBound, backer of Mimikai and The 7 Virtues, led the round, with participation from Unilever Ventures, which wrote the largest check, previous investor L Catterton, the private equity firm connected to LVMH Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy that led Alice Mushrooms’ seed round in August last year, and DJ and electronic music producer Tiësto. The popular music mogul isn’t the first big name to invest in Alice. Zac Efron, Pedro Pascal and Kevin Hart participated in its previous funding round, and it received investment from former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo at launch.
“Alice is getting her braces off,” jokes CEO Lindsay Goodstein, who founded Alice Mushrooms with Charlotte Cruze in 2022. “It was an incredible happy ending to a long, rollercoaster of a raise. There was a lot of interest. I think it really speaks to the market, the form factor that we’ve chosen, the branding, the vision. It felt really good to have that validation from partners.”
The cash infusion will be put toward major retail expansion planned for the fourth quarter this year and assortment growth. Alice Mushrooms declines to name two new retail partnerships, including one mass-market chain, but shares they will bring its merchandise to 1,300 new doors nationwide and spark a 250% increase in 2025 sales from retailers. Currently, the brand is sold at Sprouts Market, Erewhon, Clean Market and hundreds of independent natural food and lifestyle retailers.
“We’re rooted in chocolate. We’re going to stay rooted in chocolate.”
Overall, Alice Mushrooms anticipates its revenues will jump 40% to an eight-figure sum this year. The brand’s sleek tins of functional chocolates—Brainstorm, Happy Ending and bestseller Nightcap—retail for $29. Introduced on its website last week, Alice Mushrooms’ most recent product release, $58 Party Trick, is a chocolate supplement for the burgeoning number of non-drinkers. It contains cordyceps, kanna, mucuna pruriens, gotu kola, l-taurine, caffeine and guayusa, and the brand describes it as “for social elevation and mood boosting without the hangover” and “the social lubricant for a sober-curious generation.” It will be rolling out to retailers in November.
Kanna, a medicinal and psychoactive plant from South Africa that’s been depended upon by indigenous communities for centuries, has been gaining traction in recent years among innovative wellness brands looking to support people who want to party more responsibly.
“We formulated it to be a non-alcoholic party drug alternative chocolate,” says Goodstein. “It’s really where neuroscience meets indulgence. It supports all three of your feel-good neurotransmitters. So, it boosts dopamine for confidence, balances GABA for calm focus, and it keeps serotonin active for connection, so it makes you feel good in the moment and then even better the next day.”
To fête the launch of Party Trick, Alice Mushrooms went a different route than its usual splashy launch party. Instead, the brand opted for a number of smaller activations, including guerrilla-style product sampling at different New York Fashion Week events and co-hosting parties with popular Substackers Jess Graves of The Love List and Justin Moran of Who’s That?.
Two additional products are due out later this year. A forthcoming product in the women’s wellness space is formulated with Alice Mushrooms’ investor and chief medical advisor OB-GYN Jen Ashton. An area Alice Mushrooms isn’t extending into is gummies, which have become wildly popular among wellness brands, especially those that formulate with mushrooms.
“Gummies are filled with gums and emulsifiers, so for your body to break that down will take longer than it would to break down a capsule…With chocolate, you get so much more bang for your buck because as you’re chewing the chocolate, you’re starting the absorption process in the mouth,” says Goodstein. “You actually get 70% to 80% absorption from chewing your supplements. So, we’re such big fans of chewing supplements that aren’t filled with gums and emulsifiers. We’re rooted in chocolate. We’re going to stay rooted in chocolate. There might be another type of form factor down the line, but it would still be of the chocolate family.”
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