SLO County wellness shop sells more than 100 products — from mushrooms to mugwort tea
What do mushrooms, teas and CBD-laden chocolates have in common?
They’re among the many wellness-oriented products sold by Cambria’s Plantae & Fungi shop, which started online and launched its brick-and-mortar retail location in November.
The store is located at 750 Sheffield St., just off Main Street and across Santa Rosa Creek from Highway 1. The mustard-colored building with its corner front door used to house an upscale art gallery.
At Plantae & Fungi, life and business partners Michael “Mike” Coulson and Miho Watanabe offer a variety of supplements, salves, creams, oils and other products designed to help their clients feel, live and sleep better.
A sign outside the shop urges customers to “follow their roots.”
On the store’s website, Coulson and Watanabe say their “passion for plants and mushrooms stems from our commitment to our planet and our people.”
“All of our products are locally sourced, starting from Cambria ... and are made by human hands from small businesses,” they say.
All the products sold at Plantae & Fungi are vegan and gluten free, and many are pet friendly and dairy free as well.
Couple moves to Cambria, launches health and wellness store
Coulson and his partner moved to Cambria from the Los Angeles area to escape big-city madness and be closer to his parents, Marianne and Larry Coulson.
But the couple didn’t immediately go into business for themselves. Instead, they worked in San Luis Obispo’s corporate world — Mike Coulson at an active apparel firm and Watanabe at a solar company.
The corporate rat race wasn’t a good fit for Coulson and Watanabe, who are now 41 and 34, respectively — so they quit in 2016.
They wanted to become entrepreneurs and provide “something beneficial for society,” Coulson wrote via email, adding that he and Watanabe “felt plant-based health and wellness was one of the best ways to help people feel better in their daily lives.”
They “started creating herbal teas and confections for ourselves, for our own wellness and mental health,” he said, “because we did not like any of the products that were out there.”
Coulson started with an herbal sleep tea blend.
“It worked very well,” he said, so he investigated “what else I can make to make certain areas of my life better? And from there, it took off.”
Plantae & Fungi sells everything from teas to tinctures
Plantae & Fungi offers more than 100 products designed to help people feel better, such as air-purifying houseplants, mushroom powders, herbs, roots, seeds, extracts and supplements — as well as its signature teas and tisanes.
Prices range from $1.40 an ounce for flax seed to $90 for 2,400 milligrams of the Deep Sleep tincture. The store’s popular tea blends, which feature ingredients ranging from horny goat weed and butcher’s broom and mugwort and marshmallow root, are $9 an ounce.
Each blend is specifically designed to address certain ailments, aches or conditions.
“They have to taste good (too),” Coulson said.
What’s the difference between a tea and a tisane? According to Coulson, tea is created when tea leaves are infused in hot water, while a tisane happens when hot water is poured over anything from herbs to ground coffee beans.
Plantae & Fungi offers a number of specialty product lines crafted in house, including Vana Tisanes herbal teas, Olfaction Experiences aromatherapy scents and baceae tinctures, topicals and CBD-infused chocolates.
The store sells a dozen different varieties of chocolates, from peanut and almond butter cups to truffles and turtles, with more specialties in the planning stages.
Watanabe said the products in the store’s Sleep and Calm sections fly off the shelves, as those are the “areas that customers want help in improving.”
“But we offer lots of products for different areas of the body and mind,” she explained, “and when someone asks what are our most popular product, Mike always says the best product for the customer is the one that they could use most in their lives.”
“Consistency is the key,” Watanabe said, “so finding the right product for the right person is what Mike is there to do while they are in our store.”
The couple’s newest creation is the Bounty & Bloom Kitchen line, which offers pre-packaged organic, vegan meals made in small batches in partnership with Cambria chef Daniel Becker.
“We generally offer three items on Fridays through Tuesdays, and when they sell out, we’re out for the week. So, it’s first come, first served,” Coulson said, describing the Bounty & Bloom line as “fresh, satisfying (and) an convenient way to get a healthy meal ... on the go.”
Eventually, he and Watanabe hope to expand the reach of Bounty & Bloom products to other stores across the county.
Plantae & Fungi is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Call 805-395-9323 for more information.
This story was originally published August 29, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "SLO County wellness shop sells more than 100 products — from mushrooms to mugwort tea."
