There has been quite a bit of buzz in recent years surrounding mushroom based coffees...
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OKEECHOBEE — There has been quite a bit of buzz in recent years surrounding mushroom based coffees and health products and if it’s something you’re interested in trying, Okeechobee now has a shop that may be just what you’re looking for.
It’s called Runevia. It's owned and operated by Laurie Blomberg with the help of her husband Bill. The shop sells an organic, instant mushroom coffee and a variety of freeze-dried mushroom-based treats; but what Laurie seems most proud of is their mushroom based spray and lotion that she says has helped many of her friends and family with chronic and acute pain.
Laurie is originally from New York. She met her husband in Tennessee, where she attended college. From there they moved to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. The two ended up in Florida because her husband was a pastor who felt compelled to work with Native Americans and he discovered there were quite a few reservations in the state. “God laid that on his heart,” she said. “We found out there were seven reservations in Florida, so we began raising support by going to different churches and telling them what we were going to do. Then we moved on the Brighton Reservation in an RV in about 2002 and began working with a church out of Brighton." They have since switched churches but still live in Brighton.
In 2012 the couple realized that they needed to start preparing for retirement but they hadn’t set anything aside. Laurie said she began praying on it and trying to think of a something they could do that would fund their retirement but not interfere with their work on the reservation. “Then it was about December of 2012,” she recalls. “That my husband said, ‘What do you think about growing oyster mushrooms?’”
Laurie admits that she had no clue about growing mushrooms at the time, but they began researching it. Then they rented an airplane hanger from one of the members of their church and began growing brown oyster mushrooms. From there, she said their business “mushroomed."
“Once they begin growing they just poof,” she said. “In a couple of days they’re big. It takes a while to nurture them, get them to that point, but once they start pinning [little pins that start growing out of the bag] they just boom.”
They began selling to Whole Foods stores across the state, but unfortunately the person they were renting the airport hanger from needed the building for a new business. “It broke my heart to shut the business down,” Laurie said. “That was my hope for our retirement.” She explained that it was right after the Covid-19 epidemic when property values were very high and that they couldn’t afford to buy a place and build a facility up to the Whole Food standards.
As it turned out, she may have already stumbled upon the answer to their problem. During the time they were growing mushrooms for Whole Foods, Laurie came up with the recipe for the mushroom-based spray that her shop offers today.
“I like tinkering with stuff,” Laurie said. “I like figuring out natural answers to problems, and one of the things that I made was a spray with mushrooms, colloidal silver, and rosemary. I made it myself. I made the colloidal silver myself, I made the rosemary extract, and the brown oyster mushroom extract from mushrooms that we grew.”
One night she sprayed the substance on a hangnail that she had that she says was very red, hot and hurt to touch. To her surprise, the hangnail seemed to stop hurting. Laurie said the spray also helped her husband with pain in his hands that he dealt with daily from tying the bags of mushrooms they were selling. “From then on I started making it and handing it out to friends and family. Everybody. Going, ‘tell me what this does’”, she said.
That was the beginning of what would eventually lead to the business. At first Laurie was making the spray from her home but eventually needed more room and had to rent a space in January 2026. Initially, the space was just for storage and production, and Laurie had no plans to open shop. Her intention was just to sell online, but she continuously had people stopping by asking when she was going to open.
Laurie has video testimonials on her phone from all of the people who have found comfort and relief in her mushroom based spray, but she knows there are skeptics.
“Everyone has pain,” she said. “All I can say is try it and see if it works for you. Everyone is different.”
Inside the store, there are bottles of the spray, and a lotion now too, that customers can use and try for themselves. She plans to put out a newsletter in the near future and all those who sign up for it will get a free sample bottle.
In addition to the spray, Runevia offers mushroom-based coffee and freeze-dried treats that come in a variety of different flavors. Free samples of those are available as well. “And from now until the end of the year if someone stops by and mentions Lake Okeechobee News we will do $5 off of $50 or more,” Laurie said.
Runevia is located in the plaza next to Mom’s Kitchen at 909 S. Parrott Ave. in Okeechobee. You can also visit Runevia.com.
