If you're standing outside their complex of commercial, industrial and office spaces all blending into Hochelaga's industrial landscape, there isn't much to see. Inside, however, there's one DIY series of rooms which look more like a punk take on a biotech startup: Steam hisses from custom-built sterilizers, sensors monitor humidity levels in real-time, and hundreds of bags of what looks like decomposing wood sit on metal racks that reach towards high ceilings, sprouting everything from oyster mushrooms and shiitake to lion's mane.

It's where two former engineers, Vathana Len and Daniel Vogt, have built the lab-farm hybrid Full Pin to offer a new way for how Montreal restaurants, and Montrealers at large, can think about urban agriculture. The business model is simple: grow the highest-quality gourmet mushrooms possible and deliver crops grown the day before within 24 hours to restaurants within a 10-kilometer radius, all without distributors, middlemen, or inventory sitting in refrigerated trucks for days. Simple, see?

And now? Their product has been in the hands of chefs from places like Montréal Plaza, Monkland Tavern, Jun I, Mui Mui, Buvette Beaubien, and Fleurs et Cadeaux.

The pair had known each other for years before discovering they shared an obsession. Both were fascinated by mushrooms, though for different reasons; Daniel had been researching mycelium as a natural solution to combat tree parasites in urban forestry. Vathana, whose Cambodian background meant mushrooms had always been part of family meals, was interested in their culinary potential as meat substitutes. This grew into what Vathana says they called "fungi tech".

When Full Pin launched five years ago, Montreal's gourmet mushroom scene was pretty limited. You had Les 400 Pieds de Champignon, the old guard, and a few smaller operations focused mainly on farmers markets. Vathana and Daniel saw an opening—not just for different varieties of mushrooms, but for a completely different approach to growing and distributing them.

If you're standing outside their complex of commercial, industrial and office spaces all blending into Hochelaga's industrial landscape, there isn't much to see. Inside, however, there's one DIY series of rooms which look more like a punk take on a biotech startup: Steam hisses from custom-built sterilizers, sensors monitor humidity levels in real-time, and hundreds of bags of what looks like decomposing wood sit on metal racks that reach towards high ceilings, sprouting everything from oyster mushrooms and shiitake to lion's mane.

It's where two former engineers, Vathana Len and Daniel Vogt, have built the lab-farm hybrid Full Pin to offer a new way for how Montreal restaurants, and Montrealers at large, can think about urban agriculture. The business model is simple: grow the highest-quality gourmet mushrooms possible and deliver crops grown the day before within 24 hours to restaurants within a 10-kilometer radius, all without distributors, middlemen, or inventory sitting in refrigerated trucks for days. Simple, see?

And now? Their product has been in the hands of chefs from places like Montréal Plaza, Monkland Tavern, Jun I, Mui Mui, Buvette Beaubien, and Fleurs et Cadeaux.

The pair had known each other for years before discovering they shared an obsession. Both were fascinated by mushrooms, though for different reasons; Daniel had been researching mycelium as a natural solution to combat tree parasites in urban forestry. Vathana, whose Cambodian background meant mushrooms had always been part of family meals, was interested in their culinary potential as meat substitutes. This grew into what Vathana says they called "fungi tech".

When Full Pin launched five years ago, Montreal's gourmet mushroom scene was pretty limited. You had Les 400 Pieds de Champignon, the old guard, and a few smaller operations focused mainly on farmers markets. Vathana and Daniel saw an opening—not just for different varieties of mushrooms, but for a completely different approach to growing and distributing them.

If you're standing outside their complex of commercial, industrial and office spaces all blending into Hochelaga's industrial landscape, there isn't much to see. Inside, however, there's one DIY series of rooms which look more like a punk take on a biotech startup: Steam hisses from custom-built sterilizers, sensors monitor humidity levels in real-time, and hundreds of bags of what looks like decomposing wood sit on metal racks that reach towards high ceilings, sprouting everything from oyster mushrooms and shiitake to lion's mane.

It's where two former engineers, Vathana Len and Daniel Vogt, have built the lab-farm hybrid Full Pin to offer a new way for how Montreal restaurants, and Montrealers at large, can think about urban agriculture. The business model is simple: grow the highest-quality gourmet mushrooms possible and deliver crops grown the day before within 24 hours to restaurants within a 10-kilometer radius, all without distributors, middlemen, or inventory sitting in refrigerated trucks for days. Simple, see?

If you're standing outside their complex of commercial, industrial and office spaces all blending into Hochelaga's industrial landscape, there isn't much to see. Inside, however, there's one DIY series of rooms which look more like a punk take on a biotech startup: Steam hisses from custom-built sterilizers, sensors monitor humidity levels in real-time, and hundreds of bags of what looks like decomposing wood sit on metal racks that reach towards high ceilings, sprouting everything from oyster mushrooms and shiitake to lion's mane.

It's where two former engineers, Vathana Len and Daniel Vogt, have built the lab-farm hybrid Full Pin to offer a new way for how Montreal restaurants, and Montrealers at large, can think about urban agriculture. The business model is simple: grow the highest-quality gourmet mushrooms possible and deliver crops grown the day before within 24 hours to restaurants within a 10-kilometer radius, all without distributors, middlemen, or inventory sitting in refrigerated trucks for days. Simple, see?