Mushroom coffee now being sold at Sea-Tac Airport

In the land of coffee, a new kind of joe is being introduced at Sea-Tac Airport. This one is infused with adaptogenic mushrooms.

“Adaptogens are usually plant or fungi-based things that have benefits,” Jody Hall of Wunderground Coffee said on Seattle’s Morning News. “So they help us regulate our body’s stress, cortisol, mood, things like that.”

Hall explained that she thought Sea-Tac was the perfect location to offer coffee that helps soothe the stress of travel. “We think of ourselves as coffee 2.0.”

Hall is a former marketing manager at Starbucks. She has developed brands such as Cupcake Royale and The Goodship, a high-end cannabis edible company.

Wunderground launched in 2021. It opened a store in the C Concourse of the airport last Friday.

“Mushrooms are considered superfoods, especially the mushrooms that we’re using,” Hall explained. “They have incredible properties around immunity, regulating our body, think of your body like a thermostat. And sometimes caffeine can trigger anxiety and things like that. It keeps our bodies in check. It helps us with circadian rhythms.”

Seattle Seahawks introduce new ‘turf dog’ at VMAC

The mushrooms don’t have any hallucinogenic properties.

“It’s a smoother caffeinated morning, then that spike and crash. It really does regulate and mitigate caffeine and jitters, which is probably the thing you notice right away, especially if you’re one out of the 20 million Americans that are diagnosed with anxiety disorder. So many can’t drink coffee anymore.”

Besides the airport, Wunderground has a cafe at 1111 E. Pike St. in Seattle and is sold at PCC Markets.

“It’s a naturally occurring thing,” Hall said. “It’s a commercially available thing that adaptogenic mushrooms have been used in, especially Asian cultures and China for thousands of years to help with health, wellness, immunity, gut health, etc. So the U.S. is waking up to what has been going on for thousands of years.”

On their website, Hall points out that Wunderground “is taking the most enjoyed and ritualistic beverage in the world, making it better, and making it to make you feel better.”

In the long-run, her customers will decide the appeal of mushroom coffee.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.