When Harvindar Singh first visited the Emeryville warehouse of BTTR Ventures, the urban-farming start-up didn't have a product so much as a vision— mushrooms grown in recycled coffee grounds.
Just more than a year later, BTTR mushrooms and growing kits are featured on the shelves of 30 Whole Foods Market Inc. stores in Northern California and a wider rollout is in the works.
Mr. Singh is Whole Foods' only full-time food forager, scouring the Bay Area for locally made products that are often little-known—and potentially profitable. He helps bring new items to the chain's 284 stores nationwide in part by lending money to producers that need funds to ramp up production.
"My job is to go out there and find the best local products," said Mr. Singh, 39 years old. "I like going to obscure little towns that may have 10 vendors and you always find one [with potential]."
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Photo by Ariel Zambelich for The Wall Street Journal
