Morels are a delicacy that can be found during the Spring season. They’re often sold in grocery stores, but what’s their worth? This blog post will explain how much morels sell for and answer some common questions about them.
So how much do morels sell for? Fresh morels sell for $20 a pound in grocery stores. It takes about 25 morels to make a pound. Dried morels sell for $15-$20 per ounce and about $160 per pound. Cooked morels in dishes sold via a food truck or farmer’s market sell for up to $72 per pound minus the cost of the other items in the dish. Frozen morels sell for $40 per pound.
It takes about 8 pounds of fresh morels (worth $240) to make 1 lb of dried morels (worth $160). It’s far more profitable to sell fresh than dried. However, dried morels will last up to 12 months or longer so you have more time to sell them. Fresh morels only last 1-2 weeks when refrigerated so you’ll need to team with a grocery store or sell at a farmer’s market to get these out fast.
Rather than drying your extra morels consider cooking them and selling them as part of a dish from a food truck or at your local farmer’s market. A $12 dish that uses 4 morels on the side would make you about $72 per pound of morels minus the cost of the rest of the dish.
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How Much Can You Make Per Hour Selling Morels?
You can make the most money per pound by selling dry morels. From there you need to factor in your time. As always, let’s run some numbers and let the math help us decide which is the most money per unit of your time.
We made a spreadsheet to run through the options in this article.
The winner – buy fresh, cook, and sell hot dishes at your farmer’s market – $261 per hour.
This was followed closely by wildcrafting and selling to local grocery stores fresh.
Buying fresh then selling dry online was the loser.
| Option | Time to Wildcraft or buy from the store (4 hours to wildcraft 200 morels or 1 hour to buy 200 from store) | Time to Clean (hours spent to prep) | Time to Dry or Cook/Freeze (your hours spent to prep) | Time to Sell (online, drive to grocery, or farm stand) | Hourly Rate (what you would pay employee or yourself to do this | Cost to buy per pound (1 pound fresh or 8 lbs fresh to make 1 lb dry) | Price per pound | Pounds Sold | Profit Per Hour |
| Buy Fresh, Dry, Sell Online | 1 | 0 | 0.5 | 1 | $15.00 | $240.00 | $160.00 | 1 | -$117.50 |
| Wildcraft, Dry, Sell Online | 4 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 | $15.00 | $0.00 | $160.00 | 1 | $70.00 |
| Wildcraft, Sell Fresh to Grocery | 4 | 0.5 | 0 | 1 | $15.00 | $0.00 | $40.00 | 8 | $237.50 |
| Buy Fresh, Cook, Sell Hot In Person | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | $15.00 | $30.00 | $72.00 | 8 | $261.00 |
| Buy Fresh, Cook, Freeze, and Sell Online | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | $15.00 | $30.00 | $60.00 | 8 | $180.00 |
Pricing Your Morel Mushrooms for Sale
Frozen Morels
Oregon mushrooms sell frozen morels for $40 per pound. This is within the range of $20 – $50 per pound you’d expect to pay for fresh morels. Other sellers offer this up to $50 per pound frozen.
Grocery stores usually don’t carry frozen morels. That makes the value of year-round frozen morels a bit higher. Both dried and frozen morels have unique changes that happen to their taste and structure when they undergo drying or freezing.
Cooked Morels
Cooked morels are not something people usually talk about. The frozen morels I could find were just frozen. Why doesn’t anyone sell breaded morels ready to fry? We’ve got a few recipes on frying morels then freezing them.
Since there’s some extra work involved you could sell these for more. Perhaps $60 a pound or higher as you could likely sell them $10 per 4 fried and frozen morels. You may even be able to make a business out of buying dried or frozen morels, prepping and cooking them, refreezing them then selling them ready to fry again.
An even more under-explored option is to serve hot cooked morels from a food truck or farmer’s market stand in the spring season. Based on some quick analysis if done right you should be able to sell these in aggregate for $72 per pound.
It takes about 24 morels or so to make a pound of fresh morels. If you divided that up into 6 parts you’ll have 4 morels for each side dish. If you sell each dish for $12 that’s $72 minus the expenses for the other foods in your dish.
This method sounds fun but you’ll need to decide what kind of work you like better – cooking or wildcrafting. If you enjoy the cooking then you buy the fresh morels for $30 a pound in the spring, cook, then sell for the $40 profit or so.
If you enjoy wildcrafting them then you are better off finding them than drying and selling them online. You can also look at options to freeze them cooked and selling them for more in person or online. You’ll make more selling them at the higher dry price point than you would from wildcrafting than cooking. You just lose too much time in the field wildcrafting them and not making enough via selling hot cooked products.
Expenses Relating To Selling Morels – Certification, Taxes, Etc.
Some states require certification. Just about every locality will charge taxes. If you are selling to a grocery store, you’ve registered your business in your state, and you have a resellers license then you won’t usually have to pay sales tax.
See your CPA for these answers as we don’t know your area and we aren’t tax professionals.
The biggest expense will always be time. Either your time finding, prepping, and selling or your employee’s time to do the same.
How Many Morels Does It Take To Make A Pound Of Fresh Morels?
It takes 25 fresh morels to make a pound.
How Many Morels Does It Take To Make A Pound Of Dried Morels?
You’ll need 8 pounds of fresh morels to make 1 pound of dried morels. 8 pounds of fresh is about 200 morels. Therefore, there are 200 morels per pound of dried morels.
