My Food Job Rocks!

James Richardson has a PhD in anthropology and has worked for the Hartman Group for a little less than 15 years. During that time, he’s done work for a whole variety of different companies. From small companies to legacy brands. With a tone similar to Anthony Bourdain’s view of the restaurant interview, James brings a realistic yet refreshing viewpoint on the food industry and throughout the interview, brings a ton of tangible tips on how to grow, especially if you’re in the beginning stage of starting up. Questions like if your time is valued in trade shows, or what year food companies are typically profitable, or how you can navigate through different selling channels are all topics that we talk about. So get ready for a jam-packed interview on the inner workings of what really goes into growing a food business By the way, James has some awesome stuff in the pipeline. Not only does he have a podcast called Startup Confidential, but he also will be launching the book, Ramping Your Brand, at the end of the y

Pete Brennan is the Co-Founder of Soñar! Foods. A mission-driven company that sells plant powered tortilla chips. Pete might have started his own food business, but he is a veteran in the food industry. With experience from E&J Gallo Winery, Kelloggs, Foster Farms, and Zola, Pete’s specialty is marketing big brands. He teamed up with the best person he knew to start Soñar! Foods, his wife, Maria. Pete and I met at the Fancy Food Show, and again at the Alt Protein show. Pete’s a go-getter and cares about his community and every time I’m on LinkedIn, I see pallets of his chips get delivered to the nearest community market. The best part about this family business is that they really do care about doing good in the world, as 1% of their annual sales goes to helping the Latino community. Learn more about the amazing origin of this on-fire startup, its mission, and the shoulders it stood on, to be successful, and perhaps the content of this interview allows you to explore what good you can do in your world Spo

Mark Crowell has had quite an amazing culinary journey with a lot of risks and a lot of reward. First he tells me how he found out about cooking, by staging at a restaurant in Europe, and brought that love back to the United States and worked hard enough to open his own restaurant. But opening up a restaurant was really hard, and he struggled. Eventually, he became an R+D Director at both Olive Garden and Starbucks. Eventually, Mark threw it all away and started consulting. He again struggled at first but then he started to build. Now CuliNex is a thriving clean label consulting company in Washington. He has a dozen members on his team, people with whom I’ve met personally! I think the best part of the episode is the stories Mark gives about the struggles of creating businesses. But there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. As long as you have some faith. Sponsor: Salt of the Earth I'm happy to introduce our newest sponsor: Salt of the Earth and their new ingredient,  Mediterranean Umami, an all-natur

Jeremy Smith, founder of LaunchPad has impacted iconic brands such as Apple, Chobani, Bob’s Red Mills, Urban Remedy and Kumana. This episode has prime examples on how Jeremy has worked with these company's and how these companies went to the next level. A lot of great takeaways for food entrepreneurs and marketers including how to recognize superflourous trends versus trends that stick, with also amazing advice on how to make your brand everlasting. You’ll get so many great examples from iconic brands in this episode that will blow you away. Jeremy is not shy to say what’s on his mind, but he backs it up with some pretty compelling feats. If you’re a starting brand or even an experienced product developer, you’ll learn something from this episode that might help you on your next project. Sponsor: Salt of the Earth I'm happy to introduce our newest sponsor: Salt of the Earth and their new ingredient,  Mediterranean Umami, an all-natural and clean-label flavor enhancer and sodium reduction ingredient that work

Sally Squires is a food communicator who works with really cool companies crafting messages. She spent her early years at the Washington Post, and now works for Weber Shadwick, as their SVP-Management Supervisor & Director, Food, Nutrition and Wellness Communications A funny story about this interview is that you might recall I had the opportunity to go to The Ohio State University to talk about podcasting and they dropped me off in a room with Sally Squires. After a brief talk about some interesting topics, I took out my podcasting gear and did an interview there on the spot! During Sally’s 24 years at the Washington Post, she built out the nutrition section of the organization. She started with small column where people would send her questions and this launched her career from working with the USDA, to collaborate with cool food tech startups to improve their messaging. So get ready to learn about how to be a critical thinker, to have the ability to sort fact from fiction as you’ll look into the mind a

I met Darryl at an NCIFT event about a year ago and we talked, and after the event, he invited me to drink with him and I got a free beer out of the deal. I talked his ear off about podcasting and he wanted to start one. Every month, when I saw him at an IFT event, I asked him if he started. 8 months later, this podcast came to life and I’ve been giving Darryl pointers ever since. What’s great is that in almost every IFT event where Darryl and I are there, we gather a group of friends to go and drink at a local craft beer afterwards and it’s always a blast. If you’re in California, you’re welcomed to join us! Just a disclaimer, this is a very long episode! If you want some good career advice, the first 45 minutes are full of that. The rest, we talk about random stuff and as I keep on drinking some really good beer. This includes topics such as marketing craft beers, describing beer in specific detail, slurring my words, and sprinkled in there are bits of wisdom, from all of the knowledge. So the first half, t

This is a bonus episode with Rachelle Boucher (episode 46) as she talks about her experience working as a private chef for the Lucas family and her experience working with the Lucas family including interacting with the kids, Lucas himself, and the actor of Jar Jar Binks. We do this live in Tinker Kitchen!  About Rachelle Culinary Program Developer, Private Chef and Appliance Whisperer  Chef Rachelle knew early on that food would be her medium. With the power to nourish, entertain, unite and delight humans she began to use it as the ultimate outlet for her boundless energy and creativity. As an adventurer and environmentalist, she creates immersive culinary programs, classes and content promoting sustainable food and wellness. She is also the "appliance whisperer", training individuals, architects and designers on how to choose and use modern cooking appliances and technology. She cooks regularly for secret celebrity clients. When not cooking, she and her husband Rob hike and picnic in their glorious new hom

This interview is with Andy Dratt, Chief Commercial Officer at Imbibe, a Beverage Innovation Company and has had past experiences building flavor divisions in Griffith, FONA, and Sensient. If you want to know all about what it takes to develop an innovative new beverage, this podcast episode is for you! Andy and his team at Imbibe are experts in developing beverages because it’s not just formulating and pay up, but it’s much more than that. It’s a whole system. Learn about the fine line between the possible and the impossible, and new beverage trends in this episode. You’ll also learn about the amazing career path Andy’s went through, and learn how even after some detours out of the food industry, he always ends up back into food. I was fortunate enough to listen to Andy’s talk at the RCA conference and it was really fun seeing him in person. Andy definitively knows his stuff about Beverages About Andy As Chief Commercial Officer at Imbibe, Andy Dratt leads a team with a cutting-edge approach to beverage deve

Lauren Joyner used to be a designer for many tech startups and a year ago, dropped all of that to pursue food and is now the founder of LOCA Foods, which is a plant-based cheese dip company. I met Lauren at the Cultured Meat Symposium and our companies were boothed together at the Fancy Food Show and Alternative Protein show. So of course, we chatted and our discussions were so good, I wanted to capture it on a podcast. A big portion of this interview is about year one of building a food company. Being in the thick of it, things can be difficult, but this is why I love talking about these stories not only does it helps Lauren and I to talk it out, but it gives a lens of the hard parts on creating a business from scratch Another cool topic we go over is the concept of Design Thinking, in which Lauren did a presentation about it at the Alternative Protein Show. Lauren explains it in great detail and perhaps you can use these concepts in your next project. *NEW* Sponsor: Salt of the Earth I'm happy to introduce

Marc Simony wrote a compelling post at his time at the American Food Innovation Summit. I found it pretty cool, so I asked him to be on the show. What I didn’t know until I did my reach is that Marc is one of the important people in TraceGains, one of the fastest growing supply chain management software programs in the food industry. And that he live din Phoenix, neat! Marc lays on a ton of advice on his experience working for TraceGains such as times pivoting the business and times where taking risks benefitted them. Marc specifically goes into the idea of recognizing weak signals and capitalizing on them I was happy to meet Marc live at the Cactus IFT Supplier’s Night in Phoenix. We talked for a bit, and I picked his brain on some potential new projects I’m working on for My Food Job Rocks. You can see a really cool picture of him on the show notes. VP of TraceGains Network Marc is a holistic brand thinker. He joined TraceGains in the spring of 2008 as head of marketing, where he continuously searched out

This episode is with Kenny Lao, who worked with the masterminds behind Nobu, created his own restaurant empire Rickshaw Dumplings, and now brings it all together in his new project, Culinary Task Force, a consulting service to help bring new restaurant concepts to life. We have a couple of episodes on My Food Job Rocks that deal with building restaurants so I asked Kenny advice on how to build one. Especially in the New York scene. Kenny did not disappoint telling me the intricate and honest details on creating a restaurant in the city. We go over a lot of things in what you might not actually realize goes into a successful restaurant including the importance of foot traffic, to finding an architecture, to having (what Kenny calls) a full bench. Kenny and I also talk about some soft skills like how to improve your stress levels, or how to persistent in getting a call with someone important. We also, of course, talk about Chinese food in great detail, especially how to make a good dumpling. About Kenny As the

Today, Tara-Ann Dugan gives us a deep dive into the wonderful world of pork which includes barbeque, pork chops, and bacon! We learn how pork is trending and in what ways the consumer eats the meat. We go into the insights on how the data was collected (if you’re into that like I am) and also some market trends that might be related to your field. Tara also has a great history in consumer insights and I loved talking to her about her career journey. Her 4 year McDonald's stint, for instance, was super informative to see how a giant company moves forward. Form all-day breakfast, to food mobile ordering apps. We apologize in advance for any sound issues in this interview. There is a high pitched kettle-like noise sporadically throughout the interview and we’ve tried multiple methods to reduce the noise the best we can. We recommend that you listen to this podcast not using headphones in case you are sensitive to high pitch noises. Other than that, enjoy the show. About Tara Tara-Ann Dugan (Tara) joined the Nat

I’m a huge fan of the viral videos on social media that teach you how to cook in just a few minutes. The dishes are eye poppingly bright and I personally love trying to replicate them. I caught Matthew’s post on LinkedIn, talking about his layoff from Buzzfeed. As many know, many media companies went through a layoff round, and unfortunately, Matthew was one of them. I reached out to Matt to tell his story and we had an interview that night. I learned about the complexity of creating Tasty videos and the neat tips and tricks that go with it. But what’s even more impressive is Matthew’s culinary journey. He went to the Culinary Insitute of America and graduated with no debt and during that time, he would post a video on youtube every week for 8 years, about his culinary creations! Matt is doing amazingly well, with media deals all around Los Angeles. He’s using his skills in culinary video content creation to freelance for companies such as Viacom and MTV Cribs, and working as a private chef for Pretty Healthy

I met Ethan Beswick at the Prime Root’s panel at IndieBio a couple of months ago and he was just a really cool, chill dude. It helped that he offered me some whiskey before the talk. After he told me what Endless West was about, I was curious to learn more. Ethan himself has an interesting background, especially since he took about a year off to go travel the world. I’ve heard of people do this, whether it’s teaching English, or just because they’re sick of it all. Sometimes I wish I could do that, so I ask Ethan my biggest fear: how do you adjust back after you take your trip? Ethan definitively got back to food science as his journey took him to a few innovative companies until he finally joined Endless West. Over time, he's picked up different innovation tips and tricks, which we dive into as well. So get ready to learn a bit about the alcohol industry, a little bit about hiring, and maybe a few tips and tricks, to innovate in your industry. About Ethan Ethan graduated as a Dean's Scholar with a Bachelor's

This episode is with Ziynet Boz, who recently got a job at the University of Florida as an Assistant Professor. Her expertise is on sustainable packaging and she is also a full bright scholar. Ziynet brings a lot of insight into the sustainable packaging realm and teaches me about what type of packaging is truly sustainable, and how you can find more about it online. We also revisit the topic of lifecycle analysis, something in which I feel is becoming a bigger and bigger topic. Last week, at Expo West's Climate Day, I learned the opportunities in the packaging problem. 47% of waste we produce is actually consumer packages. Not only that, but our rate of using these packages are exponentially rising up! Though we see many companies clean up the plastics in our ocean, because we are producing packaging so fast, it won’t even matter how much trash we try to clean up! With this, the speaker Tom Chi, presents us so many opportunities to solve this problem. From alternative packaging material to reducing. It’s de

Joseph Robertson's job is to convince politicians to focus on Climate Change, and we get into many strategies and stories on how to do just that. Joseph’s a powerhouse when it comes to working together with political bodies to get them to understand and act on the impending climate change issue. He not only plays a key role in getting Congress to focus on sustainable solutions, but he also has a great way of rallying up great people to join the cause. This episode gave me a bit of hope in the world. That with so many frequent catastrophes this year, more and more people are finally noticing what’s going on. And that people like you and me can actually make a difference in not just food, but policy, and so many other avenues. Thank you, Darin Detwiler, for this amazing guest. Perspectives like these really shock my system and it’s so cool getting a different, positive perspective on what’s going on in the world. Sponsor This episode is sponsored by the West Coast Nuriv Music and Tech festival a free music fest

We have our final Podcast Showcase Series with Alex Sharzi. He does the Cultured Meat and Future Food Podcast. His guest is amazing, Peter Verstrate is the CEO of Mosa Meat, a clean meat company in the Neatherlands. If you’re familiar with the clean meat and cell-based world, then you might know this company, because the Chief Science Officer, is Mark Post, the man who made the first lab-grown burger. You’ll learn a ton of actionable tips about the Clean Meat Industry, and Alex’s portfolio of guests is all about this field. From the firms in the United States, to Japan, everywhere. If you’re interested in Cell-based technology, Alex Shirazi has the best portfolio of guests. A little story about Alex is that I first found him online. Paul Shapiro just did an interview with him and he showed me this simple website where his interview was posted. I thought Alex was a newbie, so I wanted to reach out and give him some tips on podcasting. We coincidentally met at Food Funded and I ended up giving him some coordin

To continue with our Podcast Showcase Series, we have an episode from Katie Mleziva, podcast host of real food brands, a podcast that gives great insights on food marketing and how to get your amazing brand on the shelf. She will be interviewing Alli Ball, a well known retail consultant in the industry. I don’t think I would do justice talking about Katie, as she’s been a recent friend and addition to the food industry podcast space. So I decided to do a quick interview with her, to learn about what she does, and why she decided to do a podcast. Enjoy! Real Food Brands is a podcast that focuses on brand strategy concepts, and the main concept is to give actionable insights to scale food companies. Some fun facts Kaite started working at Kraft Foods and worked in the cheese industry in Wisconsin I then started consulting. Didn’t start with food, but ended up in food because I really want to be part of the solution. Katie has always had an entrepreneurial spirit, she used to draw “business plans” as a kid. Kat

To continue with our Podcast Showcase Series, we have an episode from Katie Jones from the Food Heroes Podcast. In this episode, she interviews a cool startup in the UK, a company that makes beer out of old bread. Katie Jones popped out of the scene last year when LinkedIn had this weird power of getting individuals to talk more. I was fortunate to ride the wave of this, and so did Katie. Katie has a very interesting story. You can actually listen to it on her podcast. I believe it’s episode 20. It’s a really good episode and you learn a ton about Katie’s background. Also, I get a shoutout on this episode, if you’re interested in seeing the inception of this, I’ve posted it on the show notes. So Kate is also an expert in plant-based foods such as vegan ice cream and vegan cheese. This is because of her experience at So Delicious, a very popular vegan ice cream company. Katie, who is inherently entrepreneurial, stayed in the company for 6 years building the company and creating vegan products and creating sy

Welcome to the My Food Job Rocks Podcast, a weekly podcast where we interview experts in the food industry and hear about their career path, their insights on new trends and technology and their love of food. I’m your host, Adam Yee and You are listening to episode 157, where Dr. Lin Carson from Bakerpedia and Dr. Debi from the American Institute of Baking, answer complex questions about the baking industry. This isn’t just “how do I bake bread” or “why is my bread pale” questions, these two are the experts of the baking industry. If you are not familiar with the baking industry, you might need to search something up, but there’s a website for that. Bakerpedia, a long time sponsor of My Food Job Rocks, houses hundreds of articles that help the novice commercial baker learn about the potential of baking. Bakerpedia can tell you what to add to help you optimize your bread, dives into complex processes by breaking them down, and this is all for free. Lin also has a podcast called Baked In Science, which can be f