My Food Job Rocks!

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Today I help Debomitra Dey and Soniya Katekar design their website through a conference call. I’ve done this before, but I wanted to post this up so eventually, if you would like to create a blog, or Instagram account, or podcast, you can use this as a way to motivate you, or at least see how I get motivated to do things. In this episode, I drill down on the purpose on how I structure my website, and then talk about how committed you want this to be. More importantly, what are the steps and processes you need to focus on to go all out? I hope this episode will inspire you to create your own platform! Like Debomitra and Soniya, I’m always happy to chat with people who are trying out ways to educate people on science. After all, we are all in this together. Sponsor - BAKERpedia This episode is brought to you by BAKERpedia – your one-stop, resource that answers all your questions on industry trends, ingredient information, food safety and more. It’s shared knowledge, freely available, always. BAKERpedia.com –

I’m sure you've heard a lot about Tyson Foods investing in a lot of cutting edge companies. Beyond Meat, Memphis Meats, and Tovala to name a few. I wanted to get to the bottom of this, so I asked Tom Mastrobuoni to talk about the reasons why Tyson is putting a stake into these companies. His answer surprised me. To get ahead and be truly innovative, Tyson knows that it has to be invested in these up and coming companies. I learned the complexities of why it’s a win-win situation for companies to partner with Tyson. For one, Tyson has a vast array of resources to help any food company out. The new food companies just have to innovative. One of the most valuable things in the interview is talking with Tom about the newest trends. Because Tom is at the cutting edge of the industry, I asked for his opinion on plant-based foods, clean meat, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, among others. If you want to know the hottest and most game changing food technologies, this is the episode you should listen to. I h

Fred Hart contacted me after listening to my interview with Hugh Thomas and was so inspired by it, he contacted me to be on the show. Fred’s pretty legit, he’s been a speaker for Expo West, has an awesomely inspiring team, and the dude just oozes passion. We talk a lot about the power of branding, and the nuances it really takes to make a brand stand out. We don’t only say the power of say, words, but the power of color, the power of being different, and small design tweaks to make it stand out. Other big topics are about my favorite topic, how to be more creative, why Boulder has such a powerful natural food community and the beauty of being obsessed with your work. Fred also was generous to share his expo west experience. Attached is his team's massive photo collection of the expo.  And his article about it! Sponsor - BAKERpedia This episode is brought to you by BAKERpedia – your one-stop, resource that answers all your questions on industry trends, ingredient information, food safety and more. It’s sh

Sebastien messaged me on linkedin and said he was impressed by his work. Being the snoop that I am, I checked out his profile and found he was a food photographer! Hmmmm I never had a food photographer on the show…. I decided to interview Sebastien to understand the art of photography and what I got out of it was an interview about the amazing feeling interviewing creative people. Sebastien isn’t just a photographer, I would say he is a sort of historian. He not only takes food photos, but also interviews and documents the works of chefs, hunters, anyone in the food industry really. If you like photography as a hobby, Sebastien gives some great tips not only in a  professional sense like what equipment to use, but also how to up your Instagram game. He also talks about the struggles of being a photography student in college and described the experience of making his family’s lobster bisque. About Sébastien Born into a culinary household and raised in some of the finest kitchens, Sébastien’s passion for food

This is my take on an entrepreneur interview. Most if not all of the questions are free form in some way so this was an…interesting episode. It takes a while for Keenan and I to warm up, to get on each other’s wavelength, but you’ll get some amazing dialog at the end of the episode. Originally supposed to be an episode about ethics, this became an episode about people. How do you find good people, what makes people tick, what makes them do good things, or bad things. Perhaps that’s the most important thing in entrepreneurship. Keenan does not hold back in this interviews and is a fiery and loud guest. He will bring some very controversial views. I ask you just listen. This is the end of our Northeastern Lecture Series. Next week we’ll be going back to our 1 episode a week format every Monday. See you next week! Sponsor - BAKERpedia This episode is brought to you by BAKERpedia – your one-stop, resource that answers all your questions on industry trends, ingredient information, food safety and more. It’s sha

As you’ve heard in episode 112 with Todd Barr and 114 with David Mahoney, Analytics becomes an ever powerful technology to save the world. Yet the subject is pretty dense and hard to grasp. In most cases, it requires coding. I bring Uwe Hohgrawe on the show to talk a bit more about analytics and his answers surprised me. It’s actually better to be a subject matter expert first and then dive into the analytics more than anything else. So this interview is much more about why Analytics is something you might need to invest in the future, especially if you want to make big changes in the food industry. Sponsor - BAKERpedia This episode is brought to you by BAKERpedia – your one-stop, resource that answers all your questions on industry trends, ingredient information, food safety and more. It’s shared knowledge, freely available, always. BAKERpedia.com – we do all the thinking so you can focus on your business. Sponsor – FoodGrads If you are even just a little bit interested in a career in food & beverag

Can you patent your grandma’s cookies? No, but it can be a trade secret. David works as a lawyer at a really cool company that you’ve probably never heard of: Indigo Ag. From what I've gathered, the company uses data and analytics to find the optimal place to grow plants all around the world. David’s path to being a lawyer was unconventional but synergizes very well with what he was passionate about. He was a scientist first, but was so good at arguing and logic, that he was recommended to be a lawyer. In the end, he was able to combine his love of science with his practice of law. A big portion of the podcast involves us talking about the difference between a trade secret, a patent and a copyright. Things that are confusing and there’s a lot of gray area, but it’s nice to know. I recall in this interview, I had a cold so I might sound a bit clogged up and congested.  Expect some loud coughs. Sponsor - BAKERpedia This episode is brought to you by BAKERpedia – your one-stop, resource that answers all your q

If you’re in the non-profit space, what do you have to do to jump through the hoops and get funded on your project that will help your community? This is the question I asked Ted Johnson today. Ted leads an incubator that helps push these projects to get funded and we go through multiple scenarios on how to get community projects funded. This includes things I’ve never known. Some examples include ethnic based sororities and fraternities, kickstarters and go-fund-me’s. Other topics we talk about that are super interesting is the complexities of Food Deserts and the power of writing. We really stress the importance that everyone should learn to write and the best way to do it? Start a blog! About Ted Theodore R. Johnson is a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Dr. Johnson was a national fellow at the New America Foundation, where he undertook projects on black voting behavior and the role of national solidarity in addressing racial inequality. Previously, he wa

  We shoot around the topic of big data around, but it’s hard for us to understand what that actually means. Luckily, Todd Barr helps break down not only Big Data, but also gives us a taste of the fascinating world of Geographic Information Systems, and Precision Agriculture. Using drones, tractors, or anything that scans data, Todd can gather mass amounts of data, organize it, and give hyper-targeted solutions on certain issues in the food realm. We give tons of examples of how this technology works. For example, we can fix farms really easily because we know what plots of lands need more water, and we know where to put Whole foods in which suburb because we know what type of people live there, This interview is admittedly really rocky, because I had a hard time trying to understand this! And I want to understand it so I ask a lot of questions. Todd does an amazing job breaking it down with examples on how precision agriculture can feed the world. The first half of the interview is very rough, but I want you

  To kick off our Northeastern Lecture Series, I give you an episode that feels like a spy flick than anything else. Mitchell leads and manages food spies who look for food fraud in various companies and his mission in life is to make food authentic. This was all inspired by a food safety incident in China. So this episode brings us to the complex world of food fraud, and how Mitchell promotes food authenticity through various services and non-profits. We also get into a discussion on blockchain. Though nobody seems to truly understand blockchain, Mitchell tells us why it might not be the panacea we’re looking for. We do this interview live with Mitchell conveniently at Phoenix at the time. Kinda cool, huh? Sponsor - BAKERpedia This episode is brought to you by BAKERpedia – your one-stop, resource that answers all your questions on industry trends, ingredient information, food safety and more. It’s shared knowledge, freely available, always. BAKERpedia.com – we do all the thinking so you can focus on your

You may remember Darin in episode 73 where he talked about his life-long crusade to improve food safety. We’ve kept in touch and he asked me to help him with a guest lecturer project. Darin is in charge of the class, Global Economics of Food and Agriculture, which is a multidisciplinary graduate class focused on current global trends in the food industry. On the cutting edge, I was interested in helping him out and boy, I’m so glad I did. I was happy to interview 6 really cool guest lecturers from Darin’s class and wow did I learn a lot. Not only about the coolest technologies in the world like Geospatial tech, and environmental biome research, but there’s a lot on authenticity not only in the food realm but the political and entrepreneurial realm as well. Darin and I break down the purpose of the course and each of the guests that encompass this series I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. No ads this time, this one’s a freebie Show Notes GST 6350 – Global Economics of Food and Agriculture. This course was

This is a special interview where I get on skype and talk to not only Dr. Harris, but his whole class! In terms of content, this is a standard information about me, how my food job rocks, the life of a food scientist in my eyes, and what I’ve learned podcasting. If you’ve been a long time listener of the show, you’ll realize that I say the same things in previous episodes, or articles but unless you’re super obsessed with me, you’ll learn some things about me that is a great summary of the content I’ve produced in the past 110 episodes. You can even say I’ve updated my philosophy quite a bit. So key takeaways in this episode is that I distill the tactics for getting say, a job. Or switching jobs. Not only that, but the power of asking questions and the power of building your credibility. You’ll hear no laugh track on this one. Its either because I’m not funny or I couldn’t hear the crowd. I’ll be doing double episodes in the next 3 weeks and this is a special segment. I had the opportunity to help Darin Detwi

Really excited to have Austin on the show. What’s really cool is that he found My Food Job Rocks because he’s a regular listener of Don and Ben’s podcast, Food Safety Talk. Funny how that works, right? So Austin became a regular listener and engaged with me on social media. We now pretty much support each other in everything we do. Austin has his own site, Fur Farm Fork where he posts really technical, powerful stuff about food safety. This was a fun interview. Austin’s past was a bit different than most as he found out why his food job rocks out of falling into an internship and found out he really loved auditing and making corrections to said audits. Now taking on a leadership role at Earth2O. We get into in-depth discussions on whole genome sequencing, and since we have a water expert, we get into the raw water craze that was sweeping Silicon Valley at the time, and Austin has quite the interesting viewpoint on that. Also, quick disclaimer, I apologize for saying the company name Earth2O as Earth H2O multi

So this is part of the graduate student series, a series launched last year about graduate school. Even though Cat and Meg are graduate students, they have taken a different path. And this path is actually getting more popular. Cat and Meg are both getting their Masters of Professional Studies Designed for professions who want to transition into the food industry, this program is sprouting up everywhere. Even Cal Poly has one just for their dairy program! According to Cat and Meg, this 1 year intensive course allows you to tackle on a project while taking the classes you’ve always wanted including but not limited to, wine tasting, food entrepreneurship, and cheese making. Not only that, but Cat and Meg are also food communicators and instead of doing just a plain old podcast, they are killing it using Instagram! Check out @nonfictionfoods, where Cat and Meg post beautiful pictures of food and the science of that food. Overall, if you’re interested in a different approach for graduate school, or are interested

I stumbled upon Stephanie’s podcast and discovered that her episode count was the same as mine. Curious, I checked out her site and her clean, bright, and crisp platform contrasted my dark, grimy and unartistic website. I sent her a quick email and got a response back, and here we are today. Stephanie is located in Charleston South Carolina and travels all over the southern United States to eat food and interview a diverse array of guests that invoke a southern flare. There are some differences between our podcasts. Stephanie does her podcast face to face. I barely do. Her podcast has no structure, mine as too much structure. Her podcast is about the fury of southern cooking, mine is about the calmness of a food lab. But the passion is still there. Stephanie and I talk about communicating via podcasting and writing, especially what the difference is between the two mediums. As a writer, we also discuss how to describe food, and we give some salivating examples in this episode. Overall, I had a blast with this

During my chat with Ken Burgin, we went on a lot of tangents, and they all crossed a common theme, which is building an online platform. In random spots of Ken’s interview, we end up talking about different areas of internet marketing and content generation and I thought it would make more sense to snip and stitch this content to a bonus episode. And I did this for a couple of reasons. One being that this podcast episode would make a lot more sense as a separate episode because if you follow what we said, it might actually inspire you to write more, or start a blog, or start a podcast! Another reason is a bit… well, I’ll let you judge this. During my satisfaction survey, I got a comment saying that Adam shouldn’t talk about podcasting so much. This was probably in regaurds to episodes like Alex Osterle and Don and Ben’s food safety podcast. I wanted to honor this suggestion so we’re trying this now. No ads this time, this one is a freebie So we begin with a topic about podcasting, something which originally l

I met Ken when he commented on an article I posted. I think it was the one on how podcasting changed my life. Ken mentioned his experience podcasting in the food industry so we got to talking and decided to swap interviews. You can listen to my interview on Ken’s podcast on the show notes. Ken is what I like to call, an authority in the restaurant management industry. He’s had a restaurant for years,a nd then after selling it, he decided to take a more, teacher role. Ken doesn’t like the word consultant, but he has helped so many restaurant owners lower their cost and manage their dream. So in this interview, we learn some tips on how to become an authority in your space, but this is also a nice interview for people who are in the restaurant industry. You’ll learn the biggest problem with managing the restaurant industry, and even steps on how to sell a restaurants, and so much more. During our interview, Ken and I talk a lot about podcasting and blogging and I separated a good chunk of our interview and we’l

Sometimes you just browse the internet and you see a product that just is so noticeable that you have to take a look at it. This is Hugh Thomas’ company Ugly Drinks in a nutshell. A bright, light blue can with various bold flavors, and the U looks like a tongue, like it’s teasing you. Not only that, but Ugly Drink’s clever marketing campaign is eye catching and a bit tongue in cheek! Ugly Drinks was kind enough to give me some ads to show, which you can see on our website. Hugh posts regularly on linkedin promoting his company but does it in a way where I want to know more about his company. Success after success, funny ad after funny ad, I just loved the way his team is challenging the soft drink market! I had to have him on the show and I am so glad I did. Not only did I learn about the creativity in marketing and branding behind Ugly Drinks, but Hugh gave really clear, transparent advice to help the budding food entrepreneur excel to their level. So if you want to hear how to start and market a food compan

I met Dr. Sarah Ramirez in my last year in college. She was a temporary lecturer for Cal Poly and she enjoyed learning about the extracurriculars around the department, so I immediately thought she was cool. Soon, I took one of her classes about Food Waste and we’ve been friends ever since. She might be the only professor I had in Cal Poly that I see on a semi-regular basis and that’s mainly because she lives really close to my grandma’s house in the Central Valley! I’ve been keeping tabs on Sarah’s company, Foodlink, an innovative food bank in Tulare county, which is housed in one of the poorest American counties. Sometimes, I’ve helped a few times gleaning kiwis and lecturing about spices. I’ve seen Foodlink grown from a small food bank to a huge facility that has its own kitchen and hosts events to inform people on how to feed the community. Sarah’s drive and mission to feed the world is absolutely contagious. There are A LOT OF emotional truth bombs in this episode and it is just so inspiring listening to