Taste Radio

Mike Lee once helped organize a multi-course tasting dinner on a New York City subway car -- while it was in transit. As much as the encounter taught him about operational efficiency (i.e. service in 43 minutes flat, don’t get arrested) Lee, the founder of food incubation and product development firms Alpha Food Labs and Future Market, absorbed the value of creating experiential moments. “A lot of the stuff we’re doing today -- consulting with big food companies -- is not arguably doing dinners like we used to,” he said in an interview included in this episode of Taste Radio. “[But] I think that sense of thinking of the experience holistically, has definitely influenced how we market and engineer products.” A former executive with Chobani’s Innovation & New Ventures unit, Lee launched Alpha Food Labs and Future Market with the goal of understanding and executing upon a food system that is expected to look dramatically different in the decades to come. In a wide-ranging interview, Lee discussed how persona