[Music] Welcome to Food Products FAQ. A podcast we're discussing how we make food products in a step to take to make yours. I'm Adam Yeat, and I'm Brian Chau. And we're both independent food consultants who've been through the industry for over a decade. And we're going to share with you how we make great food products that have been solved in thousands of stores. So Brian, we have actually known each other for around 10 years, I believe, right? Probably a little bit more. Through a mutual friend who just got married, so it would be regular to him. You know, it's always funny. So you graduated from UC Davis and me and Cal Poly. And our friend always has astride me as you, and I'm sure he's done the same. Yeah. You always says Cal Poly version of you. He tries to set up a fire beneath us or something of that nature. You know, right? But look at us now. We're now working on a podcast together. Yep. Yep. That's the view of the food industry. We help each other out. We share knowledge. And this is kind of the point of this podcast specifically. We see kind of the interesting struggles that people have in making food products or the gaps of knowledge. And we want to essentially fill those up and give you kind of an insider's look of how we create products. Definitely. And how we think and how we work. So all of that is to be able to best understand what's kind of behind these curtains, behind the scenes of how to interact and how to work with us. To show that, you know, we mean business. Let's kind of just talk about each other and what we've done in the food industry. Brian, how about you go first and just say like, okay, when you first graduate from college, what was your journey to become essentially a really popular food consulted? Yeah. Graduate from UC Davis, fruit science and technology, emphasis in chemistry. Then I worked for the likes of caring ingredients, uh, gear, daily, chocolate company and then Matt's in the consulting firm, not the logistics company. There's an extra T in that. To and then ended up working into smaller niche boutique food consulting firms before starting my own. Um, so chow time is an R&D in operations consulting firm. We've worked with over 175 different clients, uh, launching over 500 plus SKUs through 13 plus categories. I think we've worked across 18 countries outside of the United States. Um, and yeah, we're pretty, we're pretty extensive in terms of our deliverables. We, we've, we offer R&D. So you own the formulations. Uh, we don't license or anything of that nature. Uh, along with that, we create nutrition and our supplement labels. We'll source the raw material, sometimes including packaging. So that you best understand, uh, who you can rely on as a primary or a secondary supplier, distributor or broker, depending on how esoteric this particular ingredient is. We'll do contract manufacturing searches for you, uh, unless, of course, you have in house, uh, manufacturing capabilities. Uh, and lastly, we'll figure out what your cost of goods sold looked like because all of that is encompassing in their overall production. So you said a lot of words here. If you guys have no idea what that is, don't worry. Listen to this podcast and we will break it down for you quite, quite heavily. Um, Brian, you said you worked on 13 different categories. What was your favorite category? What is your favorite category? What's your favorite food? Uh, favorite category. Well, I'll break it down. A favorite project was a Middle Eastern tea. Um, and then it's ready to drink type of tea. It's just different flavor profile. Um, and essentially in terms of favorite category I like to work with one right now is functional chocolate. Um, so taking ingredients that have functional benefits that's better for you in terms of health and then adding that into the chocolate in of itself. Um, and then favorite food mushrooms. If anybody knows me, I'm a fungal fanatic. I forged for mushrooms, I grow mushrooms, I eat mushrooms, I cook mushrooms, anything with mushrooms. Love it. Um, I'll go next. So I have a sign of different background from Brian, but we do have the same degree type bachelor's. Um, so I started my career in a Grinnell Bar factory in Phoenix, Arizona. I joined a cul-backer, which they are a contract manufacturer. They go by many names, white labelers, but they made specific Grinnell bars. So I'll go back four a.m. in the morning to work with all sorts of variety of really different interesting people to make these chocolate chakras and Grinnell bars. And you know, this was kind of this boots on the ground, fresh plants starting just chugging out Grinnell bars all day. It was a lot of work. It taught me a lot about who makes our food and kind of the fortunate value of how we kind of make food and feed everyone here. That translated later a little bit to a job at a company called Isagenix. This was a health and wellness company and I specifically designed protein bars over there learned a ton. Um, just understanding about specifically proteins from way protein to plant protein. And I found it a really, really fun job understanding the supplement industry as well. During that time, I started a really cool podcast, which is why we're doing this podcast called my food job rocks. It has over 270 episodes. Um, you can find it on Spotify or Apple podcasts. And it is just a wealth of knowledge for anyone who is interested in getting a job in an industry. Just met a ton of really cool people there and eventually stumbled into entrepreneurship where I interviewed a co founder. And we started a plant based meat company, specifically a plant based ingredient company. We were able to raise venture capital and it still exists today. It's called better mecon in Sacramento after that. The little bit of a few stints. One in particular was a food tech company called motif food works that worked on specifically. Persistent fermentation and then started a dumpling company called Sova Foods, which made plant based products. And we with Sova Foods, we have around 100 stores full of delicious plant based dumplings. They're all over the coast of California. And recently now I've started my own consultancy, um, my works, which talks a lot about trends insights and knowledge, but also leveling out the play field in terms of how we can innovate in kind of the small business realm. So you know, we both have a lot of experience. And despite only, you know, you could say having 10 years of experience, just we've seen it all, I would say, right? I'd say so and more. So why did you decide to think about this podcast then, right? Yeah, I find it. It's a way to be able to communicate. You know, in terms of consulting, there's a lot of lack of knowledge base and a lot of questions that are always being asked. Especially in the introductory calls that I have. And I feel like this is one of the ways to inform people. Uh, another could be video and things of that nature. And I think Adam can speak a little bit more to that. But I think this right here is a foundation of where people can bridge the gap. Whether you're reading or you're listening or you're watching something. If it's constructive information for people that's free, that helps streamline business decisions. It helps get right to the point, especially when working with or trying to find the right consultant you want to work with. You know, we kind of worked on building the framework for these 10 episodes. And why did you think the episodes listed are important for people to know? Yeah, these are a lot of these are frequently asked questions. And some of them are information that people think that they know how to figure out. But there's missing gaps, right? Especially if you're looking for the lens of entrepreneurs or if you're super niched in the R&D itself. There's not a lot of cross functional training, if you will, to think a little bit more about the supply chain. You know, so a lot of it is in relationship to the work that I provide as a deliverable. But also just a refresher in terms of your hiring me or Adam to be able to understand its streamline your operations a little bit more. So sometimes when you're looking at something as simple as sourcing a raw material, it's asking the right questions. It's asking the right amount of information so that we can ascertain that for you synthesize that for you. So you can make a better decision in growing out your business, especially a food business that's very fast moving, if you will. And then from there, it's really how do I work or how does Adam work as somebody who's in R&D. Often times you put on and stand the side of things. They think we're like some sort of magician. So I try to break it down so that you have some sort of deliverable that you understand what we do or not just standing around kind of holding a wand in our hands or anything of that nature. We're actually doing a lot of work. You just don't have the visual purview of actually seeing it. But you actually see results at the end of the day. And that's what we really do is we provide you the results whether or not you're actually physically there. And then you know, other things are around finance and cost of goods sold, which is very pertinent around understand your own business model. Nutrition labels and supplement labels. With.
with regards to regulatory concerns, commercialization, what does that even mean? How do you actually launch particular products? It's a huge unknown for a lot of people. Other things would be how do you work with or find a contract manufacturer? How do you actually get to the contract stage? Is there a strategy that you need to implement? Are these platforms that are popping up left and right? Nowadays helpful for you? It's essentially things like that that we're going to break down so that you'd be able to best understand how to actually create a process for yourself or how to inform yourself to move forward so that you're not locked into a business choice that may, for better or for worse, change the outcome of your overall strategy in your business. - Yeah, and so just to tell you all, we're not reading from a script. We have a specific topic. We want to cover, but we are going to talk very about just our experiences with working with these kind of topics. So each section will have just this real personal experience about what we've gone through and what we've heard of from other experts as well. So really, this is designed to be an authentic experience of what really does happen in the food industry and to be behind the scenes work of developing a food product. In terms of this podcast, what do you want to get out of this? Like what are your motivations for this particular podcast? It's probably the better question. - Yeah, so one is honestly, I think we've worked a lot in industry and I think we've collaborated a lot together though technically not in a capacity like this. We've helped each other out a couple of times, but I do think it's really valuable and important to work with people that you've worked with for a while. So when I appreciate you for diving into this project and as you know, I personally love podcasts and I love sharing knowledge. So for me, for me, it is very rewarding. I also think that we are at a certain point in our careers where we have the ability to share our knowledge to people who need it. And maybe five years ago that wasn't the case, but now we are confident that we know what is going on in the industry because we see the same things over and over again. And we think that that knowledge is very valuable to share with you all. - Definitely. And I think to add on to that, Adam is entering into food consulting so that he could help people in need really. There is a large gap in food consulting, I would say. There's no straightforward methodology that people really follow. And I think it's really relationship first and foremost. And then after that, once you have an established relationship, it's really building upon how to work with getting the right deliverables. It's very collaborative at the end of the day. Both of us are collaborating with each other, but that's also signals to anybody who's listening that it's a very collaborative effort if you're to work with anyone of us or any type of who consultant to be honest or any consulting firm. It's really a matter of can you trust this individual to help create the products that you are envisioning and vice versa, can we as a or I as a consultant or Adam as a consultant work with you in communicating because we can't read your minds just like how you cannot read our minds and why not magicians at the end of the day? Can we communicate effectively and work together towards an end goal in some sort of deliverable? And I think that at the end of the day is what we want to convey to everyone here. - Yeah, and you'll see these relationships in action. I think we're gonna do a lot of name dropping and a lot of not only companies, but also people because I think it's important to understand just the people who have helped us in this journey. - Yes, I definitely agree. - Love it. All right, well, I hope you're all excited for Food Products FAQ. Please, if you find this information valuable, you can like this podcast on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, leave a comment if you want as well. And you can also email us. My email is at
[email protected] and what's yours, Brian? - It's
[email protected]. - Love it. So get some popcorn and sit down, put on some headphones and listen to this wealth of knowledge in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.
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