My Food Job Rocks!

Today’s guest is Ken Botts, the Food Policy Manager at the…Humane Society? So I believe that Ken’s job title is very misleading. I would call him more like a food service plant protein expert. He lead a a team and travels all over the United States implementing plant based proteins into food institutions. For example, his team works with chefs in schools, amusement parks, and even the military to...

I’m so happy to introduce Tiffany Lau, a friend I knew from Cal Poly. We actually graduated together, and from time to time, we catch up. Though before this interview, it’s been a while. Anyways, very excited to have Tiffany on the show because she has experience with a very important, but not really well talked about part of the industry. She is the first guest to focuses on a very important part...

Some housekeeping items: - We're going 2 times a week! Check out a new episode every Monday and Wednesday starting January 2nd! - On January 2nd, we will be creating an awesome new series called the Graduate Series. You can check it out at myfoodjobrocks.com/graduate Key Takeaways Hear me pronounce words wrong like existential crisis My story about applying to graduate school 5 reasons why you sho...

We have an amazing guest today, Rohini Dey is an inspiring woman, who not only owns a very successful restaurant in New York and Chicago, but also spearheads a great scholarship program for aspiring women in the culinary field. We are also proud to announce the Women in Culinary Leadership Scholarship and encourage you to apply. Click here for the link. About Rohini Dey, Ph.d.  A leading restaurat...

Enter to win $500 dollars at Jessica Gavin's contest. Click Here! Today we have an amazingly bubbly guest. Jessica Gavin is a Sr. Research Scientist for Nutralite, which is a division of Amway. She’s been there for about 9 years which I find absolutely amazing. What’s also super cool is that Jessica has her own food blog at jessicagavin.com which has amazing pictures and recipes. Her blog is one o...

  We have another great small business this episode. Piccola Cucina is an Italian bakery that focuses on Italian baked goods such as macarons and focus on using almonds in their mix. In this episode, you’ll learn about the different varieties of Macarons, how important it is to maneuver and adapt in the food industry as a small player, and some amazingly good resources and advice from the CEO hers...

Stephanie Ronquillo is a Cal Poly alumni, and perhaps she could be described as one of my first influences in getting me involved in college. She was the ideal academic student. With the 4.0 GPA, president of the food science club, she’s smart. After college, she went straight into industry and works at Newly Weds Foods as a food scientist where her focus is on seasoning blends. In this interview,...

Today’s guest is the Vice President of Business Development for a distributor/ supplier, SPI Group, Russ Nishikawa. What SPI Group does is brokers deals with lesser known ingredients and markets them to customers. A specialized ingredient producer will make deals with distributors for them to market or sell their product. For example, I would have never known about a pea protein from Belgium if it...

First off, I am loving the diversity of our guests recently. From different ages and genders from all over the world! The person we are interviewing today fits into this category. Deya is from Mexico and now works for the ever-trending Beyond Meat, where they produce meat substitutes that actually taste like real meat. If you do some research, their process making it (which is proprietary, and won...

Download Interview (Right Click Save As)   For today’s episode, we have Chef Michael Bunn, Senior Manager of Sam’s Club where he takes on a Quality and an R and D role. This guy has an amazing food career. From culinary school in the military, to academia, to being a research Chef, so many things. This guy loves what he does. The RCA loves this dude too. He’s had articles published about him, and...

Today we have a special guest who came all the way from Australia. Bo Wang was born in China, moved to Canada for academia, and now lives in Australia working for the industry. His focus is microencapsulation and works to encapsulate fish oil at Nu-Mega Technologies. Within this episode, he not only talks about his amazing opportunities living in difference contries, but also really digs deep on t...

    Have you ever wanted to start your own Ice Cream Buisness? Daryl David is the man for you! His life is 100% ice cream. From starting his own business, to now helping people grow their own, there is no man I know who knows more about ice cream than Darryl David If you want more information on Darryl, check out his website on www.icecreamprivatelabel.com This episode is full of everything ice cr...

Download This Episode Here Congratulations to Alanna, Brian, and Amit for snagging Ali Bouzari's new book! This monologue is about the ways you can maximize your college experience and hopefully prepare you for the future. You can follow all of these rules, or none of them. I'm just distilling my "complicated" college life. Key Takeaways Why you need to be involved in college How to be involved in...

Download this Episode   Today we have our first food retail business owner! Sarabeth Yeli Marshall has her own chocolate company and she tells us her amazing story of how she got to where she is today. The questions are a little bit different, but this is the side of the industry where anyone can start. We have a  few more food business ones in stock and the amazing thing about food buisnesses is...

  This is part two of Ali Bouzari's amazing interview. Find part 1 here: http://myfoodjobrocks.com/018ali/ And don't forget about our giveaway at www.myfoodjobrocks.com About Ali Bouzari As an Iranian Texan, Ali Bouzari grew up with exposure to different cuisines, but most notably, beef over an open flame. His affinity for food and science lead him to become the guy where all the top chefs call hi...

Forbes named him 30 Under 30. Zagat did the same. UC Davis wrote an article about him. HIC The Useful Tool and The Culinologist interviewed him. He gave two TED talks and is about to roll out a book. He will now be interviewed for this podcast. His name is Bouzari, Ali Bouzari. He is a Culinary Scientist at Pilot R + D, holding a doctoracte in food biochemistry and having served as a research chef...

Today we have Philip Saneski, an inspiring, young, proactive, dude who has recently been working hard to build up the Research Chefs Association Student section. Philip works in an innovative consulting company in San Francisco as an intern, has experience as a pastry chef and, as a student, during the school year, he is involved quite heavily in the Research Chef’s Association (RCA). You might re...

Today, we have a really cool food job. Julie Miguel can be described as a woman who wears many hats and you’ll see in this episode how much she’s involved in. She’s a food stylist, food media expert, recipe developer, has been on TV multiple times on different stations, and her most important job; being a mother. So this is a very fun interview and you’ll get a lot of really cool, practical tips f...

I promise, this is the last Cal Poly alumni episode for a while (at least until episode 25)! But I gotta tell you about Katie Lanfranki. Katie is currently a Research & Development Technologist at South Coast Baking, Co. She is one of the most supportive, proactive people I’ve ever met. Katie’s a very inspiring person and she is super knowledgeable. In this interview, you’re going to see just how...

Do you remember episode 2 and episode 11? Both Trevor Fast and Andrea Zeng took this dude’s chocolate class and were even promoted to work in chocolate production on campus. Today, we’re interviewing a man who has been enamoured with food all his life. He was our professor at Cal Poly, he owned and owns bakeries and chocolate shops, and he spends his time donating chocolate-making equipment to Afr...

So this interview was from a deal I made with Taryn Yee. I interview her… and then she would interview me. Ideally, I should have made this episode number 5, right? Why should I wait for episode 13? Well, my birthday is January 13th, a baker’s dozen has 13 of something, 13 is an unlucky number? Whichever explanation your prefer, I’ve decided to use my interview for episode 13. Here’s my point of v...

So last week, I interviewed Andrea, a Food Technologist working for Lundberg Family Farm, and today, I’m interviewing someone from there too - her boss, a Product Developer and Research Chef at Lundberg! What are the odds? And the meeting between her and I was a completely different scenario as well. It started when I joined Podcaster’s Paradise to jumpstart my Podcasting experience and I saw a po...

Today I interview Andrea Zeng, long time friend, some time rivals. This is a great episode about choosing between culinary school and a degree in food science. Note that you can always have both (as you will find out in a future episode!). We're going to be talking about a lot of cool food science terms like enzymes and retro-gradation. Hang on!! If you would like to listen to more of our episodes...

In this episode, we are going to talk about my experience getting a job in the food industry as a senior in college. Everyone has a different experience, but mine might relate to yours. (Yes, the picture is photoshopped) If you would like to listen to more of our episodes, make sure to check out our itunes link. If you like them, we would love it if you could rate and review. Thanks! Key Takeaways...

This week we eat and chat with Kyle Failia. As a Sales Manager with Glanbia (a global company supplying dairy isolates and functional ingredients), Kyle has found a perfect fit for his passion!   About Kyle  Originally a Nutrition student, Kyle's interest in functional ingredients and physical activity crossed paths at his sales position with Nutrishop. Through his interactions with customers and...