My Food Job Rocks!

We have returning guest Cesare Varallo, an Italian lawyer who is the global advisor on food safety, food labeling, and food regulatory issues talk about what's happening right now. More specifically, he’s a crisis consultant for food and one would say we’re in a crisis. I wanted his perspective on the pandemic because well, he’s in Italy, and also because Cesare interacts with so many global playe...

This is a crossover episode Don Schaffner and Ben Chapman, host of the Food Safety Talk Podcast have both been busy doing interviews about well, COVID-19. Everyone from popular national news, to local news, to celebrity chefs are asking about how coronavirus will affect food. Mainly, can it survive on food in any way, shape or form? Don and ben tell us what they’ve found.  Ideally, the lessons for...

I was first introduced to Burlap and Barrel when my friend Phil Saneski told me about them at MISTA. All the way in California. The next time I heard of them, I met Ori sitting down working at the WeWork Food Labs in New York, when I was doing my orientation. We chatted, knew a few common friends, and then he invited me to a Rabobank mixer. So if you’ve noticed a pattern with our entrepreneurial g...

You might not have heard of Curion Insights. That’s because their job is to help big fortune 500 companies innovate. A lot the top food companies can get stuck in a rut and need services like Curion to test things using methods like sensory testing and category reviews. Keren Novack herself has an interesting background and uses her psychology degree often as she climbed up the career ladder to be...

We’re introducing something called the Pantry Podcasts, which is basically an analogy that these podcasts, like your pantry items, are practically timeless but eventually, you have to create something with them! Don’t think of this as year-old pasta, but rather that special bottle of bourbon you’ll open on special occasions or perhaps to reward yourself from surviving the tough period we’re all go...

Today we interview David Chan, Watter Resource Control Engineer by day, and creator of Nichijou Ramen by night! So before I got a full-time job at WeWork, I was thinking of launching a new podcast that was a lot less in formality and structure. Now, I don’t have the time, but I have a bunch of interviews that are amazing, but aren’t the common My Food Job Rocks structure. However, they are all sup...

Alison Montford is the founder of Ends and Stems. A web platform where they send you recipes to help you be more mindful about food waste. This isn’t the first time around the block for Alison. She’s had a business before and is a master bootstrapper Alison used a ton of tricks that bootstrapped entrepreneurs have to use such as tapping into groups that share, and focusing on your Minimum Viable P...

We have 15 stories throughout the WeWork Food Labs Ecosystem (and some of my personal friends) based on one simple prompt: A career in food can be incredibly difficult, and we believe it requires true love to work towards positive change within the industry. What moment or experience initially sparked your love of food and keeps you going when you’re having a tough day? we recorded what they said...

We interview several people who benefit from the SQF conference and you’ll be hearing case studies on how SQF has benefitted them from copackers to consulting. What I find really cool about this episode is how people get into the quality field and how they progressed throughout their roles. I find it beautiful that no matter where you are in life, you can end up in a career in food. What I find am...

I was invited to the SQF Conference in San Antonio to do some interviews. If you’re not familiar with the SQF Institute, it’s a certification body that ensures our food is safe. After all, SQF stands for Safe Quality Food, but it’s a lot more than that! I was fortunate to be invited to their annual conference last year to learn a bit more about the concepts behind SQF and the people who run it. We...

Daniel has had a multitude of very impressive jobs but nothing satisfies him as much as showing data for a good cause. Daniel’s job is to gather data sets through either tests that he sends out or gathers other data points to convince huge, conventional companies to use their products such as JUST Egg. If you’re in the plant-based industry, there’s a lot to think about such as: who is your actual...

Lilian Cruz-Hand, is a Quality Specialist, but she does so much at her job at Save A Lot. From building a sensory lab, to working with product development. She's a rockstar, and listens to all of my episodes. So much, that her boss actually contacted me to interview her! Eric Iserman asked me to interview Lilian and I think that really says something about the team in Save A Lot and supporting one...

We’ve had a couple of Fairtrade focused episodes such as Kim Chackal from Equifruit, so familiarize yourself with that episode if you haven’t already. Now we’re going to the East Coast and we’ll be talking about the amazing effect Fair Trade has on farmers and why big companies such as KIND are buying fair trade products. Learn about Bryan Lew’s career path and his advice for anyone when it comes...

I’m sure when you started your job, you had to go through training videos that help you understand the importance of something. Before this was powerpoints but nowadays, the videos are much more engaging. Whether about car safety, good manufacturing practices, or even food safety, to get people to understand and care about important topics, it helps for the video to be engaging. This is where Aust...

Since this podcast is unscripted, I don't have a giant paragraph of text and complex show notes. To summarize the first 10 or so minutes: My excuse for not posting an episode is because I was playing video games all month Thanks to a few people, especially Karen Lee and Shahram Shafie for the warm welcome to Austin, Texas. It shows that you never know who'll reach out when you tell everyone on the...

If you haven’t listened to episode 200 part 1, you can find it at myfoodjobrocks.com/200Wow So the past three weeks looked like this: I drove from Sacramento to Texas, met some friends in Los Angeles and Phoenix, and then flew to New York. Met up with my friend David Despain in long Island and then the next week, had an orientation in New York with my Friday getting familiar with the brand new Foo...

Welcome to the 200th episode [part 1] I’m your host and food scientist, Adam Yee and you are listening to episode 200, where I interview a couple of dozen people about their food jobs. The party was super fun, a lot of my friends showed up and I loved interviewing them. You’ll get a variety of different guests. From young entrepreneurs to seasoned veterans, to people not even in the food industry....

Jane Miller is a food industry executive with experience ranging from high growth start-ups to Fortune 500 companies which includes companies like PepsiCo, Frito-Lay, Bimbo Bakeries, Heinz, Rudi’s Organic Bakery, and now Lily’s Sweets. What I love about Jane is her transparency and clear explanations on the complex questions I ask such as how to build a network, how to climb the corporate ladder,...

Scott Lerner started his career in the military, then jumped into an MBA, then in toilet paper, then food companies, then founded his own sparkling beverage company. And has been a CEO for multiple high growth startups and with that, tons of unique experiences to help you think differently and grow better. Since this episode is a long one, I’ll keep it short, you’ll get tons of advice about growin...

Evan Holod is the CEO of Michel Et Augustin, a cookie company located in France, but Evan is bringing it to the states with a colorful brand and personality Evan is a funny guy with a candid sense of humor but has a lot of wisdom to share about marketing brands like Bazooka Joe, Ring Pop, and Coca-Cola. Michel et Augustine is recently pushing into retail launching in many different grocery stores...

Joe Heitzeberg is the CEO and Co-Founder of Crowd Cow, an e-commerce site that sells premium meat. And when I say premium, I mean meat straight from the farm, or Japan! We all hear about the innovations of alternative meat, plant-based or cell-based meat all over this podcast so I was delighted to interview a new perspective in the way we view protein, the fact that you can not only find out where...

Kat Fernandez, President of the Food Tech Club, interviews me at their UC Davis student meeting. Had a blast recording this live and great to give advice that I hope students find useful. Show Notes Mandy Jain Episode Kat Fernandez What Would You Want to Know as Freshman?: What food science actually is. Food scientists make food and feed the world What would you do if you were back as a freshman i...

This episode is with Akshita Iyers, CEO and Founder of Inirv, a smart kitchen tech company whose first product is a kitchen knob that you can control on your phone! Akshita Iyer started this company with her husband when her mother forgot to turn off the stovetop, and burnt down her house. At the time, Akshita and her husband were in the medical industry and dropped everything to build a company t...

Learn about how Renee Dunn from Amazi Foods fell in love with Uganda and how she found the company, pretty much by accident. But the real gem in this episode is getting into the thick of importing products from a different country. Renee established and built up a relationship with a person producing products in Uganda, but after some difficulties in communication and product delays switched to ma...

When you think of Mars, you might think of chocolate or pet food but have you ever thought about the important role Mars has on Food Safety? In fact, Mars recently launched a brand new, state of the art global food safety center right in the heart of China. Within this center, Mars employs top scientists to solve the world’s pressing food safety solution innovations including research on mycotoxin...