The Business of Food with Steve Alexander

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8496002/8496002_2026-07-07-201202.64kmono.mp3 When Dana Cree decided to open an ice cream shop, she went on Kickstarter and immediately had to make a decision: what to name it. In the audio clip above, she tells WGN’s Steve Alexander, “The first question was ‘Tell us a little about yourself,’ and I wrote, ‘My name is Dana Cree and [&#8...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8484188/8484188_2026-06-30-164128.64kmono.mp3 Whether you eat it for breakfast or another meal, cereal is arguably the most popular item in the grocery store. The cereal aisle is big for a reason: Industry and government figures show Americans purchase roughly 2.5 billion boxes of cereal every year, which translates to roughly 10 to 14 pounds of cereal pe...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8478625/8478625_2026-06-26-170425.64kmono.mp3 In the audio clip above, Jim Fizzell, our WGN gardening guru of more than 60 years, tells Steve Alexander that an important piece of equipment needed for successful gardening is a spiral notebook. And a pen or pencil.

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8464694/8464694_2026-06-19-134134.64kmono.mp3 It’s vacation season for a lot of us, and in the audio clip above, Mr. Fizz, gardening guru Jim Fizzell, has tips for making sure that when you get back, your houseplants, garden plants, lawn, trees, cats, and dogs are in good shape.

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8446811/8446811_2026-06-11-230911.64kmono.mp3 College isn’t for everyone, and some Chicago high school students are now getting the opportunity to get started in a well-paying job as a forklift driver. In the audio clip above, Olive-Harvey College President, Dr. Kimberly Hollingsworth, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that for the first time, a credit course...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8446732/8446732_2026-06-11-224332.64kmono.mp3 Without agriculture, there’d be no FIFA World Cup games at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The natural grass turf, installed just for the World Cup, is one example. Another example is in the stands. Thanks to farmers, a company called PlantSwitch has replaced cups and lids and utensils made with petroleum with a plas...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8434203/8434203_2026-06-05-144703.64kmono.mp3 If you’re a parent or grandparent, you may consider those plastic pouches of food your toddler sucks on contentedly while you drive down the road as the best invention ever. But Lincoln Park mom and baby food company founder Erica Bethe Levin is alarmed by a Greenpeace study finding as much as 11,000 microplastics...

Our gardening guru Mr. Fizz, Jim Fizzell, talks about how to keep those “wascally wabbits” out of your garden without resorting to the way Elmer Fudd tried to deal with bugs. Jim also says it’s not to late too plant, even from seed, and talks about the proper amounts of water to put on your […]

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8399412/8399412_2026-05-20-164212.64kmono.mp3 If you like your Italian Beef “dragged through the garden,” you can thank Vincent Formusa. More than a hundred years ago, he started packing chopped veggies in the tradition of his native Sicily–in olive oil. Not only did other Italian immigrants love it, popularity spread, and the V. Formusa Company i...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8383204/8383204_2026-05-14-210004.64kmono.mp3 For those of us who love to raise food and flowers and anything else that we can grow, this is a difficult time of year. We’re itching to get out in the garden and plant, but the soil temperature isn’t quite warm enough. Even in the middle of May, Chicago-area weather can be unpredictable. […]

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8372305/8372305_2026-05-11-165505.64kmono.mp3 Forgetting to eat is a real thing for people taking the GLP-1 magic weight loss drugs. But before we get to that, let’s talk about TV dinners. In the 1950s, televisions were a new thing and rapidly became prominent in American homes, so people decided that rather than sitting around the dinner table, why […]

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8356576/8356576_2026-05-04-171816.64kmono.mp3 Guacamole, the Cinco de Mayo (and Super Bowl, and general party of any kind) staple, wasn’t as common, nor available year-round, prior to 1997. That’s the year a ban on avocados from Mexico was lifted, thanks in large part to the North American Free Trade Agreement approved during the Clinton administration....

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8337452/8337452_2026-04-27-164752.64kmono.mp3 Synthetic fertilizer is arguably the most important life-saving innovation of all time, credited with preventing 2.7 billion premature deaths. In the audio clip above, Susan Stroud, the founder of No Bull Agriculture, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander we have a couple of Germans to thank for that. In the early 1900s, Fr...

Whether you pronounce it “NUT-tella” or “NEW-tella” doesn’t matter. “We are very accepting of both pronunciations,” says Seth Gonzales, Senior Director of Marketing for Nutella in the Ferrero candy group. In the audio clip above, he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander the origins of Nutella go back to post-World War II Italy, where poverty was rampant, [&#82...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8079514/8079514_2026-04-06-160814.64kmono.mp3 When Danielle Marshall’s doctor told her she was on the verge of pre-diabetes, it got her attention. Her parents were diabetic and she had seen the difficulties they endured. She took her doctor’s advice to lose weight to heart, began exercising regularly and juicing — as in grinding veggies and fruit...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/8030357/8030357_2026-03-12-172957.64kmono.mp3 When an email from Northwestern University landed in my inbox, I thought I was reading a very early April Fools joke, or maybe something from The Onion. “I thought it was a joke, too,” says Dr. Fred Turek, a professor in the Departments of Neurobiology and Neurology, and director of the Center on Sleep [&#82...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/7945359/7945359_2026-01-30-153359.64kmono.mp3 There’s a company in Chicago’s Medical District that has figured out how to replace petroleum in the manufacture of many everyday items, from house paint to bandages to diapers. In the audio clip above, Justin Brown, the CEO of Låkril Technologies, tells how its proprietary technology converts low-cost lacti...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/7933188/7933188_2026-01-24-170628.64kmono.mp3 Once again, corn is proving it can replace petroleum-based plastics in a commonly-used product: filters for HVAC systems in home and commercial systems. Aerterra (a combination of the Latin words for air and earth), a Chicago-area company, spins fiber for the filters from a by-product of corn. In the audio clip above, M...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/7894379/7894379_2026-01-05-173619.64kmono.mp3 The City of Chicago has 27 locations where you can take your Christmas tree to be recycled, and where you can later pick up mulch for your garden. The full list and a link to a map are shown below. There are eco-friendly alternatives, though, as noted in the audio clip above with WGN’s […]

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/7870255/7870255_2025-12-22-155255.64kmono.mp3 To understand why Revolution Brewing named its Christmas beer “Fistmas,” look no further than the company’s logo: a raised fist. “Craft beer is nothing short of a revolution,” says the founder, CEO, and self-described Chairman of the Party, Josh Deth. In the audio clip above, he tells WGN&#...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/7867669/7867669_2025-12-19-164709.64kmono.mp3 Remember those kids birthday parties where you had to be sooooo careful about serving your child’s friends anything containing peanuts?  The allergies were real. The scientific advice to deal with allergens by total avoidance, it turns out, was wrong.   Around the turn of the century, the Ameri...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/7861990/7861990_2025-12-16-222730.64kmono.mp3 When you think of Denny’s, the breakfast served 24/7, the Grand Slam, or the cleverly named breakfast sandwich “Moons Over My Hammy” probably stand out. Any time, day or night, Denny’s is there to sate your appetite. What you don’t think of when you think of Denny’s, and what I’...

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/7846670/7846670_2025-12-08-013910.64kmono.mp3 Until Sunday’s loss at Green Bay, the Bears had won eight in a row. Is it a coincidence that the Bears began their winning streak after the co-owners and operators of Kneads and Wants, a Skokie bakery, were featured as a Chicago Bears Small Business All-Pro? Perhaps, but Madeleine England, who runs the bakery [&#8...

Stan’s Donuts began in Los Angeles in 1963, after founder Stan Berman moved there in 1954 and opened the first location in Westwood. After forming a friendship and partnership, Rich Labriola of Labriola Baking Company opened the first Chicago location in 2014, and now owns and operates 17 Chicago area locations. For a National Donut […]

https://serve.castfire.com/audio/7785455/7785455_2025-10-28-222955.64kmono.mp3 We hear a lot about omega-3 fatty acids and most of what we hear is that we don’t get enough of them in our diets. In the audio clip above, Dr. Daniel Robinson, an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and an attending physician in the Division of Neonato...