Key Takeaways

How leaders use family as a support network
How to not only innovate, but how to introduce new ideas
Should you incubate or join a mastermind if you choose to start on your own?

Other Links

Pina Romolo, CEO from Pico La Cucina Rohini Dey, Founder from Vermillion Naz Athina Kallel, CEO from Save Good Food Crystal MacKay, CEO from Farm and Food Care Lisa Tse, CEO from Sweet Mandarin Mike Hewitt, CEO from One Haus Raf Peeters, CEO from Qcify Ali Bouzari, CSO from Pilot R+D Dr. Howard Moskowitz from Mind Genomics Terra Chips Dang Foods Taco Bell Fancy Food Show Expo West Foodgrads Peas On Moss

Transcript

The last ten episodes had a bunch of startups and businesses that are not only innovative, but also are down to earth and realistic. It was amazing to talk to the owners! In this context, we’ll refer any owner, and founder as a CEO, though sometimes this isn’t the case. What I loved about learning from the CEOs was that these people were in a stage where they made something profitable but can also tell us the tangible tips needed to succeed in the food industry.

This episode will take a lot of excerpts from past episodes, such as Pina Romolo, from Picco La Cucina and Rohini Dey from Vermillion as they have also created businesses from the ground up. The last ten episodes brought on a great amount of guests including Naz Athina Kallel from Save Good Food, Crystal MacKay from Farm and Food Care, Lisa Tse from Sweet Mandarin, Mike Hewitt from One Haus and Raf from Qcify. Within these interviews, we see a common thread that hopefully you can dissect in terms of starting something… and executing something.

The word CEO, is fancy and powerful. Those that hold the title know that theya re the ones with the final say in anything that goes. Any initiative they bring will override any other opinion.

Being the Chief requires a special type of person. A person obsessed with science might actually not make a good CEO. Take for example both Dr. Howard Moskowitz and Ali Bouzari. Both are Chief Science Officers and rely on a CEO with a different skill set.

Ali Bouzari’s story on pilot R+D’s role describes this well. A team of three creative food professionals had hired Dana Peck to run their finances. Once they realized how essential she was on the team, they made her CEO. She was CEO because she knew much more about finance, a which is the blood that runs companies, and that her business experience trumped all three of her partners. Her experience with mergers and acquisitions in her past life brought a point that she could get clients and manage them well.

So it’s very important for a CEO to generate money and be a champion of what their company stands for. I think in most situations, a CEO is designed to generate money needed to fund the other arms and legs in the department.

Anyways, I have about 6 core topics that I found beneficial from interviewing these guests and the idea is to distill the information well enough where you can be innovative, supportive, and efficient. Let’s begin

Family Matters

Both Pina and Lisa are in family companies. Pina has her mother do the R and D work, and Lisa collaborates with her sisters. From their interview, you can tell that they are big picture, and that they are risk takers. All of the founders we’ve interviewed are.

Though I don’t want to be biased, being younger, more ambitious, and the most adaptable in your family seems to be the best indicator of being considered a CEO. Some people like the spotlight, or rather, are willing to sacrifice being in the spotlight.

Another side of the coin is Mike Hewitt, who wanted to start his own business because he wanted to spend more time with his family. The chef is life is hard, with 12 hour days and minimum pay, Mike had to decide to change jobs.

They say that an entrepreneur has to sacrifice working 40 hours a day to work 80. But most people who work those hours have their family supporting them, which I think is vital for success.

Whther you work with family or for family, a support network is necessary to succeed. We drive into this a little bit further down, but I want to state it now. The people who you care about are probably your first customers. And like all businesses, it’s important to make your customers happy

Challenging Unfamiliar Concepts and Trends

Naz and Rohini both made concepts that were risky. Naz found opportunity in ugly fruit and Rohini decided to take on ethnic indian cuisine. Both, however, added their own little twist. Naz combined ugly food with technology and created an amazing app that allows her to pick up ugly food and Rohini decided to add a fine dining element to Indian cusine to make Vermillion a hit.

Something I’ve noticed during a lot of lectures on innovation is a specific formula that is quite common. Combining a new concept with an old one and creating a new yet familiar concept. This has been the best way to introduce something really new and pairing it with something old.

A big example of something new with something old is an example I gave about an article about the Fancy Food show.

Terra Chips, who make specialty vegetable chips. I was fortunate to listen to the Financial officer speak and their story was interesting.

Two chefs were working under this superstar chef at a restaurant and the chef started deep frying things like lotus root and putting them on top. Everyone raved about them. However, the two chefs could never be as good as the superstar chef so he started to be better at something else.

They took off and decided to start frying vegetables like lotus root on their own. Soon it became things like orange sweet potatoes, purple potatoes, taro, etc. They started with a bicycle, then an ice cream truck, then finally got a distributor going.

Terra Chips uses the unfamiliar concept of fried root vegetables but sine they serve it in a familiar chip bag

Here’s a twist on it: I was listening to the snacking innovation summit the other day and Dang foods was speaking. He was saying it was thanks to Whole Foods white labeled coconut chips that they were able to be successful. An old entity introduced a new concept and people realized that these coconut chips were there the whole time.

The most important thing to know is that not everyone will like your innovative concept, but there are people who love those things. As many of our CEO guests have said, follow your audience.

From Novice to Expert and when to split The basis of any consulting business is to be an expert in your field that is so good, people will pay you directly for your services.

Can the same be said for starting your own business? From what I’ve been researching, it depends.

From who I talked to, most businesses are born out of passion or born out of solving a problem.

So based on our guests, about 3 guests who started their business out of passion are people like Pina, Rohini, Lisa, and Naz

Rohini started with a high paying job in the business consultant industry but she found a gap in Indian cuisine. Because she absolutely loved food, she decided to dive in and conquer the ethnic up-scale dining scene.

Lisa and her sister sold their houses to continue on their family restaurant and took it to the next level. Though they might have had some restaurant experience as children, they took it to the enxt level as adults with a sauce line and cookbook. Sometimes other types of experiences can work.

And Naz’ story is amazing. She started her business after her bout with cancer. Absolutely amazing. She has embraced technology and is solving our food waste problem.

The other 3 guests I want to analyze are people who started something because they could do it better, and that would be Mike Hewitt, Raf Peeters, and Crystal Mackay. These people have actually experience in their field and have used their network to leverage their business.

Mike Hewitt created One Haus with about two years of Human Resource experience. Maybe that’s all you need. However, Mike’s previous experience in the hospitality and restaurant industry gave hi the ability to make One Haus unique.

Raf Peeters has said that Qcify is created based on a need in the market place, but his decade of experience in optics electronics has helped him build a stable and profitable business.

Crystal Mackay has been an educator all her life and from pigs to pretty kuch the whole Canadian food industry, she’s the best at telling stories.

I guess what I’m saying is that, does experience matter? I guess not. I think (as Raf has said), passion matters. You can start something any time you want if you have decades of experience, or none at all.

Innovate!

I’ve written a couple articles about this on linkedin. All CEOs are innovative, either rn product, or process. It’s extremely important to develop this type of mindset as this will not only help you make great products, but also help you develop a mindset to create new products, or let me try and say it in a way you should think of it...