- 14
- Episodes
- 2019
- First episode
About Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur is a podcast in an audio diary format that shares my experiences as I attempt to Learn to be a Food Entrepreneur. In this series I will share my successes and failures as I learn, work on projects, and experiment with creating a food company. If you have any questions, suggestions or information please feel free to reach out! Instagram: @Learningtobeafoodentrepreneur Email: learningtobeafoodentrepreneur@gmail.com
- Publisher
- Learningtobeafoodentrepreneur
- Category
- business
- Language
- en
- Explicit
- No
- First episode
- 5 Mar 2019
- Latest episode
- 10 Mar 2022
Latest episodes
14 episodes in the feed.
10 Mar 2022
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Season 2 Episode 4
I am releasing all of season 2 because business has picked up for me over the last year or two and I've gotten behind on these episodes. Writing in depth reflection on my experiences at the time of these recordings takes a lot of time. If you like the reflections maybe I can do those in a recorded form instead? Let me know what you think.
10 Mar 2022
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Season 2 Episode 3
I am releasing all of season 2 because business has picked up for me over the last year or two and I've gotten behind on these episodes. Writing in depth reflection on my experiences at the time of these recordings takes a lot of time. If you like the reflections maybe I can do those in a recorded form instead? Let me know what you think.
10 Mar 2022
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Season 2 Episode 2
I am releasing all of season 2 because business has picked up for me over the last year or two and I've gotten behind on these episodes. Writing in depth reflection on my experiences at the time of these recordings takes a lot of time. If you like the reflections maybe I can do those in a recorded form instead? Let me know what you think.
9 Jun 2021
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Season 2 Episode 1
It has been a year and a half since Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur season 1 ended. During season 1 I wanted to start exploring my path as an entrepreneur, but did not know exactly where to begin. I decided to fill my days with what ever tasks I could, and researched cryptocurrency in an attempt to start gathering equipment I might need for a food business. At the end of season 1, I was headed to The Local Food Center in Missouri to learn more about what it took to run a food business. Season 2 is a four part series all about my experience at The Local Food Center during 2018. You'll hear about the challenges I faced, what I learned, what I built, my successes and my failures. In this first episode I give you an introduction to what the Local Food Center was, and what I was doing when I arrived. I tell you how I spent my time learning about my surroundings, the manufacturing equipment, the products we were manufacturing, and how the products were distributed. I also tell you about the inspiration behind me trying to automate data collection, production scheduling, and projections for our manufacturing process. I ended up at the Local Food Center through an Alumni from the University I went to. I decided to intentionally accept a substantially reduced income for the opportunity to learn from the founder directly and work as a Food Scientist/General Manager. I still have copies of our original contract haha! In Hindsight Arriving at the Local Food Center, I believe, was a good experience. It was a high paced environment, there was a lot to learn, and the pressure to succeed was on which are all ingredients that help me do my best work. I think where I could have improved in the early days at the Local Food Center, was getting to know the people who worked there a little bit better. I dove directly into the work, but did not spend as much time getting to know everyone. It wasn't until a few months after I arrived that the pressure let up a little bit, and I began getting to know people more in depth. I found that getting to know people is important for developing relationships as well as gaining buy-in for a desired change within the business, and getting quality, honest, constructive feedback from the people around you. Currently it is 2021 and I still rely on the experience I gained at the Local Food Center for interpersonal interactions and team building.
1 Jan 2020
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Episode 8 (2017 & Season 1 End)
Hello, I wanted to address that I am a few days later than I'd like to be with this post. I recorded this episode as episode 9, but when I started uploading the podcasts I ended up combining episode 6 and 7 into episode 6 pt.1 and 6 pt. 2. That is why this is 'Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Episode 8' and not episode 9 . In This Episode There were a ton of updates in this episode that I briefly go over. First and foremost I updated my sound equipment! If you think the pop filter and mic stand helped the quality of the podcast please let me know! Besides the equipment update there were 7 things I wanted to talk about: My first (failed) experiment making Kombucha My experience volunteering at New Roots in Louisville Kentucky. I volunteered at 1 event, went to 1 meeting, and volunteered 1 other time. I started taking photos around Louisville. I now have a ton of photos on my hard drive and am always looking to grow my image portfolio. I met with someone to talk cryptocurrency & blockchain at a coffee shop. I traveled to Mansfield Missouri to visit a Food company startup called The Local Food Center. Lastly, I talk about how I started adding to a book list I created which was inspired by a podcast called 'The Investors Podcast': - Check List Manifesto - Death and Life of Great American Cities - Good to Great In Hindsight Listening to this podcast before uploading it, I am filled with so many feelings. Going into it, I didn't truly understand how transformative 2018 would be on my life. There are a few things here that stuck out to me, and you can find them below. My food manufacturing/cooking/formulating experiments have all but stopped. Now (1/1/2020), my experiments focus more on learning efficient ways to grow produce in a limited area and thinking of ways to apply technology to augment that process. I thought volunteering at New Roots was a valuable experience. I haven't been over there or reached out to them since the end of 2017, but even now I hear their name come up from time to time. I still volunteer some of my time, I will expand on this in later episodes but I think there is so much value in getting involved in your local community. Whether its volunteering, or going to events or whatever you can do - I think its worth it. So much so that I wrote an article about it (https://thriveglobal.com/stories/why-you-should-get-involved-in-your-local-community/) on Thrive Global. My book list is a dynamic list that I started putting together at the end of 2017, so if you have any recommendations please let me know. Going to Missouri was the beginning of a series of events that would provide me with a lot of insight on what it means to be an Entrepreneur. I ended up moving to Missouri in 2018 were I was the General Manager and Food Scientist at The Local Food Center. During 2018 I was exposed to the pros and cons of taking an alternative Entrepreneurial path. I learned a lot about myself, what kind of business owner I'd like to be in the future, and got a glimpse of what it actually takes to operate a food manufacturing business. Entrepreneurship is hard work, it should be no surprise to find out Entrepreneurship is not actually how its portrayed in the media. Season 2 will be about 2018. That's it for 2017, in this case I will call it the 'Season 1 Finale'. I want to remind you all listening, that this is one big experiment to see if these podcasts bring any value to you, so let me know how I can make it better!
1 Dec 2019
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Episode 7
In Episode 7 of Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur, I talk about experimenting with making Lacto-fermented pickles and performing some market research. I was really interested in learning about lacto-fermented pickles because I had been reading some articles about the potential benefits that lacto-fermented foods may have on gut health. So I decided the way I wanted to explore and learn more about lacto-fermented pickles was to make them myself. To do this, I split my approach into three categories - Formulation, Manufacturing, and Market Research. Initial formulation was primarily comprised of finding a recipe, tweaking the recipe, and finding the variety of pickling cucumber. Manufacturing (at an extremely small scale - a couple of jars at a time) involved writing down detailed explanations on how to make the pickles. This included, washing the jars, how many pickling cucumbers went into a jar, how long to boil the brine I wanted to use, how long I needed to store the pickles in brine at room temperature, and how long to store them in refrigerated temperatures. This is just to name a few, but the goal was to write down as many details as I could. Market Research, I thought, was an extremely important category. The purpose was to gauge how much interest in lactofermented pickles there was. If not, I would have gone back to the drawing board and tried to play around with finding a food item people may be interested in. I also used the market research to guide how I changed the formulation or manufacturing process over time. For example, in this episode I was able to get a group of people (mainly family members, but some peers of family members) to try the pickles I had made and I wrote notes on what they would say. Their input would guide decisions such as reducing the salt content, increasing the number of days the pickles spent at room temperature during the fermentation process. I am under the impression that the method I am talking about: 1. Creating a baseline formulation, 2. Creating a written manufacturing process in detail 3. performing market research can be used across a wide range of products. The purpose of using this method was to establish a market research and data influenced feedback loop that could direct the development of the food product over time. IN HINDSIGHT Since I recorded this episode I've stopped working on my lacto-fermentated pickle project. This is due to something that will be revealed on a later podcast that I don't want to spoil for you now. I also want to remind you that I was still using a video game microphone in a coffee cup, with a kitchen towel over it to help block out some of the hard P's and S's you may be hearing. As far as formulation goes, back then I did not own a proper scale to weigh ingredients on, but now I have more equipment. I think it is important to weigh ingredients when formulating a food product in order to create a price breakdown for the product. A metric like price/gram of each ingredient used can make a huge difference when figuring out how to price a product. Also, weighing ingredients can lead to a more consistent product. For manufacturing, I think I did pretty well. I took a lot of photos, and I think I have some video of the process I was using as well. What I wish I did differently (that I learned later on) was to time myself on each step of the manufacturing process. Getting a time for each step, helps determine a total manufacturing time. You never know when this information can help! My Market Research was very family oriented. This was partly because I was nervous to ask strangers to try 'an experimental food item'. In hindsight, I would be curious to learn more from strangers.
1 Nov 2019
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Episode 6 pt. 2 (11/16/2017)
This is pt. 2 of Episode 6 In this episode I dive in to what my plans were for the camera I purchased. I also talk about how I organized the files, content, and ideas that I come up with. Every Sunday evening around 5pm I started doing an internet broadcast I called 'From The Ground Up: Lazy Sunday Broadcast'. It started off as an experiment where I would play music from artists I met through blogging. After a while the show transformed into a broadcast where I would share my entrepreneurial journey and talk about Food, Tech, and Media. Sometimes I would come up with an idea, talk about it on the broadcast, collect feedback, experiment, and then talk about the results in the next weeks broadcast. I initially got the idea from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. In the book Eric Ries talks about the Build-Measure-Learn method which is a positive feedback loop to see how effective a product, service, or idea is and changing it based on the feedback you receive. Overtime I used this feedback to change the broadcast and the experiments little by little over time. The show is now called 'Lazy Sundaze' and I have been doing the show every Sunday for 2 years now. Basically after getting my camera I started planning what I wanted to document and I also built a system that would help me try to continuously create new things or 'experiments' to document. The end goal was to learn or figure out a way to, make it fun, make it valuable and try to monetize it. In hindsight, I have still not brewed mead. But I have done some other experiments that came up during Lazy Sundaze. I have tried making kombucha, lacto-fermenting pickles, I have made carrot powder, and celery powder. I have also started a 28 sq foot garden in my back yard and a 4 sq foot garden in my closet. I think at the time of recording this I did not have my pop filter for my microphone yet, so you can hear breathing and other fast-moving air in the microphone. I still use my 'Business Folder' today, however, some of it has moved over to google drive for collaborating purposes. I also want to mention, during this recording I was trying really hard to learn different or unique ways to document and monitize my experiences. However, over time my need or desire to monetize my documented experiences/experiments faded away. I started to just enjoy sharing my experiences, learning and figuring things out. Now I do Lazy Sundaze, and do the Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur podcast without really any intention to make money from it.
26 Sept 2019
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Episode 6 pt.1 (11/16/2017)
At one point in this episode I mention “I’ll just edit it out” but when I decided to start uploading these I decided to leave them as raw as possible. This way I could practice the quality of my speaking, and the listeners could hear the any progress I make over time. In this episode (November 16, 2017) I go through everything that happened since the previous recording on october 16th 2017. At the time of recording this podcast, I purchased my first camera. It was a Cannon T6i package from Amazon. At this time it was important for me to start filming as many things as possible to start collecting footage. I started filming me cooking different recipes. The video for unboxing my camera can be found here: https://youtu.be/SqdDmugcwQk (If you would like to see any of the other videos please let me know!) I also talk about my experiments with pickling cucumbers. I started working on two different methods to decide which method I prefer to use. -The first method of pickling I used was a vinegar based pickling. -The second method I used for pickling was a Lactofermentation process. When I compared the vinegar based pickling process with the Lactofermentation process, I found that I personally enjoyed the Lactofermented pickles more. I took a scientific approach when experimenting with the amount of salt that was in the brine and the length of time the pickles sat at room temperature. Now that I think back to this experiment, I'm pretty fond of it. I'd like to make more Lactofermented pickles and perfect my recipe. I also talk about a project I started while researching cryptocurrencies. Back in 2017 I read through the white papers of the top 30-40 cryptocurrencies in order to better understand the purpose of each one. At the time I saw a number of people using them simply for financial gain but I was more interested in the technology and the problem each cryptocurrency/blockchain was trying to solve. I posted a video about sorting the cryptocurrencies into different sectors and someone reached out to me recommending that I see if there were correlations between cryptocurrencies in each sector. Looking back: The experiments I was doing were very important to me at the time. I enjoyed learning about lactofermentation and approaching a recipe scientifically. Having the camera proved to be especially valuable. I still use it pretty frequently today. It was also very validating when someone reached out to me to ask if I had determined if there were coorelations between cryptocurrency prices in different sectors. The experience was provided value. Also in hindsight- I think at this time I was using a rockband microphone in a coffee cup with a towel over it. It wouldnt be for another few month until I got a pop filter and a microphone stand. I'd like to get back to experimenting with fermented pickles. Maybe perfect them and design a label for it?
20 Aug 2019
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Episode 5 (10/14/2017)
Let me try to untangle what was going through my mind at the time of recording this episode. Listening to this episode I remember what I was thinking very clearly, however, I remember when the microphone got in front of me and I began recording my thoughts my communication was not the best. At the time of recording this I had created a list of my long term goals and a number of smaller short term goals using the 'Notes' App on my iPhone. My primary long term goal at the time of recording this was to "Become a food entrepreneur, and start a food company". I still have not achieved that long term goal, but I have achieved a wide variety of short term goals that will hopefully lead me to completing my long term goal. In this episode I'm talking about my short term goals at the time which were: Creating a 'Content Reservoir' Mapping out a workflow for creating content My plans for these Audio Recordings 'Collecting Colors' My plans for a Camera Market Research Questionnaire Let's dissect and reflect on the short term goals from 2 years ago I was trying to communicate with those of you listening to this episode now. Creating a 'Content Reservoir' : I started creating content and storing it on my computer. I referred to the folder I keep it all in as a 'content reservoir'. At the time of recording this I didn't have much content. I had been doing an experimental 'Digital Asset Class Vlog' on Steemit (Steemit vlogs (https://steemit.com/@mckenziegary)) which was a vlog about collecting cryptocurrency and my experience in the cryptocurrency space starting from $0. I did not have a collection of photos, videos, blog articles, etc. but I wanted to start collecting them so that I could release the content at my own pace when I thought the time was right. Mapping Out a Workflow: I realized very quickly after trying to create & collect photos, audio, and blog articles that I could design a system to streamline the process of creating content. I designed a flowchart, created images, and created videos for the system so that it could be easily communicated and replicated in the future. My plans for these Audio Recordings: When I first decided to start recording these episodes, I did not know where I wanted to distribute them. I also use to call them 'From The Ground Up Audio'. My thought at the time was to distribute them on something called Dsound or 'Decentralized Sound Platform'. This was so I could monetize the audio without having to add ads. On 03/05/19 I decided to distribute these audio recordings on a more mainstream platform, Anchor! Collecting Colors: At the time of recording this I got inspiration from 'Colors (https://colorsxstudios.com/ )'. Colors have YouTube videos where they have established/up and coming artists perform in front of solid color backdrops. I thought it would be a neat experiment to put a solid color on the outro of my vlogs that reflected my mood that day. So I found a color palette generator and saved HTML hex color codes that I could use for my vlogs later. Purchasing a Camera: I was planning/mapping out popular places to go around Louisville to collect photos. I saw a lot of business potential in purchasing a camera. The Camera has been a value add over the last few years. Market Research Questionnaire: I reached out to a professor at Penn State about Food Market Research who referred me to an old boss of mine. He told me about Secondary vs Primary market research. A year and a half later, I created a survey here (https://forms.gle/ks3qEKkvWfeATMX88). The survey currently has 25 responses.
16 Jul 2019
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Episode 4 (10/10/2019)
In this episode I talk about how I began learning more about food additives and reading about how the FDA classifies the safety of certain food ingredients. One of the things that stuck out to me is how vague the language that the FDA uses can be sometimes. I go on to give some examples of how certain food ingredients have been rated by the FDA for consumer safety. I also touch on my approach to increase the quality of my blogs/photos/audio in order to increase the amount of disposable income available to feed back into improving my content quality. To Reflect: At the time of recording this I had been jobless out of college for about 10 months. My goal at this time was to research and build a system that would allow me to be more productive on a daily basis. I would brainstorm ideas and create miniature projects for myself that I would then have to complete. Around this time I also started writing down the characteristics I wanted to have, my values in life, and the goals I wanted achieve. The project I was working on at this time was to build a timeline (overview) of the food industry. I pinned a long piece of yarn from one side of my room to the other, and began researching the dates when foods were invented, the dates when food companies were founded and the dates when food regulations were put into place. I marked the yarn with a permanent market and each mark represented a year. I would then place a sticky note on the mark that represented the year the invention/regulation happened. Now, I didn't memorize these facts or their dates, but it did lead me to learn a number of things I did not know about the food industry before. I can also refer back to this research experience and know where to find the information. For example, manufactured cereal was apparently invented within a year of pasteurized milk. Another example, the FDA had to put regulations in place to prohibit misleading labeling due to cases like - "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup for teething and colicky babies, unlabeled,yet laced with morphine, killed many infants." Looking back I think this was very valuable because I was able to create a system to continuously develop projects and get feedback (positive feedback loop). At the time I had recently started doing an internet broadcast on Sundays where I would share information about my projects and then review/develop them based on the feedback I received. I still do that to this day. (more can be found on FDA 'evolving regulatory powers' here https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fdas-evolving-regulatory-powers/milestones-us-food-and-drug-law-history (https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fdas-evolving-regulatory-powers/milestones-us-food-and-drug-law-history) )
15 Jun 2019
Learning To Be a Food Entrepreneur Episode 3 (10/3/2017)
In this episode I talk about a book list I started creating, I also give a summary of my experience exploring cryptocurrency. To reflect: By this time I had figured out my approach in cryptocurrency and it came down to executing in order to keep collecting as much as possible. My goal at the time was to purchase a camera with cryptocurrency in order to improve the quality of my blogs in hopes of earning more cryptocurrency. I was still relatively new to Louisville Kentucky (where I was living and currently live) and I did not know to many people or places. I didn't really get to show people my skill sets or thirst for knowledge until late 2018/early 2019. During 2017 I felt pretty alone, I didn't know the direction I wanted to take and had little to no guidance. I didn't realize the power of getting out and interacting with people/clubs/organizations yet. I am still adding on to and working through my book list. I've made it into a 'live' book list where I add to it and cross books off over time. In 2018 I even read some books that weren't on the list... but more on that later. Reminder: These are raw audio diaries. In order to streamline to process of creating them I reduced the amount of editing so I apologize if you hear any nervous hiccups.
17 May 2019
Learning To Be A Food Entrepreneur Episode 2 (Also recorded 10/3/2017)
In this episode I briefly stumble and then begin explaining my origins in the Cryptocurrency and Food Science space. I share one of the experiences that made me passionate about the Food Industry. To reflect: I was and sometimes still am nervous about sharing my thoughts/ideas publicly to people that I do not know. But in this video I tried to force myself through that and share some of my experiences that lead me to be passionate about food & entrepreneurship. At the time getting a camera was a big deal to me. My video/photo quality had been lacking for some time. I had been using a logitech USB camera which limited me to being close to a computer or laptop to take video unless I used my phone. I remember putting a lot of thought into my strategy and approach to creating content on the Steemit platform. I also put a lot of thought into how I would strategically deploy the cryptocurrency I earned over time. Since I started all of this living with my mom, $0 USD and $0 cryptocurrency it was very important to me to think deeply on how I used my $ and my crypto. It still is very important to me. Reminder: These are raw audio diaries. In order to streamline to process of creating them I reduced the amount of editing so I apologize if you hear any nervous hiccups.
27 Mar 2019
Learning To Be A Food Entrepreneur Episode 1 (From 10/3/2017)
In this episode I fumble through the very first audio diary I ever recorded. To reflect: Back then I remember being a lot more nervous to talk to the world about what I am doing and what I want to accomplish. There are moments where there is dead air, moments where I repeat myself, moments when I cough and hiccup into the microphone. Overall the quality is not good. At the time I was learning a lot about cryptocurrencies and had very big ideas of the potential growth. If you listen to this you will find out my thoughts and goals at the time. I also said I would do these weekly which lasted about 5 episodes.
5 Mar 2019
Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur Intro
In this episode I introduce Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur. I talk about the purpose of this podcast, the format and the overall goal of Learning to be a Food Entrepreneur.
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