Essential Ingredients Podcast

 “You have to give something away to get someone in.” —Kourtney Jason

For any small business, getting noticed isn't easy. Between all the noise online and in their communities, it's hard for owners to get their message heard. Hence, increasing visibility through smart PR and marketing can really help spread the word. When more potential customers learn about what the business has to offer, it leads to more opportunities for sales, growth, and success.

This week, Justine chats with Kourtney Jason about getting publicity for small businesses and authors. Kourtney is the Co-Founder of Pacific & Court, a boutique book publicity and digital marketing firm based in Brooklyn. She helps small businesses and independent authors and publishers to expand their media outreach through various digital marketing services.

Tune in as Justine and Kourtney discuss strategies for restaurants and startups to create buzz, the importance of following up, and tips for pitching media effectively. They also outline the PR process for hiring an agency and managing expectations as well as insights on digital advertising and maximizing publicity opportunities.

Meet Kourtney: 

Kourtney Jason is the President and Co-Founder of Pacific & Court. With more than 13 years of experience as a publicist, she has worked with and represented celebrities, world-renowned chefs, and bestselling authors. She led the in-house publicity departments at Ulysses Press and Time Inc. Books, and further honed her strategic communications skills at Bread & Butter and Smith Publicity agencies. 

Since its launch in 2021, P&C’s publisher clients have included Ulysses Press, KeyPress Publishing, Jesse B. Creative, The Collective Book Studio, Rocky Nook, Dzanc Books, and more. She’s secured coverage for clients in top-tier national media that includes the TODAY show, Associated Press, People magazine, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, Oprah Daily, Salon, Reader’s Digest, and much more. 

Her past work includes high-profile authors such as country music icon Martina McBride, actress Valerie Bertinelli, chef Todd Richards, TODAY’s Siri Daly, New York Times bestselling authors Syd and Shea McGee (of Studio McGee) among others. She is the author of five non-fiction books, including Lights Camera Booze: Drinking Games for Your Favorite Movies, which was included in the Academy Awards swag bags. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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Episode Highlights:

02:41 People and Perspectives

06:39 PR Strategies for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs

11:17 The Importance of a Well-Written Pitch  

16:03 The Importance of Building Long-Term Relationships with Professionals

20:08 How to Make Advertising Less Intimidating

 “You don't start by showing them everything; you start with what's that one thing that matters most. But then through that journey at the end, you make available everything that may matter to them.” —Aditya Varanasi

Digital advertising has become vital for businesses as consumers spend more time online. Advanced tools now allow advertisers to precisely target audiences across platforms based on detailed data. For startups and small businesses especially, digital provides an affordable and measurable way to efficiently build awareness, engage customers, and boost sales.

In this episode, Justine Reichman interviews Aditya Varanasi to discuss effective yet affordable advertising strategies for startups and small businesses. 

Aditya is the founder and CEO of Awarity, a digital advertising platform that helps small businesses efficiently build brand awareness. With over a decade of experience in marketing, he was able to make targeted and data-driven advertising affordable and accessible for all businesses.

Listen in as they explore the challenges of building brand awareness with limited budgets, when digital advertising makes sense, how to determine the budget and target the right audience, how targeted digital ads can help businesses stretch their dollars further, actionable tips on crafting clear messaging, consistency, analyzing campaign performance, and allowing time for behaviors to change, grassroots marketing alternatives, and how to amplify their message in a way that makes sense for their goals and budget.

Meet Aditya: 

Aditya Varanasi is the founder and CEO of Awarity, a digital advertising platform that helps small and mid-sized businesses maximize the impact of their marketing budgets. With over 15 years of experience in brand marketing and advertising, Varanasi previously led brands at Frito-Lay and worked as the CEO of a startup funded by private equity. He holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Varanasi founded Awarity to make world-class advertising accessible and effective for all businesses. Under his leadership, Awarity has grown to serve thousands of clients across industries and helped boost their sales and brand awareness through targeted digital campaigns.

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Episode Highlights:

01:52 Advertizing Challenges and Strategies for Startups

08:32 How Advertizing Impacts ROI

12:03 Marketing Strategies and Agency Costs

18:26 Aligning Goals with Advertising Strategies

22:30 Simple and Consistent Advertising 

“What we needed was the diversity of what nature provides, we needed to get better nutrition to more people… not in the big corporate way, but doing something different than anything that we've done before.” —Todd Rands

With sugar consumption linked to health issues like obesity and diabetes, consumers are looking for healthier options that allow for moderation without compromise. Innovation in natural low-calorie sweeteners holds promise for addressing this need and empowering personal choices. 

Led by CEO Todd Rands, ELO Life Systems is developing sustainable, natural ingredients by engineering plant biofactories. With decades of experience in molecular biology, agriculture, and venture capital, Todd's vision is for ELO to make healthier, plant-based products accessible to all through agricultural innovation.

Join in as Justine and Todd explore ELO's research process, partnerships with major brands, goals of making plant-based ingredients widely accessible, and leveraging molecular farming to revolutionize global agriculture and food production.

Meet Todd:

A seasoned life-sciences executive, Todd Rands has more than 25 years of scientific, legal, and business leadership at Fortune 500 companies, venture capital-backed startups, and top-tier law firms. With Elo’s advanced technology and a world-class team of innovators, Todd brings a singular focus to making everyday foods consumers love more nutritious and better for the planet.

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Episode Highlights:

02:10 Reimagining the Food System with Cutting-Edge Tech 

06:58 A Natural Alternative to Sugar

13:13 Molecular Farming for a Healthier, More Sustainable, and More Affordable Food

19:22 Sugar Alternatives and Their Health Impacts 

“Food as your medicine is anything that's not processed. These are things that we should be eating [because they] prevent you from having to take drugs. So if you're interested in health, you should be eating holistically in that regard.” —Kevin Bressani

Your best self starts on the plate!

The food we put on our plates each day has a profound impact on our health and well-being. Yet in our fast-paced world, it's easy to lose sight of how the small daily choices around what we eat can nourish our minds and bodies.

During his travels abroad, Healthy Roots Chef Kevin Bressani was exposed to permaculture and the connection between soil health, biodiversity, and nutrition. This experience brought him to an awareness of how this impacts the whole food production process, and ultimately the health of the consumers.

In this conversation, Chef Kevin shares insights into how eating for optimal health starts on the plate by cooking in tune with the seasons from sustainable, organic sources. Justine and Chef Kevin also delve into how prioritizing whole, minimally processed foods and supporting local farms through our shopping decisions can help optimize wellness from the ground up. Tune in to learn practical strategies for making meals that not only taste delicious but also care for people and the planet.

Meet Kevin: 

Chef Kevin Bressani has always been passionate about food and nutrition. As a young kid, he became interested in cooking by watching great chefs such as Jacques Pepin and Julia Child on television. This interest sparked a desire to work in various restaurants and to travel around the world to places like Australia where he worked and learned on organic and biodynamic farms. Kevin also traveled to Belize to study the natural healing power of plants and herbs with traditional Mayan healers. Through these adventures, he became inspired to nourish his community by creating healthy meals. 

In 2009, he enrolled in the Natural Chef program at Bauman College in Berkeley, California.  He polished his culinary skills and expanded his knowledge of therapeutic cooking at Bauman College and an internship at Three Stone Hearth, a community supported kitchen in Berkeley, CA.  Chef Kevin believes that food is a powerful medicine and a vital component in our own longevity.  As a personal chef, his cooking philosophy emphasizes the use of whole, local, and organic foods to provide every cell in the body with the vital nutrients and minerals needed to stay healthy and prevent disease.

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Episode Highlights:

01:30 Food Choices and Seasonal Eating 

05:59 Personalized Meal Planning and Holistic Health 

11:13 Private Chef Services

15:59 Evolving a Food Business with a Focus on Healthy Products

“We're doing some work, but not enough work. We need to move away from just talking about our impact, and we need to actually start making an impact.” —Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli

Digital tools hold great potential to transform waste management strategies. By tracking waste data and providing actionable insights, new technologies can optimize diversion efforts and maximize recycling rates. This revolution in waste analytics promises to make resource recovery vastly more efficient and sustainable.

Waste Administration and Tracking Software (WATS) is a waste management software company co-founded by Meredith Dannenberg. It provides tools to help businesses track, measure, and reduce their waste streams like trash, recycling, compost, and e-waste. 

Listen in as Meredith shares insights about digitizing waste data and processes, understanding local composting guidelines, choosing a co-founder wisely, addressing the issue of food loss, and focusing on action over just measuring impact. 

Meet Meredith: 

Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli built services and operations as Exec Director of Common Ground Compost LLC from 2017-2022. She sits on the US Composting Council board of directors and was a founding member of the New York City Microhaulers and Processors Trade Association. She believes that materials literacy and upstream/downstream supply chain transparency are foundational building blocks of the circular economy. Meredith is a TRUE Zero Waste Advisor.

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Episode Highlights:

03:48 Waste Reduction and Entrepreneurship 

09:26 Recycling Best Practices 

16:03 Streamlining Waste Management with Digital Tools 

22:01 Co-Founding a Software Company 

29:13 Addressing Food Loss Across the Supply Chain   

“We are more microbes than we are human cells. And it's the only alien thing that's in our body that we have to form a unity with in order to enjoy phenomenal health.” —Natasha Trenev

Probiotics are live microorganisms that can enhance digestive health when consumed in adequate amounts. Cutting-edge research continues to reveal exciting new ways specific probiotic strains can promote a healthy immune response and reduce inflammation throughout the entire body. As the gut microbiome plays a vital role in overall wellness, maintaining a diverse population of beneficial bacteria through probiotic intake is crucial, but only if done the right way.  

Joining us for the premiere episode of Season 8 is probiotic pioneer Natasha Trenev, a pioneer in the fields of fermented foods and probiotics, introducing these concepts over 40 years ago. As founder and president of Natren Probiotics, she continues her mission to educate on gut health and choose probiotic strains that support the immune system.

Listen in as Natasha provides a historical perspective on how our understanding of gut health and functional foods has evolved. She details early studies on probiotics and women's health as well as controversial topics like soy milk, kombucha, and raw foods consumption based on her decades of research and experience. 

Justine and Natasha also share important factors to consider when choosing a probiotic supplement and practical advice on reintroducing foods and incorporating fermented options like homemade yogurt into our diet.  

Meet Natasha: 

Probiotic pioneer, Natasha Trenev, has significantly contributed to the evolution of the probiotics industry. Prior to her work in the field, consumers had very limited knowledge of the supplement and its many benefits. Natasha's extensive experience and knowledge of the industry began with her family's 750-year history of producing the most beneficial yogurt prized by the royal family of Yugoslavia. 

After graduating from UCLA in 1970, a decade of research led to Natasha's development of the first revolutionary method of producing an effective and scientifically validated single-strain probiotic bacteria product. Her efforts helped to establish the entire probiotics category in the world!

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Episode Highlights:

01:42 Gut Health and Holistic Approach to Health

06:28 Research Studies

12:26 Probiotics and Gut Health

17:55 A Focus on Safety and Effectiveness 

24:06 The Impact of Diet on Overall Health 

 “It's a business, but more than anything, it's a community, and it's a movement.” —Marika Messager

The level of consciousness profoundly shapes a leader’s effectiveness. Self-awareness of one's blindspots, biases, and triggers is key to leading with wisdom, empathy, and care for all people affected by decisions. This approach benefits every member of the company as it centers around long-term well-being over temporary gains.

In this episode, Justine is joined by Marika Messager, a researcher and teacher of consciousness, and Founder of Conscious Leadership, an organization that helps develop conscious leaders capable of creating systemic change. 

Tune in as Justine and Marika explore how unconscious biases, emotional triggers, and disconnect from one's emotions can negatively impact leadership, tools for cultivating presence, ways to create a more inclusive culture, and strategies for managing energy states.

Meet Marika: 

Marika Messager is the founder of Conscious Leadership, an organization dedicated to researching unconscious behaviors and toxic patterns. Through her work, Marika helps individuals and organizations uncover the root causes of unhealthy behaviors and transform themselves. With years of experience, she guides her clients on their journey of self-awareness and emotional mastery to become conscious leaders. Marika is passionate about creating systemic change by developing healthy behaviors in individuals, families, and professional circles.

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Episode Highlights:

00:56 The Connection Between Consciousness and Leadership

03:07 Leadership Core Values

09:18 Energy Management and Emotional Regulation in Business

16:19 The Importance of Cultural Competence

19:11 Conscious Leadership and Inclusion 

“The three main factors are taste, price, and availability. Make sure things taste amazing, make sure it's affordable, and make it even more healthy.” —Alan Perlstein

Cell-culture technology is unlocking new frontiers in food production by growing crops from single cells instead of plants. This novel approach allows us to see a new generation of "designer" foods engineered at the cellular level to promote wellness in tasty new ways.

California Culture is pioneering the use of cell culture to grow cocoa and coffee from single cells, allowing them to produce chocolate and coffee with unprecedented health benefits. By cultivating cocoa cells in bioreactors, they can infuse chocolate with high levels of heart-healthy cocoa flavanols while removing lead and other toxins. Their vision is to make chocolate not only more delicious but also a secret weapon for cardiovascular health.

Listen in as California Culture CEO, Alan Perlstein shares how his background in biotechnology and entrepreneurship led him to this innovative idea, the health benefits of cocoa flavanols, and his vision to make chocolate healthier and more sustainable through this technology. Justine and Alan also talk about the potential of cellular agriculture in improving the food industry, the process of scaling your biz from lab to market, expanding distribution, making products more affordable, guiding principles for product development, and more.

Meet Alan:

Alan started working in a tiny cell-cultured fish lab in Long Island 17 years ago, back in the early days of cell-culture technology. He launched his first food tech company Joywell Foods (formerly Miraculex), where he commercialized protein-sweetened foods. When he saw tension brewing between the huge demand for chocolate and the sustainable/ethical issues surrounding it, he knew he had to look towards something bigger and thus, California Cultured was born. 

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“A lot of times, taking over business legacy doesn't necessarily mean that brand or that company, but how do you continue that story.” —Jia Liao

The bold and complex flavors of a hotpot have introduced many new food lovers to unique culinary experiences. Eating hotpot allows diners to immerse themselves in the tingling, numbing, and spicy sensations as different ingredients are cooked in the communal broth. Gathering with friends and family to cook ingredients has also won fans worldwide and helped spread appreciation for this cuisine to distant parts of the globe.

This week, we are joined by Jia Liao. Jia has dedicated her career to sharing the rich culinary traditions of Sichuan that she grew up with through her brand Hotpot Queen. Having worked for many years in her family’s hotpot restaurant, Jia is passionate about introducing new audiences to authentic Sichuan flavors and the cultural experiences that can be shared through food.

Listen in as Jia shares her journey of carrying on her family's culinary legacy while innovating to introduce Sichuan cuisine to a global market. Justine and Jia also talked about sourcing ingredients from local Chinese chili farmers, tips on making family business work, the challenges of building a new product line for expansion, popular ways to use Hotpot Queen products, goals of expanding distribution, and insights about bridging cultures through food and sparking curiosity about diverse flavors.

Meet Jia:

Jia Liao is the founder and passionate leader behind Hotpot Queen. She was born and raised in Sichuan, China where her family has operated a hotpot restaurant for over 40 years. Jia studied economics and business in the United States before returning to China to work in the hospitality industry for 13 years. In 2021, Jia launched Hotpot Queen to share Sichuan cuisine and málà flavors with a global audience through premium condiments and sauces. Her goal is to make málà the next umami sensation and start a málà revolution.

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Episode Highlights:

03:14 Innovating Legacy

09:06 Cultural Exchange in the Food Industry

13:36 Creating New Culinary Experiences

17:41 Expanding the Family Biz with a New Product Line

21:33 How to Make Family Biz Work

27:06 Building Online Presence 

“When we think about our community, we don't feel alone at all. We look at all of our farmers, all of these amazing other CPG brands, we are becoming a loud minority that is shaking and moving the system.” —Maddy Rotman

“Be a little bit more curious when you're out there shopping for alcoholic products. Gravitate towards the brands that fully disclose everything.” —Taylor Lanzet

As the world of spirits embraces regenerative organic farming, a new era of eco-conscious consumption is taking root. By adopting practices that mimic nature's restorative cycles, distillers are not only crafting exceptional spirits but also nurturing a more sustainable and equitable future for the industry. This shift reflects a growing awareness that the spirits we enjoy come not just from the land but also from the hands of those who care for it.

Driven by their passion for sustainability, Maddy Rotman and Taylor Lanzet founded Anytime Spritz, a company offering a line of low-ABV canned cocktails made with ingredients sourced from regenerative organic farms. Their commitment to regenerative agriculture led to the creation of three delicious flavors, expanding distribution from New York to California. This initiative sets a new standard for the alcohol industry, paving the way for a more sustainable future.

Listen in as Maddy and Taylor share how they met, the inspiration and vision behind launching Anytime Spritz, what regenerative farming means to them, and the importance of partnering with organic growers. They also discuss the challenges of entering the alcohol industry as first-time entrepreneurs, why transparency around ingredients is so important to their brand, and their upcoming spirits releases. 

Meet Taylor: 

Taylor Lanzet is a passionate food policy expert dedicated to transforming the food system for the benefit of farmers, workers, and consumers. Known as a food policy nerd, Taylor blends academic expertise with practical experience, working tirelessly to bridge the gap between policy and action. With a focus on sustainability and equity, Taylor collaborates with diverse stakeholders to advocate for mission-driven initiatives and build a more resilient and ethical food system for all.

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Meet Maddy: 

Maddy Rotman has extensive experience in sustainable food systems and building farm-to-table supply chains. She met her co-founder Taylor Lanzet while they were students at Brown University where they studied the intersection of food systems and climate change. Maddy brings her passion for organic and regenerative agriculture as well as her business experience to Anytime Spritz's mission of creating transparent, organic canned cocktails.

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Episode Highlights:

00:55 The Sustainable Farm-To-Can Cocktail 

06:31 Identifying Market Need

13:02 Sustainable Spirits and Consumer Impact

19:08 Regen Ag and Natural Flavors

23:30 Lack of Transparency in the Alcohol Industry

25:20 Drink Mindfully