Fell Into Food Podcast

I had Michael Smith back on the podcast this week — round two with the guy behind Rameking, the only pre-filled portion cup dispenser out there, still running the whole operation with one other person out of Ohio. And yes, that jingle is still stuck in my head. It plays at the end of this episode too. You've been warned.

This episode is less about the product and more about what happens once you actually start posting. Michael went from 200 followers to a video sitting at three million views — no music, no editing, nothing polished about it, and the same thing that made people mad about it is the reason it worked. We get into that, and then into the real meat of the conversation: a private group he built called Global Nova, forty-some business owners trading warm introductions instead of competing for the same cold leads. No dues, no catch. Sounds like a nice idea in theory until you realize it's actually working for him.

Somewhere in the middle of all that we also cover why the standard sauce cup isn't cutting it anymore — blame the chicken tender for that one — and the one-word email trick that actually gets telemarketers to leave you alone. That's how these conversations go with Michael.

If you're trying to figure out what to actually do with the people already watching you, or you just want that Rameking song stuck in your head for the rest of the week — this one's for you.

Michael Smith / Rameking: rameking.com — available through US Foods, Sysco, and Amazon. 

LinkedIn: Rameking / Michael Smith

Instagram @ramekingdom

Facebook @therameking

TikTok @ramekingdom

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood

FellintoFood.com

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Welcome back Michael Smith, and the jingle nobody can get out of their head

01:00 — What Rameking is, and the new 3.5–4oz cup coming because of chicken tender culture

02:59 — Rebuilding social media from 200 followers, and switching to an educational content style

05:20 — Recording 30–60 fifteen-second videos in a day, and the jingle sign-off on every one

06:33 — The Robopost CSV trick for scheduling a week of posts at once

09:45 — The raw, no-music TikTok video that hit 3 million views

13:25 — Why he built Global Nova instead of just growing a following

21:22 — What surprised him most about who joined — a Bar Rescue celebrity chef and Dart Containers

26:46 — Warm intros vs. cold outreach, and the trick to get telemarketers to actually leave you alone

29:03 — Audience vs. community vs. support group — the real difference

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Rameking (rameking.com) — portion cup dispenser, available through US Foods, Sysco, and Amazon

Robopost — social media scheduling app Michael uses to batch content, including CSV bulk uploads

Global Nova Group — private LinkedIn networking group Michael founded, ~42 members, free to join

George / Grill Advantage — mentor who helped shape Michael's educational content style

Brian Duffy — celebrity chef (Bar Rescue), Global Nova member

Dart Containers — sustainability lead is a Global Nova member

Levy Restaurants — Michael's former employer (GM, Ohio State) — kept as a warm-intro resource for the group

• Episode Art

Samantha Skyring is the founder and CEO of Oryx Desert Salt, a mineral-rich salt sourced from an ancient underground lake beneath Africa's Kalahari Desert — now stocked by Whole Foods and Woolworths, served in more than 3,500 restaurants, and supplied to JetBlue Airlines. We get into desert salt versus sea salt, the sodium and hydration science most people get backwards, and what's actually sitting in the "natural" sea salt in your pantry.

This one starts with Samantha walking 75 miles across the Skeleton Coast in Namibia in her twenties — the trip that put her face-to-face with the oryx antelope the brand is named after — and gets a lot more intense from there. Fifteen years ago, with a toddler to care for and no guarantee any of it would sell, she sold her house, bought 34 tonnes of desert salt, stored it in a garage unit, and started bottling it herself at her dining room table. That's how Oryx Desert Salt began. She'll also tell you, on tape, that table salt was invented as an industrial product around 1910 for paint and textiles, and that the chemicals added to make it "flow freely" are still in the shaker on your table today.

We cover what's actually harvested out of the ocean when a bag says "sea salt" — plastics, sewage, and in some cases radioactive waste from decades-old ocean dumping. Samantha walks through why sodium and hydration are more connected than most people realize, why she thinks "salt is bad for you" might be one of the more persistent food myths out there, and how she landed a national Whole Foods listing off three cold emails to a category buyer. We also get into the plastic-free, ceramic-mechanism grinder that kept over 894,500 plastic grinders out of landfill in 2024 alone.

Website: https://oryxdesertsalt.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oryxdesertsalt/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oryxdesertsalt/?hl=en

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@oryxdesertsalt4081

Oryx Desert Salt can be found at

Amazon

Whole Foods

Direct on website

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Cold open: the five-month desert journey that started it all

01:18 — What Oryx Desert Salt is, and why an antelope is the logo

05:42 — She sold her house to buy 34 tons of desert salt

06:25 — Inside the Kalahari salt pan: 55 million tons, bigger than Texas

10:00 — What's actually in your sea salt (plastics, sewage, radioactive waste)

12:27 — Table salt's origin story: an industrial product from 1910

17:15 — "Salt is bad for you" — dismantling the biggest nutrition myth on the planet

26:26 — How she landed a national Whole Foods listing with three emails

32:15 — Getting on JetBlue and Amtrak

37:12 — The "tequila fist" taste test and what chefs are saying

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood

FellintoFood.com

Chris Valdes is a Miami-based chef and TV personality best known for Food Network Star, who's spent the last eleven years building a media career out of catering, storytelling, and refusing to let anyone else write his story for him.

This one didn't feel like a normal chef interview. We got into what it actually takes to build a brand before you have a team, how much of yourself you let a producer or a platform write for you versus protecting your own voice, and where AI actually earns a place in a professional kitchen instead of just taking over. Chris talks about grit in a way that doesn't feel like a quote on a slide — it's lived in.

We also ended up in Miami's Latin fusion food scene, the right way to cook a pot of black beans, and somehow my own Father's Day cookout. That's how these conversations go.

Connect

Website

Instagram 

Youtube

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood

FellintoFood.com

4. CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

Timestamps pulled from the final edited transcript (with intro narration) — these supersede the earlier raw-recording chapter list.

00:00 — Cold open: how Chris built a media brand on purpose

04:17 — Starting a catering company at 19 — the -$267 first event

08:06 — Staying authentic vs. playing a character on TV

11:31 — When cooking turned into storytelling (the Le Cordon Bleu essay & Emeril's "BAM")

15:54 — Why people actually connect with his content

23:20 — Jeff's own jump from corporate to entrepreneur

26:23 — The bride who almost didn't hire him — and 11 years of loyalty since

32:12 — Miami's Latin fusion food scene + the black beans recipe

42:13 — AI, tech, and what's actually changing in food media

53:22 — What's next: the next chapter as a storyteller

Travis Petersen is the chef and founder behind Nomad Cook, a culinary cannabis brand that's hosted more than 1,200 cannabis-infused pop-up dinners in 117 cities across 37 states, and the person who helped the American Culinary Federation build its first cannabis chef certification course. He got his start on MasterChef at 31, years into a sales career in oil and gas — and built everything else from there. 

He bombed his tacos and got eliminated in the second episode, three minutes of total airtime. Ten days later, a recession hit his oil and gas company and he got laid off with a year's severance. That accident of timing is the entire reason Nomad Cook exists. He calls it the stars aligning; it's also just a guy who decided to spend a free year finding out if he could actually cook.

We get into how a newspaper photo of a sold-out cannabis dinner sent him into his own backyard for his first pop-up, and how that snowballed into touring 20 days a month with 500 pounds of gear and a sous chef in tow. He breaks down what terpenes actually are — sativa and indica only describe how the plant grows, not how it makes you feel. 

He's also walking away from the touring life at the height of it. His last public Nomad Cook pop-up dinner is September 5th in Miami, and after that he's moving Nomad Cook into education only while he starts a new venture helping small businesses with AI automation.

Social

Instagram: the_nomadcook

Website: https://www.thenomadcook.com/

ACF Cannabis Course

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood

FellintoFood.com

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Intro: Travis Petersen, the Nomad Cook

02:24 — The first backyard pop-up

04:48 — From oil and gas to MasterChef

09:54 — Writing the cookbook, building the ACF certification

15:02 — What a cannabis dinner actually is

19:05 — Terpenes, the entourage effect, and the mango trick

23:20 — Inside the dosing system

27:49 — Why the touring life is ending

33:25 — The Paris takeover surprise

51:23 — What's next: education and AI

Rob Whitten and Jane Lo are the co-founders and co-CEOs of p!ng — a robotics-powered coffee company building 120-square-foot autonomous pods that take your order before you arrive and hand you a finished drink in under 30 seconds, with no one behind the window. Rob is a West Point graduate and former robotics leader at Amazon and iRobot. Jane is a brand strategist and Booth MBA who spent her career inside customer experience at Forrester and SharkNinja. Together, they're going after the $50 billion coffee industry with an idea that sounds like science fiction until you realize how much of the modern drive-thru is broken.

They didn't start with the robot. Rob ran a food truck first — flipping eggs on two four-foot griddles — just to learn the food business from the inside before he ever touched automation. And in the early pilot, when customers pulled up to what looked like a fully automated pod, Rob and Jane were behind a curtain inside, making the drinks by hand, Wizard-of-Oz style, just to prove people would actually want this. The twist? When customers found out there was a person inside, they were disappointed. They wanted the magic to be real.

That tension — building real automation without losing the human side of hospitality — runs through the whole conversation. We get into how p!ng's "sensor-augmented geofencing" actually identifies which car you're sitting in before you reach the window (your phone is doing more work than you think), why they chose Cometeer flash-frozen coffee extract over brewing on-site, how a fifty-plus-ingredient menu gets built around what robots can actually do well, and what their Robotics-as-a-Service franchise model looks like for someone who wants to own a pod without ever having to learn robotics.

P!ing - Where to find 

Website — pingthru.com

TikTok — @pingthru

Facebook — facebook.com/pingthrucoffee

LinkedIn (company) — linkedin.com/company/pingthru

YouTube — youtube.com/@pingthru

Instagram — @pingthrucoffee

Jane Lo — linkedin.com/in/jane-lo-ping

Rob Whitten — linkedin.com/in/rob-whitten-pingthru

Wefunder — wefunder.com/ping

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood

FellintoFood.com

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

00:10 — Intro: Rob Whitten & Jane Lo, p!ng

01:28 — Origin story: food trucks, robot armies, and how p!ng came together

09:50 — Hand-building the first pod in a driveway

13:02 — "The guy in the box" — why customers wanted the magic to be real

14:49 — Restocking and the hub-and-spoke model

18:02 — Sensor-augmented geofencing explained

22:19 — Why p!ng uses Cometeer flash-frozen coffee

26:14 — Building a 50-ingredient menu a robot can run

30:23 — Robotics-as-a-Service: the franchise model

38:21 — What's next: 24/7 pods, WeFunder, no-tip pricing

Ian Sutherland is the co-founder of World Freight Direct — a dedicated industry platform for global freight and logistics — and brings 55 years of combined freight experience to the table with his wife and co-founder Kath. He was back on Fell Into Food this week to talk about the thing that makes everything in your restaurant, your kitchen, and your supply chain actually move: global freight.

Most people in food think about supply chains when something goes wrong. A delivery doesn't show up. A price spikes overnight. A product disappears from the shelf. Ian has spent thirty years watching what happens before that — and in this conversation, we got into it from the ground up.

We covered how international freight actually works: the four modes of transport, what a bill of lading is and why it matters, how a freight forwarder functions as the connective tissue between a seller in Australia and a buyer in Chicago, and what's physically happening inside a container when equipment travels across an ocean to land at your booth at the National Restaurant Show. I walked through his own experience unloading overseas freight for the first time this year — and yes, it looks nothing like what you'd expect.

Then things got interesting. We talked fertilizer. Not the bag you buy at a garden center — the bulk-shipped global commodity that Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., Canada, and China all export, and that the world's food bowl cannot function without. Ian broke down why ammonium nitrate that grows your crops is the same compound that leveled the port of Beirut in 2020 — one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in modern history. The connection between what's in your soil, what's in your food, and what can happen when it's handled wrong is something most people in the industry have never thought about.

We also got into World Freight Direct — the platform Ian and Kath have been building and rebuilding for eighteen years. It's a vertical industry platform that connects freight forwarders, customs agents, 3PLs, shipping lines, and specialty food and beverage companies in one place. Ian explains how it integrates with Hospitality Chain (Episode 58) so that the two industries that can't exist without each other can finally find each other on one platform. And we closed on AI, automation, the death of email, and why neither Ian nor Jeff think the relationship part of this business is going anywhere.

Find Ian

https://hospitalitychain.com/

https://worldfreightdirect.com/

LinkedIn

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood

FellintoFood.com

CHAPTERS / TIME00:10 — Intro: Ian Sutherland returns — World Freight Direct and 30 years in freight

01:04 — Ian's background: wife got him in, marine roots, 55 years combined with co-founder Kath

05:34 — How international freight works: 4 modes of transport, bill of lading, freight forwarders

10:12 — Unloading a container: what's actually inside and why it looks nothing like you'd expect

12:17 — Fertilizer: what it's made of and why the global food supply depends on it

14:44 — The Beirut port explosion: 2,500 tons of ammonium nitrate and what it did

18:06 — The pandemic in Melbourne: most locked down city in the world, 268 days

24:37 — The stat: freight + hospitality = over 20% of the global workforce

26:18 — World Freight Direct: 18 years to build, rebuilt 4 times, why vertical platforms matter now

37:42 — AI agents in freight: how automation will close deals faster than any email ever could

I've known Ethan and Cass for a while now, and every time I'm around them I walk away thinking the same thing — these guys just get it. Not just the event business, but the people side of this industry. That's what Taste Events is built on.

They co-founded a curated B2B food service event company that takes everything broken about the trade show model and fixes it. We're talking 150–200 people, chain operators and suppliers who actually belong in the room together, and one-on-one meetings built around an intelligence dossier pulled from real conversations — not a generic booth pitch. The whole thing is designed so that when you sit down, it matters.

We talked about how they built it, what made them realize "anti-trade show" was the wrong framing, and how they're keeping events fresh without losing what makes them special. We also got into NRA — what's trending on the floor (clean label is in, meat analogs are fading), how they work the show, and what actually gets done at Portillo's at midnight.

Oh, and somewhere in there Ethan ate sardines on the show floor to start a conversation. Worked like a charm. He also runs a tin fish review account on TikTok called Tinnies with the Boys. I have no notes on that — just go follow it.

Find Taste Events:

• LinkedIn: @TasteEvents
• Instagram: @TasteEvents
• Website: thetasteevents.com

Timestamps

[00:00] Cold open — Nutter Butter on TikTok is an acid trip

[01:17] How Ethan and Cass got pulled deeper into food service

[03:25] What a Taste Event actually is — the model explained

[08:09] The intelligence dossier and why it's not speed dating

[09:21] The extracurriculars — Taste Tour, dinners, and where the real magic happens

[14:37] NRA reflections — Year 2, Portillo's at midnight, and trends on the floor

[21:36] Tong Talks origin story — Hannah Lopez, a mic, and a pair of tongs

[24:20] Good people, good times, good business — and how you protect that as you grow

[29:26] Advice for anyone at a crossroads: if it makes you nervous, lean in

[35:48] Next event info + where to find them

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood

FellintoFood.com

Chef Steve McHugh is a six-time James Beard Award finalist, the author of Cured, and the founder of the celebrated San Antonio charcuterie restaurant of the same name — a 12-year run built entirely around preservation, dry aging, fermentation, and the science of what happens when you take time seriously with meat.

Steve grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm, trained at the CIA, and cut his teeth in John Besh's kitchens in New Orleans before a lymphoma diagnosis stopped him mid-career. He finished treatment, moved to Texas, and opened Cured at the Pearl Brewery — a restaurant centered on whole-animal butchery, handmade charcuterie, and a custom aging case that eventually became one of the most interesting preservation programs in the country.

In this conversation, we get into the real science behind curing and dry aging: what 60/60/60 actually means and when it doesn't apply, the difference between EQ curing and salt box method, why water is the enemy of every preservation technique, and how mold — the right mold — is the thing that keeps your case healthy and your flavors complex. Steve talks about how COVID wiped out twelve years of charcuterie inventory in three months, and how his wife's idea to fill the empty case with dry-aged beef turned into a second revenue engine. We also go deep on fish dry aging, wet aging, rapid aging claims, and one of my favorite moments in recent podcast memory: Steve debunking the "uncured bacon" label at the grocery store. Spoiler — they're curing it with celery. They're just not telling you.

If you're a chef trying to understand preservation, an operator thinking about a dry aging program, or just someone who wants to know what's actually in that pack of bacon be sure to listen all the way through.

Steve McHugh: Instagram / Twitter / Facebook: @ChefSteveMcHugh 

Book: Cured — available anywhere books are sold

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood

FellintoFood.com

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 — Introduction
• 01:17 — Farm life, work ethic & finding the kitchen
• 07:26 — CIA, New Orleans & John Besh
• 09:43 — Lymphoma, recovery & opening Cured
• 15:08 — Curing vs. dry aging: the science explained
• 22:05 — How COVID created an accidental dry aging program
• 29:03 — Mold: why it's your best employee
• 43:05 — Dry aging fish
• 48:01 — Uncured bacon: the truth
• 52:01 — Life after Cured & what's next

Cherie Calbom — known as The Juice Lady — holds a Master of Science in Nutrition, has authored 36 books with over 3.5 million copies sold, and has spent decades studying the connection between what we eat and how we feel. Her latest book, The Truth About Seed Oils, digs into how "heart-healthy" vegetable oils became the default in the American kitchen — and what that's quietly done to our health.

The story of seed oils doesn't start in a kitchen. It starts with cotton waste rotting in piles at the turn of the 20th century. A dark, smelly oil originally used to lubricate machinery was refined, deodorized, bleached, and rebranded as a modern American cooking staple. World War II did the rest — when ships carrying coconut oil couldn't get through the waters, seed oil manufacturers filled the gap, hired cookbook authors, lobbied hard, and told home cooks this was the healthier, more modern choice. Heart disease went up anyway. It's still the number one killer.

In this episode, Cherie breaks down the lipid hypothesis, the influence of Ancel Keys, what actually happens inside a seed oil refinery (hexane, bleaching agents, degumming — not pretty), why the omega-6 to omega-3 imbalance is driving chronic inflammation, and what the research shows about seed oils' connection to anxiety, depression, and aggression. She also fields the strongest counter-argument — a 2025 JAMA study suggesting people with the highest seed oil intake were 16% less likely to die — and explains why she's skeptical.

And then there's her own story. In her 20s, Cherie was bedridden with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia — sleeping 12 hours a day, waking up exhausted, unable to walk around the block. She couldn't work. She moved back home. Five days into a juice fast, her body expelled a tumor the size of a golf ball, blood vessels attached. Three months later, she woke up feeling like someone gave her a new body in the middle of the night. That experience sent her back to school to get her master's degree so she could be a credible voice for everyone else trying to find their way out.

Socials: 

Cherie Calbom, M.S. — The Juice Lady Website: www.juiceladyinfo.com 

Instagram: @juiceladycherie 

X (Twitter): @JuiceLadyCherie 

TikTok: @juiceladycherie 

YouTube Shorts: TheJuiceLadyCherie 

LinkedIn: Cherie Calbom Book: The Truth About Seed Oils — available on Amazon App: Seed Oil Scout (link on her site — click the book on the homepage)

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood

FellintoFood.com

Chapters:

00:00 — Intro: Meet Cherie Calbom, The Juice Lady

00:40 — The Dark History of Seed Oils: From Cotton Waste to Your Kitchen

03:10 — The Lipid Hypothesis, Ancel Keys, and Why Heart Disease Never Got Better

06:00 — Inside a Seed Oil Refinery: Hexane, Bleaching, and Toxic Byproducts

07:45 — The Omega-6 to Omega-3 Imbalance Driving Chronic Inflammation

10:00 — The Counter-Argument: What Does the 2025 JAMA Study Actually Say?

13:30 — The Real Cost of Cheap Oil (And What to Do If You Can't Afford the Swap)

19:10 — Seed Oils, Anxiety, Depression, and Aggression

21:45 — Cherie's Story: Bedridden in Her 20s, Healed in Three Months, and a Tumor the Size of a Golf Ball

29:05 — What Cherie Eats, Seed-Oil-Free Swaps, and One Action to Take This Week

Ron Cardwell, Director of Commodity Strategy at Restaurant Technologies (RTI), runs point on cooking oil for the company that pioneered automated oil management — the closed-loop system that delivers fresh oil and pulls used oil out of more than 40,000 restaurants. We get into the seed oil debate, allergen myths, beef tallow's comeback, and what actually happens to the used oil in your fryer.

Ron's nickname is "The Oil Nerd." He earned it. He started in soybean processing out of college, fell in love with how oil touches every corner of food and energy, and has been deep in commodity strategy ever since. RTI moves more than 700 million pounds of fresh oil into restaurants every year and pulls hundreds of millions of pounds of used oil back out — and almost all of it ends up as renewable diesel, biodiesel, or sustainable aviation fuel.

We dig into how operators should actually think about oil — flavor, function, and price, in that order, not the other way around. Why "buy the cheapest" is a trap that costs you more in turnover and bad food. The seed oil vs. beef tallow debate — what's signal and what's noise, what the real trade-offs are on flavor, supply, and price when you switch. The allergen question that comes up at every front-of-house every week — and why a fully refined and deodorized oil doesn't carry the allergen at all (Ron settles this one on tape). What pourable beef tallow actually is and why it exists. Why high-oleic crop breeding is changing what "stable frying oil" even means. The full-circle history — beef tallow → saturated fat fear → trans fats → seed oil blends → consumers asking for tallow back. And the part of Ron's job he loves most: turning used fryer oil into renewable diesel at roughly 20% the carbon intensity of conventional diesel.

Socials and Links:

Website: www.rti-inc.com

RTI 2025 Impact Report: https://www.rti-inc.com/blog/restaurant-technologies-recycled-more-than-390-million-lbs-of-uco-in-2025/

Ron Cardwell Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronald-cardwell-21a7531a6/

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Intro and welcome: Ron Cardwell, Director of Commodity Strategy at Restaurant Technologies

01:31 — How Ron earned the nickname "The Oil Nerd"

02:44 — Why oil is one of three core nutrition components — and the most functional

03:49 — What "Director of Commodity Strategy" actually means day-to-day

05:09 — Quick recap of RTI's closed-loop oil system (referencing Ep 17 with Diana)

05:24 — The most dangerous job in a kitchen — and why bulk delivery eliminates it

07:12 — Jeff's experience as a former RTI customer

08:32 — RTI's 2025 Impact Report — released Earth Day, recycling stats

09:36 — Choosing oil: the three variables operators actually need to weigh

11:24 — The trap of buying the cheapest oil

12:13 — Flavor profiles by oil type — neutral vs. flavored oils

14:39 — The allergen question — settled on tape

16:15 — How operators (and customers) can verify allergen status — the supplier statement

18:32 — The seed oil vs. beef tallow debate — what's signal, what's noise

21:03 — Switching to tallow — flavor, supply, and price reality

24:58 — Why beef tallow is a byproduct, not a planned crop — supply ceiling

27:13 — Beef tallow handling — the solid block, the cleanup, the pourable version

29:23 — Glass vs. plastic and why dark storage matters more than the bottle

30:30 — Sustainability: where the used oil actually goes

32:58 — Where the oil category goes next — high-oleic, crop breeding, consumer demand

35:59 — The full circle: tallow → saturated fat fear → trans fats → blends → tallow comeback

37:20 — The one thing every operator should change Monday morning

37:55 — How to actually monitor oil quality day-to-day — smell, taste, look

38:55 — Where to find Ron and RTI — NRA Show, rti-inc.com

39:35 — Wrap up

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