My Food Job Rocks!

Brandon Robinson set out to be a lawyer. Instead he built a video production company that lost half its revenue in the 2008 financial crisis, sold lasers, worked at Groupon right after its IPO, and then founded a med spa chain that he sold to private equity. Then one Monday night in Washington he walked into a mini golf bar so packed he couldn't get a tee time, and he knew he'd found his next business.

In this episode, Brandon, founder and CEO of Tipsy Putt, talks about how a chance conversation in an airport lounge led to the sale of his company, and how his wife's MBA class at Sac State ended up writing the 74-page business plan that launched Tipsy Putt. He's candid about the leases he signed in 2020, sure that nobody would ever go to a basement or second-floor bar again, and why he wishes he'd stuck to his original model.

We also get into the pressures on restaurants right now: GLP-1 drugs, energy prices, lawsuit costs, and why Brandon thinks Gen Z's drinking habits are more about price than taste. He explains why Tipsy Putt still sells a $6 beer from local craft brewers instead of big-brand light lagers, and makes the case for community, league nights, and getting a beer with someone face to face.

What we cover:

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ess Pryles is a live-fire cook, two-time cookbook author, TV host, and the founder of Hardcore Carnivore. She grew up in Melbourne, Australia, never trained as a chef, and dropped science classes as soon as she could. She got into barbecue because she loved how it tasted. That led her to Texas A&M's Beef 101 and Brisket Camp, and then to a graduate certificate in meat science from Iowa State.

In this episode, Jess talks with Adam about how she went from early Twitter and Instagram to judging on Food Network's Pitmasters and hosting her own shows, Hardcore Carnivore on Tastemade and Feast by Fire on Outdoor Channel. She explains how TV production works behind the scenes and why she waited nine years to write a second cookbook. She also covers what surprised her most about the meat industry after growing up in a city with no connection to agriculture.

We also get into:

Jess's new book, Prime Cuts, is a guide to choosing, prepping, storing, and cooking meat, with 100 recipes organized by cut.

Find Jess as @jesspryles on all platforms.

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What happens when AI agents start doing the grocery shopping? Alicja Spaulding teaches what she describes as the world's first MBA and undergraduate curriculum in AI and food marketing at Saint Joseph's University. She has been watching technology upend industries since her early days in new media marketing at Universal Music Canada.

Adam and Alicja talk about building a portfolio career and why today's consumer is pickier than ever. They also ask what your competitive advantage is once AI makes everyone faster, better and cheaper. They cover where AI still falls short in food, like photography for packaging, and how it's helping small restaurants compete. Alicja also explains why she thinks of AI as a "return on imagination," not just a return on investment.

In this episode:

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Adam sits down with Nicole Gallace, Talent Solutions Manager at FoodGrads and Careers in Food, who founded FoodGrads back in 2016 and has spent 20+ years recruiting across the food and beverage world. A decade after Nicole gave Adam his very first platform, the two reconnect for a wide-ranging, freeform conversation about how much has changed — and what still matters.

They dig into the real state of hiring in food manufacturing: the post-COVID swing from frontline roles back to skilled trades and professionals, the scramble for electricians and millwrights, and why "become a plumber" isn't advice that fits everyone. From there it's all AI — the hopeful-but-unsure businesses experimenting with ChatGPT and Claude, the pushback from young people who don't want a machine handing them the answers, and Adam's case for becoming "tech curious" as the real job-security skill.

Along the way: AI-perfected resumes and the interviews that expose them, the em dash as an AI tell, smart glasses on the factory floor, and why the skills that don't get automated — communication, storytelling, critical thinking, showing up in person — are about to matter more, not less. They close on the human stuff: personal branding, being vulnerable in public, letting go of a bad co-founder split, and Nicole's north star — "nothing happens to you, everything happens for you."

Find Nicole: FoodGrads.com and the That's a Food Job podcast with Veronica Hislop.

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What does it actually take to bring a human protein—one never before put into a human body orally—from a shared co-working lab to a partnership with the largest food company in the world? This week, Adam sits down with Laura Katz, founder and CEO of Helaina, the company making bioidentical human bioactive proteins, starting with its first commercialized product: a replica human lactoferrin sold under the trademark EFERA.

Laura shares the whole journey. A self-described food scientist who knew at age ten that her purpose was to feed people, she cold-emailed her way into biotech with no network, no fancy school, and no idea what a venture capitalist was—collecting "hundreds of no's" along the way. From launching a lab in New York the same month COVID hit, to running over a hundred fermentation tanks at commercial scale, to publishing eleven peer-reviewed papers and running six clinical trials at once, she explains how Helena knocked through each milestone in step with its funding rounds.

We get into the science of why lactoferrin is so hard to make (an 80-kilodalton molecule packed with disulfide bridges and glycosylation), why the biotech "market adjustment" is pushing the industry toward high-value molecules over commodities, and the surprising range of applications—from infant nutrition and prenatal iron deficiency to women's health, gut and immune health, and athletic performance.

Along the way, Laura offers sharp, hard-won advice: be obsessed with the problem, not the product; do one thing right before doing anything else; skip the hype and the endless conference circuit in favor of the only two things that matter—driving revenue up and cost of goods down; and, for the next generation of food and biotech talent, show up "AI native," with a team of agents behind you.

Whether you're a founder, a food scientist, or just curious about the cutting edge of what's going into our food, this one's full of substance.

In this episode:

Follow Laura and Helena on LinkedIn and Instagram, and learn more at Helena's website.

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What does it actually take to build a restaurant that lasts and to scale it without burning out?

In this episode of My Food Job Rocks, Adam Yee sits down with Christin Marvin, CEO of Columbine Hospitality, who started as a 15-year-old line cook flipping enchiladas and went on to open 13 restaurants across concepts from speakeasy barbecue to casual French. Today she coaches multi-location restaurant owners on how to grow the right way.

Christin shares the lessons that carried through her 20-year career: the difference between the creativity of independent restaurants and the discipline of chains (and why the best operators blend both), what real hospitality looks like when you listen closely and never say no, and the hidden costs that blindside first-time builders — from $80,000 sprinkler systems to million-dollar construction overruns.

We also get into the hard stuff: why most owners scale out of ego instead of strategy, how to develop leaders from within so you can work on your business instead of in it, and her "low flame vs. high flame" approach to coaching people through uncomfortable feedback. Plus, an honest look at the toughest moment the industry has faced — rising costs, a post-pandemic talent shortage, grocery-store competition — and where AI genuinely helps versus where it should never touch the guest experience.

Whether you run a restaurant, lead a team, or just love the business of food, this conversation is packed with practical wisdom on leadership, hiring for values, and why investing in people is the highest-ROI move you can make.

In this episode:

Connect with Christin Marvin:

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An interview about my past career, present-day projects, and future insights

Check out Nathan Schmidt's website: https://progressusolutions.com/

The CPG Level Up Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4rKQ00Gayuk2kIqERYWyTK

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Starting next week, we will do an episode twice a month.

But I'll still be on every week! Listen to the R&D Radio podcast on the Startup CPG podcast!

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Bruce Friedrich, president and founder of the Good Food Institute, joins the show to mark GFI's 10th anniversary and unpack a decade of building the plant-based and cultivated meat ecosystem.

Drawing on his acclaimed new book Meat (a Publishers Weekly Top 10 and Nature Top 5 science pick, praised by Jane Goodall, Nobel laureate Michael Kremer, and Kim Stanley Robinson), Bruce makes the case that the real challenges were never about taste or technology alone. They were about scaling, regulation, and money.

Adam and Bruce dig into how cultivated meat costs have plummeted 100,000-fold on a fraction of the funding of any comparable technology, why so many plant-based startups mistook themselves for "the next Impossible," and how 30+ governments went from zero funding to hundreds of millions in just six years. Along the way: Gartner hype cycles, the Waymo and Tesla parallels, the surprising promise of blended products, and honest career advice for food scientists eyeing an underserved field.

A grounded, optimistic conversation about technology adoption, the fragility of our food system, and the unglamorous work of changing the world one tech challenge at a time.

📘 Learn more about the book at meatbook.org · Connect with Bruce on LinkedIn · Newsletters at gfi.org/newsletters

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Light bites and refreshments are included with your ticket; please indicate any dietary restrictions in your ticket order confirmation form.

Heads up, as always, we'll have VIPs in attendance as well!

Hey Chicago: Startup CPG is hosting our first-ever Founders & Formulators event!

Join us at the historic Palmer House Hotel for an afternoon of structured "speed-dating" with the top food scientists and product developers in town for IFT FIRST 2026.

Finding the right formulator on your own usually means months of cold outreach, dead-end calls, and guessing whether someone's expertise even fits your product. This event skips that process entirely, giving you 1:1 time with multiple formulators.

Each expert brings different knowledge, experience, and working style, so you’ll get lots of different perspectives which you can use to improve your product.

Not necessarily looking to bring on a formulator? Come anyway. These formulators can taste your product, evaluate your formula in person, and give you expert insights you can't get from a call with someone who's never actually seen your product.

Whether you're still in development and looking for a partner or trying to scale something that's already on shelves, bring what you're working on!

Light bites and refreshments are included with your ticket; please indicate any dietary restrictions in your ticket order confirmation form.

Heads up, as always, we'll have VIPs in attendance as well!

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