Talking Shiitake

Richard Prout, Chief Product and Innovation Officer at Zambrero, take us through his journey from London hospitality to helping build a mission-driven global brand. We explore Zambrero’s Plate 4 Plate initiative, which is set to surpass 100 million meals donated this year, and how the team keeps consumer needs at the heart of innovation. Richard also shares why Zambrero partnered with Fable to launch Pulled Shiitake Mushrooms and gives us a look at the brand’s international growth across the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and the US.

Today I speak with Charlie Hachem, Co-Founder of Piccolo Me and multiple other hospitality brands. Charlie takes us through his childhood living and breathing hospitality by working in the family coffee business with his mum, dad, cousin and brother Roy. They’ve since gone on to build a hospitality empire across Sydney and have just opened their first cafe in Lebanon!

Charlie takes us through building the Piccolo Me business, launching new brands and some of their viral menu launches including the Cheeseburger Croissant!

Today I speak with Greg Creed, former CMO of Taco Bell then CEO of Yum! Brands globally (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and more). Greg talks through how a key consumer insight relating to drinks at Taco Bell lead them to the development of the Mountain Dew Baja Blast. This product began as an LTO and 20 years later it’s doing more than $1B in sales annually! 

Today I speak with Matt Shook, Founder and CEO of the 42 door Texas smoothie and juice chain JuiceLand. I had the pleasure of filming this episode in person at Matt’s house in Austin, Texas. Matt talks us through his journey into the juice and smoothie business, how it’s changed over the years and together we drink a JuiceLand Percolator smoothie and eat a Bánh Mì Wrap - made using our Fable pulled shiitake!

Today I have the incredible honor of Talking Shiitake with Professor Peter Singer. In 1974 Peter wrote the book Animal Liberation which laid the philosophical foundation for the vegan movement. This book played a huge role in my going vegan and co-founding Fable so Peter has been hugely influential in my life. He’s done the same for many others too - in addition to helping lead the animal rights movement he’s helped lead the effective altruism movement and this year he retired as the Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He’s arguably the world’s most famous living philosopher and I’m incredibly proud to say he’s been a big supporter of Fable over the years from when we first met mushroom foraging in Melbourne until today. 

In today’s episode we talk about our new Fable beef and shiitake mushroom product - blending beef from cows with shiitake mushrooms. I share our reasoning behind the product and get Peter’s thoughts on the ethics of it. 

I’m honoured to present to you - Professor Peter Singer.

In this episode, I Talk Shiitake with Cindy Flores. Cindy runs her own Taquiria in Redfern, Sydney called Tacos Muchachos and we met when she was head of culinary at the incredibly successful 200 door Mexican restaurant chain Guzman y Gomez where we worked together to introduce our Pulled Shiitake Mushrooms onto the menu there.

Cindy grew up in the small town of Sayula in Mexico then studied at culinary school in Guadalajara before moving to Australia and embarking on her mission to bring amazing Mexican food to Australians. 

She’s certainly managed to do that in a big way and it was a real pleasure to catch up with her.

In this episode I Talk Shiitake with Diem Fuggersberger. 

Diem’s story is a tale of resilience, persistence, great food and a passion for sustainability. She had a turbulent childhood fleeing Vietnam with her family as a child, being attacked by pirates, and living in a refugee camps before making it to Australia. 

Diem learnt to cook from her Vietnamese Grandma and her butcher mother. They instilled the importance of ingredient selection, food preparation and sustainability. 

With her husband and business partner Werner, they built a food manufacturing business growing to 105 employees before the financial crisis hit and they had to close their business down leaving them $1M in debt. 

They bounced back founding Berger Ingredients which has grown into an incredible business blending spices, manufacturing ready meals including the Coco & Lucas brand available in all Woolworths stores in Australia, baking granolas and pastries, and producing sauces and protein for food service. 

They’ve launched 55 SKUs into retail in Australia working with Woolworths, Coles and Costco. We’ve been developing a partnership with them at Fable and their work and food are outstanding. 

Diem is an incredibly inspiring woman and it was a real pleasure to speak with her on Talking Shiitake.

In today’s episode of Talking Shiitake I speak with meal kit company Marley Spoon Australia’s Co-Founder and CEO Rolf Weber. Rolf and I first met nearly 15 years ago when we were both in the fashion industry and I actually interviewed him for my blog back then! We’ve both moved from fashion into food and this was a reunion of sorts. It was fascinating to hear from Rolf his journey into food, including the highs and lows of managing Marley Spoon through COVID where they saw a huge spike in sales for meal kit deliveries and how his role has changed as he’s grown an incredible business from 0 to $220m in revenue.

Welcome to the first episode of my new podcast Talking Shiitake!

In this episode I talk shiitake with George Peppou, co-founder of cell cultured meat company VOW. George and I met back in 2019 when we were figuring out our paths in the alternative protein space. George went with the cell cultured approach, I went with mushrooms!

We each thought the other was crazy but put small angel checks into each other’s businesses just in case we were wrong and the other was right! So far we’re both happy with our decisions but we’ll see how this plays out!

George has done an incredible job building VOW, they’ve progressed tremendously well. On the technical front VOW is fully vertically integrated, their costs of production are coming down into premium meat territory and they’ve built the largest operating cell culture line for food production anywhere in the world, by quite a margin. And they’ve achieved this having raised 1/10th the capital of other major cell based meat companies.

George has taken a very clever go to market approach. Rather than trying to leap straight to the mass market, VOW have launched their luxury FORGE brand and Quail Parfait product into 3 high end restaurants in Singapore with more restaurants and cities launching this year. Next stop will be the premium health niche targeting customers looking for meat products with very high protein, iron and micronutrient density in a highly bioavailable, delicious format.

It’s a strategy taken straight from one of my favourite business books, Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A Moore, which inspires us at Fable too.

We talk about the potential challenges for the cell cultured meat space given strong consumer trends towards “real” food and George provides some interesting analogies with the growth of the cereal category.

Finally, George shares the story of their incredible PR win that he and his co-founder Tim Noakesmith drove with their Mammoth Meatball which lead to coverage in nearly every major global news outlet and appearances on Stephen Colbert amongst many other TV and news shows.

This was a very inspiring conversation and exactly why I wanted to start this podcast - so I can Talk Shiitake and share some of the incredible conversations I’m fortunate to have with inspiring people like George.

I’m new to hosting a podcast and I’d love any feedback on what you liked, didn’t like or think I can improve.