The Business of Food with Steve Alexander

Push play for the radio edit above. The extended version is below.

Many Chicagoans remember Emily Hurd. She, her voice and her piano, with occasional accompaniment, played many Chicago clubs: Space, Schubas, Martyrs, and the Old Town School of Music, among them. She played elsewhere nationally and internationally, too, getting rave reviews. How about this praise from the New York Times?

“She sits at the piano, lips to microphone, boot to pedal, and speaks her mind — in song. I became an instant fan.” ––Val Haller,   New York Times

She is a prolific songwriter — now finishing her 20th album — combining soul, folk, blues, and rock, and her songs have been finalists in several international songwriting competitions. Paul Zollo of American Songwriter says that she writes “albums to fall into and swim in forever.” Her songs have been featured on television’s NCIS, 90210, The Good Wife, Melrose Place, and Life Unexpected.

Her music career was going great.

But her life changed in 2013. Her dad died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Emily, an only child raised in Rockford, decided to pack up and move home to be closer to her mother. And then, as she tells WGN’s Steve Alexander in the audio clips above, “I thought I would do something really crazy with my grief energy.” She bought a 100-year old building in an area of Rockford that didn’t have much else going on and decided to turn it into a restaurant which would be a community gathering place and music venue.

Even though she loves working with her hands, working with wood, the old building became somewhat of a money pit. As she was pulling up flooring, she hit asbestos. An abatement company said it would cost nearly $100,000 to clean it up. Emily didn’t have the money so she did what musicians have done for eons: She did a Kickstarter campaign, offering various rewards for different levels of donations. It worked. The community covered not only the cost of the asbestos but a little extra.

The community also pitched in physically when they saw the dumpster out front filling up with debris from the renovation, which Emily was doing while she was pregnant. Not recommended, she adds.

The rebirth of the building took some three years, but the end result is a beautiful, wood-dominated interior (much of it repurposed) with a small stage where local artists regularly play.

As she explains in the extended version audio clip above, the restaurant became something far different than what she had intended. Instead of just being an outlet for her grief, it became what the community and her team, now numbering 32, needed.

Which, it turns out, is what she needed.

“The place is running on generosity and the generosity makes you feel like it’s all just magically happening all the time.”

Something else happened to Emily during all this. She married and now has two children.

By the way, the name, The Norwegian? Emily did her Ancestry.com and found she is Swedish, but zero percent Norwegian. “I just wanted it to be ‘The Something,'” and with her husband, Mark Christensen, being Norwegian, “The Norwegian just kind of stuck.” To earn some Norse cred, Emily took lessons in Minnesota on how to make lefse. How about lutefisk? Yes, but just once a year during a big winter carnival in the parking lot where, among the activities, there’s a herring toss. Seriously.

It’s all happening at The Norwegian in Rockford, where Emily continues to make music. Oh, and about her mother? “She’s here all the time. We’re always asking her, ‘Mom, we ran out of herring, can you run?’ You know, it really never ends, even though you’ve hit adulthood yourself.”

The Norwegian, at 1402 North Main Street in Rockford, is open 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, with dinner served from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday .

The Business of Food with Steve Alexander is heard at 7:38 am on Monday and Friday, 6:38 am on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and at 12:45 pm each weekday on WGN Radio.

Radio edit above, full-length interview below.

When you’re starting a business, it’s wise to pay attention to others’ opinions. Zach Rash and Brad Squicciarini were studying robotics at UCLA and developed the concept for a more efficient, economical, and environmentally friendly way of delivering food: a robot, or more to the point, a robocourier. Rather than continue to grad school, they decided to start a company. They named it Cyan, like the color, and if not for the advice of an investor, that’s the name they would have given to their robots. “He said that’s the worst name I’ve ever heard, so we looked up cute dog names and Coco was at the top of the list. It was about a 10-second process.”

In 2020, they rolled out Coco, which is a pinkish-reddish (cyan!) insulated cube on wheels that weighs about 100 pounds and can carry several large pizzas or four bags of groceries, or a combination of both. It can carry hot or cold food, or both. Deliveries began in parts of Los Angeles, where the weather is nearly always nice. As he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander in the audio clips above, in December of 2024, they added snow tires, all-wheel drive, and other adjustments to see if Coco could navigate the often icy and snow-clogged sidewalks of Chicago, not to mention the freezing temperatures that limit battery life. It did, and as of this writing, there are about a hundred Coco robots roaming the streets of Chicago.

“The core technology we’ve developed is this ultra-low cost vehicle, it’s compact, it’s lightweight, it’s super-safe, it’s energy efficient, it works really well in these dense urban environments like Chicago where there can be a lot of traffic and it’s difficult to find parking,” said Rash. “So, it’s designed to be the best autonomous vehicle to move goods around these cities, and that’s all powered by a self-driving A.I. technology.” He says Coco uses a combination of five cameras; front, rear, left, and right cameras with LiDAR for 360-degree perception, essential for autonomous navigation. Cameras provide visual detail like signs and lane markings, while LiDAR delivers accurate depth sensing. Together, he says, they create a real-time 3D view of the environment, allowing safe path planning, obstacle avoidance, and reliable operation in complex urban settings.

But even with all their A.I. and cameras, the robots can get bogged down. That’s where humans come in. “We have drivers who work remotely and can oversee the fleet and step in when the robots are having trouble making a decision.” Rash adds, “You know you can think about it going down the sidewalk autonomously, it can cross the basic intersection autonomously, but then you have a lot of different situations where you have snow all over the ground, the traffic light’s out, it’s gridlock traffic, or there’s a construction zone. The system won’t know what to do itself, it can ask for help, and our human operators (who may be thousands of miles away) are trained on how to handle those scenarios.”

Rash says the robots complement, not replace human delivery drivers. “When it’s freezing cold, snow all over the ground and it might be miserable to be outside and be a delivery courier, those are also the same times people want to order food or groceries the most. They don’t want to leave their house, they want things brought to them, but it’s hard to get drivers on the road during those times. So robots can provide a really helpful service to people in the most extreme weather conditions.” Even in good weather, some restaurants have trouble getting enough drivers.

Most of the food delivered by Coco is pizza. “It’s about 70% hot prepared food, and 30% groceries,” says Rash. To order food delivered by Coco, a customer uses the restaurant’s app or delivery apps DoorDash or Uber, places the order. The restaurant places the food in Coco’s box, punches in a code to lock it, and Coco takes off to its destination. Customers can track the robot on their phones, much like we do with ride-share cars, and are notified when Coco arrives. They punch in a code and the lid opens. Rash says the deliveries take at most 15 minutes, and Coco makes no stops along the way.

Any problems with thieves? Rash says no. He says it would take special tools to get into the locked Coco food compartment, and at 100 pounds, it would be difficult to haul away. There are cameras all over it and alarms and pre-recorded warnings and messages the remote drivers can activate. Plus, he says, “People generally understand that it’s transporting food from a local business to a family for dinner. People treat them with a lot more respect than you might have seen with some other devices.” He may be referring to the EV rental scooters, which are often dumped willy-nilly after their use, blocking Chicago’s sidewalks. Those, too, along with tree roots and broken concrete and other impediments that make just walking on the sidewalks difficult, present a challenge to Coco’s mobility, but Rash says the system keeps track of such things and Coco, in its A.I. way, knows how to avoid them.

The Business of Food with Steve Alexander can be heard Mondays and Fridays at 7:38 am and 12:45 p.m., and Tuesdays-Thursdays at 6:38 am and 12:45 p.m. on WGN Radio.

Radio edit above. Extended interview below.

Chicago is a restaurant city, one of the world’s best, and at the top of the list of Windy City restaurateurs is Alex Dana. In 1973, he opened his first restaurant on the corner of Washington and Wacker in the heart of the Loop. It was across from the Opera House, and his recipes won the hearts and palettes of opera fans and performers. A year later, he began building what would become the first of the Rosebud Restaurant Group.

Located on Taylor Street in Chicago’s Little Italy, it was originally named Bocciola della Rose (Bud of the Rose). Wisely, he changed the name to Rosebud, which opened in 1976 and it quickly became known for its delicious, authentic, Italian cuisine and as a hot spot for celebrity sightings. In the audio clips above, Dana tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about late night visits from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and others after they performed, and he talks about his special friendship with Tony Bennett. More contemporary stars became fans, including Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Oprah Winfrey. Rosebud on Taylor St. is where Rosebud traditions were born 51 years ago and it remains open today.

Over the decades, the Rosebud Restaurant Group expanded to include Rosebud on Rush (1992), Carmine’s on Rush (1995) which opened as Carmine’s Clamhouse. “Actually, that was a laundromat, then El Cerrito came and put an addition on the top and made it a restaurant. Carmine’s, with its patio dining, became one of “the” spots in Chicago to see and be seen. “What made us there was the outdoor seating. That’s what that street’s known for. That outdoor, in the evenings, people wanted to hang out” and people watch. In 2023, Dana decided the old building had given as much as it could, and he leveled it and built a brand-new Carmine’s, which is opening this summer. There will not be sidewalk seating. Instead, there will be a second-floor outdoor terrace/patio that will be outstanding. It seats 100-125 people and you overlook Rush Street and everything, and you feel so comfortable and safe up there. You’re not on the street, but yet, you’re there, you know? And at 10 o’clock, the police close up the sidewalk seating, but we’ll be able to stay open (with our outdoor seating) till two in the morning.”

Another Carmine’s opened in Rosemont, with more Rosebuds added in Deerfield, Lemont, and Naperville, and Rosetta Italian in Chicago’s Theater District, and Mia Rosebud in Boca Raton, Florida.

Dana tells Alexander the key to success and longevity in a very difficult business is passion. “I love what I do. I love what I do. And my father and mother loved what they did. They were great restaurateurs because they worked hard, like I do. We’re back-of-the-house people. I’m in the culinary world. Management is beautiful with the guests and waiters and all of the people who take care of the customers, but I still like being on top of the red sauce and making sure it’s what people want everyday.”

Labor–finding and keeping good workers–has been an issue for the restaurant industry. “But you know what?” asks Dana. “If you make the people feel like they’ve got a home, and they’re happy, and you pay them well, it’s good.” He concedes that it isn’t a business for everyone and is hard on families. Six-day weeks, and the notion of spending weekends with your spouse and children like people in other industries do? “You don’t do that in this business. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, where are you at? Saturday night at five o’clock, you know what that’s called? Showtime, here they come!”

One of Dana’s tenets is: “You can’t look back if you want to move ahead.” That may have propelled him over the past half-century, but you can’t blame the guy for revisiting some of the many memories he has assembled in an iconic career.

Even though he did skydive recently, it’s hard to imagine what WGN legend and meteorologist emeritus Tom Skilling could have in common with Superman. In the audio clip above, WGN’s entertainment reporter Dean Richards, in his regular 8:10 a.m. segment with Bob Sirott, mentions the name of the actor playing Superman in the new movie: David Corenswet. It’s pronounced “corn sweat.” WGN’s Steve Alexander, with the help of Chicago’s very own Superman, takes the story from there.

The Business of Food can be heard on WGN Radio Monday-Friday at 12:45 during the Wintrust Business Lunch with John Williams, and during The Bob Sirott Show Mondays and Fridays at 7:38 am, and Tuesday-Thursday at 6:38 am.

In the audio clip above, famed Chicago-grown chef Joe Flamm tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about his participation in the recent Taste of the Nation for No Kid Hungry event where more than 500 people got together to have fun and donate money to tackle food insecurity in Chicago. The sold-out event was at Rockwell on the River, hosted by Flamm and Diana Davila, the Chef/Owner of Mi Tocaya Antojeria. Fifty of Chicago’s top eateries brought out their celebrated chefs and mixologists to support No Kid Hungry’s work. (Missed it? You can still donate at the website.)

Flamm has been involved in No Kid Hungry for several years and tells Alexander about going to Chicago schools where No Kid Hungry donations pay for kids’ breakfasts. He says each dollar donated provides up to 10 meals for kids in need, and across the country one in five children are living with hunger. In addition to Flamm, fellow Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard cooked and Michelin Star restaurants such as Sepia and Galit, and multiple James Beard Award winners and finalists were there to serve the crowd.

Flamm also tells Alexander how he got into the restaurant business as a teenager, and what the business is like right now in Chicago.

“Hold my beer!” has become a popular comeback to try to “out do” another person’s story. But in the audio clip above, researcher Jennifer Hoponick Redmon at RTI International tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals” because they last forever and are nearly everywhere, including our blood.

PFAS are human-made chemicals discovered nearly 100 years ago by accident. They became widely used because of their water-, oil- and stain-repellent properties. Over the decades, they have have been found in surface water, groundwater and municipal water supplies across the U.S. and the world. Hoponick Redmon and her team wondered if there are PFAS in our beer, too. Yes, they are.

Hoponick Redmon and her colleagues tested 23 beers. The test subjects were produced by U.S. brewers in areas with documented water system contamination, plus popular domestic and international beers from larger companies with unknown water sources. They found PFAS in 95% of the beers they tested.

Although breweries typically have water filtration and treatment systems, they are not designed to remove PFAS. It is possible to filter out the bad stuff through techniques such as reverse osmosis and activated carbon, but she says that is expensive and there’s debate about who would bear the brunt of those costs.

There’s a health cost. Recent studies show that PFAS exposure can lead to adverse reproductive, developmental, cardiovascular, liver, kidney, immunological, and carcinogenic health effects. And, the PFAS can remain in the body for years. Ironically, beer has been a staple beverage since premodern times, when it was actually considered safer than water given the destruction of waterborne pathogens during brewing. Today, beer is the third most popular beverage around the world, behind only water and tea.

If you’re a brewer–and it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, PFAS are a problem for all–RTI International is offering help on its website. If you’re wondering about your tap water, you can contact your state’s Department of Public Health.

His first drone was made from Popsicle sticks, tape, and some cheap motors. Now, his company is building thousands of drones a year, many of them the size of small cars. In the audio clip above, WGN’s Steve Alexander talks with Arthur Erickson, CEO and co-founder of Hylio, a rapidly growing American ag drone company that is moving into a new 40,000 square-foot manufacturing facility in the Houston area. Erickson and his three co-founders started building drones in a dorm room at the University of Texas in 2015. Ten years later, they are moving into their new facility and ramping up production to provide drones that apply fungicides, herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer, and can plant cover crops. “The sky is not the limit” in this case, says Erickson, who expects applications for drones in agriculture to continue to grow. Examples include a Canadian customer using a Hylio drone to eject custom-made pods containing tree seeds onto burned-out mountainsides in the Canadian Rockies. Some unexpected uses for drones are developing, too, such as using them to clean panels and control weeds on solar farms.

Click above to hear the extended 16 and a half minute interview; click below for the 2 and a half minute radio version.

First things first: Where did Meathead get his name? In the audio clips above, he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander his dad gave it to him. Not at birth, though. It was after he and his dad watched “All in the Family,” the ’70s TV series where Archie Bunker dubbed his new son-in-law “Meathead” because of his polar opposite political and social beliefs. “Dad and I were on opposite sides of the political fence,” says Meathead. “He was no Archie Bunker–he wasn’t a bigot–but I was a young, liberal college kid, and when I got into cooking professionally, Meathead just kind of stuck.”

Chicago’s very own Meathead has a new cookbook, his second. The first was the bestselling Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling. His new book is The Meathead Method: A BBQ Hall of Famer’s Secrets and Science on BBQ, Grilling and Outdoor Cooking. He sees it as much a science book as it is a cookbook. In its 400 pages, he teaches why and how to elevate all your cooking, outdoors and indoors. He busts myths, teaches science, shares hot tips, and introduces new methods, tools, ingredients, and recipes. And he isn’t kidding when he says “Almost anything you can cook indoors you can cook outdoors–only better.” One example: fried chicken. “It’s a bloody mess. It spatters all over the counter top, it gets all over the floor, it sets off the smoke alarm, the house stinks for a week.” Instead, he says, “You go out back, turn on your gas grill. Turn one burner on high, leave the other burners off. Put a Dutch oven on the side with the burner, put in two inches of oil. When it hits 350, you put in your chicken. You want to roll it around in flour, or corn starch or egg white, do all that. After about 15 minutes, you’ve got beautiful fried chicken, and who cares if it spatters, who cares if it smokes?”

Among the many myths he busts is the popular Chicago Beer Can Chicken. “No doubt about it, a whole golden chicken sitting on its butt like Buddha is delicious looking. And it absolutely is delicious, because it is a roasted chicken and roasted chicken is a culinary wonder. But the beer can has nothing to do with its wondrousness, and in fact, it keeps the chicken from reaching its pinnacle.” He goes on to explain why and concludes with: “Whoever thought this up musta had one too many.”

Along with the science, the “why,” there’s plenty of “how.” There are dozens of recipes for beef, bison, pork, poultry, veggies, fruit, side dishes, bread, soup, sauces, rubs, desserts, and more. Plus, he includes instructions on how to cook on every type of grill, including charcoal, gas, wood, wood pellet, and electric, and the various types of implements you’ll need to be the master of your backyard BBQ domain.

It’s beautifully illustrated. “Ooh, ooh,” exclaimed Meathead. “Can I tell you something? I did all the photography. I got my Masters at the Art Institute of Chicago. I’m a photographer. I’m very proud of that.”

Meathead is the founder of AmazingRibs.com.

Click below to hear the audio.

For nearly a century, one of the biggest names in baking has been Wilton. The Naperville-based company is the go-to brand for professional and home bakers for everything from baking pans and tools to icing pouches and sprinkles. In the audio clip below, Declan O’Leary, the president of Wilton, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about summer baking camps for grades 3-5, and 6-8 which are happening at Wilton’s Sweet Studio in Naperville. Camp themes include:

Whisk and Wonder, where baking meets science. Kids will create edible experiments while learning how chemistry, physics, and biology make baking magic happen.

Decorating Adventure Camp: Kids will learn the art of cake decorating, including creative techniques like piping, frosting, and working with buttercream frosting, royal icing, and fondant to decorate their own summer-themed desserts.

Is It Cake?: Campers will explore the art of illusion, transforming cakes and treats into everyday objects — like popsicles that are actually cake and realistic edible sandcastles.

The camps are 1/2 day, week-long sessions. More information at Wilton.com.

By coincidence, and not related to the baking camps, Steve found out he and Declan are related, by marriage. Steve asked Declan — who has a distinct Irish accent — what part of Ireland he’s from. Declan said, “I’m a West Cork man.” When Steve said his wife Diane’s family is from a tiny farming village of Kealkill, Declan said his family is from the same area. When Steve said Diane’s late uncles were John and Ted O’Leary, Declan exclaimed, “They were my second cousins!” Small world.

Here’s how it works: “Dig up the soybean and hold it up to your nose. If it smells like earth, you’re good. But if you can squeeze it and a liquid comes out and it smells rotten? Guess what, it’s rotten.” That’s how Brad Mason, a field agronomist for Pioneer Seeds in Western Illinois describes the sniff test. In the audio clip below, Mason tells WGN’s Steve Alexander how early planting started as an experiment several years ago, but has become a fad bordering on mainstream as a majority of Illinois growers are gambling on early planting. And it is a gamble. In a cool spring, such as we’ve had this year, there’s a chance the seed will rot before the soil temperature rises to sprouting temperature, 55 degrees. If that happens, the farmer has to replant. That’s expensive. But the payoff for early planting can be big. Mason says where 50 to 60 bushel beans were the norm with traditional planting dates, early planters are seeing 70 and 80 bushel beans, and he says growers are telling him they want to hit 100 bushels per acre.