The Perfect Bite

Some people learn about the food industry from the outside. Jordan Buckner learned it from all sides at once, and then built the community he wished had existed while he was figuring it out.

Jordan Buckner is the founder of Foodbevy, a community and resource platform now reaching over 5,000 CPG founders and food and beverage professionals, and of Joyful Co., a corporate gifting company built around emerging CPG brands. But before all of that, he was a fifth grade entrepreneur selling Airhead candies out of his cargo pants, a high schooler running a student-operated coffee shop with a $4,000 grant, an architecture student with two degrees from Michigan and Illinois, and the founder of not one but two simultaneous CPG businesses: ChopBox, a meal kit company, and TeaSquares, a green tea energy snack that made it into Whole Foods Chicago in its first four months.



In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Jordan for one of the most candid, educational, and genuinely warm conversations about what it really takes to build in the CPG space. From a childhood surrounded by entrepreneurship on every side, to the night he collapsed on his kitchen floor in a panic attack and his wife helped him see that TeaSquares had to end, to the decision to build Foodbevy with an intentional stress level of 2 out of 10 and no plans to sell, Jordan is one of the most honest voices in food and beverage today.

He also pulls no punches on the structural realities of the CPG industry: Why it is stacked against brands from the start, how distributors and retailers hold all the leverage, what AI is actually doing for small founders right now, and why building a personal mission statement might be the most important thing any founder can do before building a product.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up surrounded by entrepreneurship on every side: a grandmother with a grocery store, a dad with grocery stores in Chicago, and a mom who got her culinary degree and ran a catering business
• Selling Airhead candies out of cargo pants in fifth grade and his mom's leftover cookies in high school
• Opening a student-run coffee shop at Whitney Young High School with a $4,000 grant from the parents association
• Studying architecture at University of Michigan and University of Illinois with a dual MBA
• What architecture taught him about creativity within constraints and entrepreneurship
• ChopBox: a meal kit business born during an internship in Michigan, run out of his mom's commercial kitchen
• TeaSquares: green tea energy snack bars made from puffed millet, almonds, and pepitas that got into Whole Foods in four months
• Why having too many points of differentiation created a moat that kept customers out rather than competitors
• Running two CPG businesses simultaneously and almost everything himself
• The night he fell to his kitchen floor in a panic attack and finally realized something had to change
• Shutting down TeaSquares during COVID after corporate office revenue disappeared overnight
• Why the CPG industry is structurally stacked against brands: retailers, distributors, and leverage
• Suja paying $1 million in slotting fees and getting cut six months later
• One point of differentiation being the right answer instead of white space
• Founding Foodbevy during COVID with a small membership fee and a founder meetup model
• Founding Joyful Co. with a COVID relief box for first responders that became a corporate gifting business
• How Foodbevy has evolved: 250+ podcast episodes, webinars, articles, and a retail buyer directory
• The shift in CPG from e-commerce back to retail and what that means for founders right now
• AI for CPG brands: three founders using Claude to build dashboards, sales analysts, and full business software
• His conscious decision to run Foodbevy at a stress level of 2 out of 10, with no plans to sell
• His daughter at age three pretend-negotiating with UPS and running her own art market
• Creating a personal mission statement as the foundation of every business decision

Find Jordan and Foodbevy:

• Website: foodbevy.com
• Instagram: @foodbevy
• LinkedIn: Jordan Buckner
• Joyful Co: joyfulco.com

Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!

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In a world full of AI generated images, there is still nothing quite like a photo that makes you stop scrolling and say: Is that for real?

Laura Scherb is the founder of Page and Plate Studio, a food photography and styling business that brings CPG brands, cookbook authors, and editorial projects to life through imagery so textural and rich it practically pops off the page. She is also the co-founder of Kitchen Sink Studio alongside pastry chef Emily Spurlin, a board member of Les Dames d'Escoffier of Chicago, and a two time IACP Photography Award finalist whose still life recreation of a 1600s oil painting stopped Sarah cold the first time she saw it.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Laura for a warm and detailed conversation about what it actually takes to create the images that sell cookbooks, CPG products, and entire brands. From two grandmothers who shaped her relationship with food in completely different ways, to dying mashed potatoes green as a kid, to a decade long journey from governmental disaster relief consulting to picking up a Canon Rebel and never looking back, to the strobe lights that finally unlocked her signature style.

Laura also pulls back the curtain on what a five day, 35 recipe cookbook shoot actually looks like, how she prices her work fairly for both herself and founders, and why she believes investing in real photography is always worth the wait. Plus a peek into Kitchen Sink Studio's culinary retreats, including an upcoming trip to Normandy with eight women this fall.

In this episode, we cover:

• Two grandmothers, two completely different food philosophies, and how both shaped Laura's path into food
• Dying mashed potatoes green, pink, and blue as a kid and an early lesson in edible color
• Studying writing at Carnegie Mellon and picking up her first camera, a Canon Rebel, while traveling
• A career detour into governmental disaster relief consulting and what it taught her about professionalism
• Starting the Page and Plate food blog, pairing books with meals, and dabbling in catering
• The moment she realized photography was the piece brands needed most
• Going all in on Page and Plate Studio in 2017 with a six month bet on herself
• Lil' Bucks and Emily Griffith: An early client relationship that has lasted nearly a decade
• The trial and error of self-teaching photography, manual settings, Capture One, and artificial lighting
• How strobe lights and learning to manipulate light unlocked her signature textural style
• Why travel and changing scenery keeps her creative inspiration fresh
• Behind the scenes of a commercial CPG shoot versus an editorial cookbook shoot
• What a five day, 35 recipe cookbook shoot actually looks like, recipe by recipe
• Pricing fairly: Flexible payment structures and understanding where founders are coming from
• Paying it forward: How other women photographers helped her get started
• Two IACP Photography Award finalist pieces, including a recreated 1600s oil painting still life
• Kitchen Sink Studio with Emily Spurlin: Culinary retreats in the Driftless region of Wisconsin and an upcoming trip to Normandy
• Her honest take on AI in food photography and content creation
• Advice for founders: find your people and ask for help

Find Laura and her work:

• Instagram: @pageandplatestudio
• Kitchen Sink Studio: @kitchensinkstudios
• Website and portfolio: pageandplate.com
• Substack: pageandplate.substack.com

Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!

You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod and sign up for our newsletter!

Some people spend their entire careers supporting others before they finally step into the light themselves. Adrienne Cheatham spent eight years at Le Bernardin, years supporting Marcus Samuelsson at Red Rooster and Street Bird, and a lifetime believing she was meant to be the operational person behind the scenes. And then a call to Top Chef and a family gumbo challenge changed everything.

Adrienne Cheatham is a Michelin-starred chef, James Beard Media Award nominated cookbook author, Food Network personality, and co-host of The Chef's Cut podcast alongside Top Chef co-finalist Joe Flamm. And now she is launching something brand new: Eating History, a deep-dive food history podcast she is co-hosting with her husband Stephen Bailey, with its first season dedicated entirely to the origins and history of pizza.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Adrienne for one of the most layered and beautiful conversations The Perfect Bite has had yet. From a childhood of chaotic, massive family gatherings with a mom from a family of twelve and a dad from a family of fourteen, to cooking Christmas cookies in batches for a solid week because they were too broke for gifts, to faxing her resume to Charlie Trotter's kitchen and ending up at Le Bernardin instead, to finally finding her voice through her family's Southern food heritage on Top Chef and pouring all of it into her cookbook Sunday Best.

This is a conversation about what happens when someone who spent their whole career making other people shine finally gives themselves permission to be the person out front. And about what a marinara pizza and a husband who nerds out about history on his morning walks can do to change the entire direction of your life.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up in a big, chaotic Chicago family where food was always a massive, joyful production
• Her mom's famous "restaurant night" where leftovers became a candlelit dining experience
• Why her parents refused to let her go straight to culinary school and what journalism and business classes taught her instead
• Getting her internship at Le Bernardin by faxing, mailing, and physically showing up with her resume for three weeks
• Eight years at Le Bernardin, becoming exec sous chef, and copy editing Eric Ripert's cookbook 
• Why she stayed past the one-year anniversary that most cooks treated as their exit date
• Leaving Le Bernardin after a toxic kitchen situation and being recruited by Marcus Samuelsson
• Being pushed out front by Marcus before she was ready: The New York Times documentary, meeting Gail Simmons, the De Gustibus demo
• Top Chef: Going in without watching the show and not knowing who she was as a chef yet
• The gumbo challenge that changed everything: Winning with her mom's recipe and discovering the Sunday Best concept
• The real story of Southern fried chicken and why it was only made a few times a year
• Sunday Best: Writing the cookbook to honor her family's history, her grandfather, her mom, her mixed heritage
• The James Beard Media Award nomination and what it meant to have her family's stories recognized
• The Chef's Cut podcast: Why Joe Flamm was always the obvious co-host choice
• Eating History: Co-founding a podcast production company with her husband Stephen and deep diving into the history of pizza
• Barbecue Brawl on Food Network: Her first long-term show
• What it felt like to realize she is now actually a founder
• Advice for founders: Perfect is the enemy of progress, just get started



Find Adrienne:

• Instagram: @chefadriennecheatham, @chefscutpod, @eatinghistorypod
• The Chef's Cut: Available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube
• Eating History: Available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube
• Sunday Best cookbook: Available wherever books are sold
• Barbecue Brawl: Airing on Food Network now

Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen!

Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!

You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod and sign up for our newsletter!

He broke his back snowboarding, got stuck on his couch, and found the Food Network. Thirteen minutes after submitting his MasterChef application, a producer called him. And he never slowed down from there. 



Josh Gale is the founder and private chef behind The Chef Out West, a Canadian food creator and MasterChef and Beat Bobby Flay veteran whose bold, unapologetic, in-your-face food philosophy has taken the internet by storm. After years of corporate tech sales, a decade running restaurants in Vancouver, and a string of celebrity private cheffing gigs, Josh committed fully to content creation at the start of 2025, posting six pieces of content a week for three months. Two months in, a high-protein pistachio ice cream video went to a million views overnight. Everything changed.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Josh for a conversation that is as bold and energetic as his food. From buttered noodles and Shake 'N Bake in a non-food family to obsessing over Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals on his couch, to accidentally building a 100,000 person Facebook following he didn't even know existed, to partnering with his life partner Mackenzie to run one of the most exciting creator businesses in the food space right now. Josh is building a business that lets him play hockey twice a week, go camping on summer weekends, and never miss a birthday again. And his food is an exercise in maximalism the whole way through.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up in a non-food family and not discovering food until his 20s
• Six years in corporate tech sales and the square peg, round hole feeling
• Breaking his back snowboarding and finding the Food Network on his couch
• Obsessing over Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, and Bobby Flay during recovery
• Cooking every day, feeding his friends, and building an early Instagram following
• Getting called 13 minutes after submitting his MasterChef application
• Quitting his job before he even went on the show
• MasterChef as a kid in a candy store moment and total confirmation
• The origin of The Chef Out West name
• Beat Bobby Flay and the lobster-stuffed ravioli with crispy capers that judge Christian Petroni called an exercise in maximalism
• A decade running restaurants in Vancouver from cook to head chef
• Private cheffing for celebrities and saying yes to everyone except himself
• Why saying yes to every client in 2024 felt exactly like being back in a restaurant
• Committing to content creation at the start of 2025 with a three-month deadline
• The high-protein pistachio ice cream video that went to a million views overnight
• Korean marinated eggs on rice and the momentum that built from there
• The three revenue streams powering The Chef Out West: brand deals, Facebook and YouTube view monetization, and website ad revenue
• Accidentally discovering 100,000 Facebook followers and the passive income that followed
• Mackenzie and the creative-technical partnership that makes everything work
• The digital cookbook planned for end of 2025 and the print cookbook to follow
• Doing only one or two things at a time really well as a key operating standard
• Building a business around a life, not a life around a business
• Advice for founders: start the thing, film the content, make today day one

Find Josh and The Chef Out West:

• Website: thechefoutwest.com (burger blueprint, recipes, stories)
• Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok: @thechefoutwest
• Crispy Edges: their insider community

Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!

You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod and sign up for our newsletter!

If you have been sleeping on Cleveland, Chef Vinnie Cimino is here to wake you up.

Vinnie is the co-founder of Cordelia, one of Cleveland's most beloved restaurants, and the brand new ROSY, a wood-fired neighborhood spot that opened just seven weeks before this conversation. He is also a three-time James Beard Award nominee, a community anchor through the Cleveland Family Meal Project and Food Conscious, and one of the warmest, most thoughtful voices in the Midwest food scene today.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Vinnie for a conversation that covers the full arc of a remarkable career. From a childhood surrounded by big Italian-Slovenian family gatherings and his grandmother's restaurant in Kent, Ohio, to working at Greenhouse Tavern under Jonathon Sawyer, to pop-ups and vagabond cooking during COVID, to answering a mysterious Indeed ad posted by his future co-founder Andrew Watts that simply said he wanted to open the next great Cleveland restaurant.

Cordelia, now approaching its fourth year, is exactly what it sounds like: a warm hug. Grandma's dining room meets James Beard-level cooking, with family photos on the walls, vintage 1950s silverware, and a seasonal menu built entirely around what local farm partners bring through the back door. ROSY is Cordelia's sibling, but generationally different: old world techniques, live fire cooking, and an Adriatic and Balkan-inspired menu in a 50-seat neighborhood space where 80% of guests just walk in off the street.

And running underneath all of it is Vinnie's guiding philosophy: hospitality starts inward. Take care of your team and they will take care of your guests. It sounds simple. In practice, it looks like buying James Beard Awards tickets for almost 50 members of his staff, rolling out PTO for part-time employees, and his team eating cake together the day his nomination was announced while he was away cooking a benefit dinner across the country.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up in a big Italian-Slovenian family with a grandmother who ran her own restaurant in Kent, Ohio
• His first mid-rare steak in college and the moment food really clicked for him
• Getting pulled into a kitchen at Russo's in Peninsula, Ohio and never really leaving
• Taking a $30,000 pay cut with a one-year-old and a new house to pursue cooking for real
• Working his way up to CDC at Greenhouse Tavern within 10 months of joining
• Pop-ups, cooking in people's homes, and vagabond cooking during COVID
• Reconnecting with Andrew Watts through an Indeed ad looking for a chef co-founder
• Opening Cordelia: the inspiration, the vintage silverware, the family photos on the walls
• A seasonal menu built around what the farms bring in, not the other way around
• Why Cordelia's menu changes frequently while 40% stays as beloved staples
• Partnering with 23 to 25 local farms including The Chef's Garden and a mushroom farm in Detroit
• The "everyone's got the chef's table" feeling at ROSY
• ROSY's Adriatic and Balkan-inspired wood-fired menu and the 50-inch wood-fired grill
• Three James Beard nominations and what it means to the whole team
• Shutting both restaurants down for Beard weekend so almost 50 staff can go to Chicago
• Cleveland Family Meal Project during COVID and how it has evolved into Food Conscious
• A senior living facility in North Ridgeville centered around healthy food and cooking
• Rolling out PTO for all staff, including part-time, because hospitality starts inward
• What he is most proud of: watching young cooks become sous chefs
• His advice for founders: the hardest part is starting, so just start at square one

Find Vinnie and his restaurants:

• Cordelia: 2058 East 4th Street, Cleveland | @cordeliacle
• ROSY: 2912 Church Avenue, Hingetown, Cleveland | @rosy.restaurant
• Vinnie on Instagram: @chefvinniecimino

Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!

You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod and sign up for our newsletter!

Some brands set out to sell a product. Diaspora Spice Co. set out to change a supply chain, honor a culture, and bring the most potent, story-rich spices in the world into home kitchens across America. Nine years in, they are doing all three.

Sana Javeri Kadri is the CEO and founder of Diaspora Spice Co., a regenerative spice company built on a singular mission: put money, equity, and power into the best spice farms across South Asia and bring wildly delicious, hella potent flavors to your everyday cooking. Asha Loupy is Diaspora Spice Co.'s recipe editor and co-author, the woman behind some of the brand's most beloved and obsessively cooked recipes, including the strawberry cardamom bars that reliably spike website traffic every spring.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with both Sana and Asha for a conversation that covers the full arc: from a 23-year-old Sana buying a 350-kilogram turmeric harvest with her first ever tax refund and storing it in a co-op basement in Oakland, to selling out in four days and waking up to 700 orders after a New York Magazine gift guide mention, to building a company that now works with 100+ regenerative farm partners across South Asia and pays 3.9x above commodity price. And now, a cookbook that took five years, three months of travel across 10 Indian states and Sri Lanka, 14 languages, and one very memorable pumpkin chutney discovered in a kitchen in Kashmir as the cameras were packing up.

Asha's origin story is equally delightful: she cold-walked her resume into Market Hall Foods after college, worked her way to the cheese department because that's where all the cool people were, and eventually slid into Sana's DMs with a photo of perfectly pleated cumin lamb dumplings with a turmeric wrapper that changed both of their lives.

This episode is one of the most joyful, warm, and genuinely inspiring conversations The Perfect Bite has ever had. Two Bay Area women who love good food, care deeply about the people who grow it, and have spent nearly a decade proving that spice can be a vehicle for justice, storytelling, and extraordinary flavor.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up with food: Sana eating all the graduation snacks at preschool, and Asha dictating recipes to her mom at age four
• Sana's time at high school in Italy and working on a vineyard and olive grove at 15
• Asha cold-walking into Market Hall Foods and gravitating to the cheese department
• The turmeric latte trend that sparked Sana's curiosity about who was actually growing the turmeric
• Buying a 350kg turmeric harvest with a $3K tax refund and storing it in a co-op basement
• Selling out in four days and waking up to 700 orders after Julia Turshen's New York Magazine mention
• Building trust with farm partners by paying quadruple the commodity price on time
• How Asha slid into Sana's DMs with perfectly pleated dumplings and changed the trajectory of the brand
• Three months traveling across India and Sri Lanka for the cookbook
• The pumpkin chutney discovered at the last possible moment in a kitchen in Kashmir
• Why they brought in regional cookware for every studio shoot (Kerala clay pots, Manipuri black pottery, Kashmiri copper)
• The strawberry cardamom bars that spike website traffic every spring
• Busting myths about South Asian cooking: you can make most recipes in the cookbook with six spices
• An exclusive tease: Diaspora Spice Co. is opening a store (location and timing TBD)
• The Padma Lakshmi collaboration returning later this year
• Asha's solo cookbook "Dinner Season" coming June 2027!
• Advice for founders: just start and get a good therapist

Find Diaspora Spice Co.:

• Website: diasporaco.com
• Instagram and TikTok: @diasporaco
• Available in about 900 independent stores across the U.S, including Whole Foods California
• The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook: available wherever books are sold

Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!

You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod and sign up for our newsletter!

What if food media got the Puck treatment?

That's the question Max Tcheyan asked and Caper is the answer. Max is the CEO and co-founder of Caper, a new food and hospitality media company built on the premise that the food world deserves the kind of serious, insider, character-driven storytelling that business gets from Puck, that sports got from The Athletic, and that Hollywood gets from Vanity Fair. The characters are there. The stories are there. The journalism just hasn't caught up yet.

Max knows how to build this. He was one of the earliest employees at Bleacher Report, grew The Athletic from startup to New York Times acquisition, and co-founded Puck, the subscription media company covering Hollywood, fashion, politics, and business with a talent-led model that changed how premium media gets built. Now he's applying everything he learned to the world he loves most: food, restaurants, and hospitality.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Max for a conversation about what Caper is, why it needed to exist, and how he's building it. The founding team is a genuine Avengers assembly: journalists from The New Yorker, the New York Times, Artnet, Eater, and Bon Appétit who are equity partners in the business, not just employees. The editorial philosophy is built around what Max calls the "power triangle" of food: the hospitality groups (producers), the chefs and restaurants (actors), and the behind-the-scenes agents, the publicists, real estate players, consultants, and advisors, whose influence on food culture nobody is covering yet.

There's also an underground chef competition happening in undisclosed New York City locations that sounds like Top Chef meets an underground rap battle. And yes, a podcast and video strategy is coming.

This is one of the most forward-thinking conversations about the future of food media and food storytelling we've had on The Perfect Bite. If you care about what food journalism can become, and what food entrepreneurship looks like when it's treated like a tech startup, this one is for you.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up with a northern Italian mother and grandmother and the Bolognese that got frozen and shipped to college
• The double meaning behind the name Caper: the ingredient, the adventure, and why it elevated the brand
• Dropping out of law school to join Bleacher Report as employee number five in 2007
• Building growth marketing before "growth hacking" was even a term
• The Athletic: building a pure subscription model that sold to the New York Times
• Co-founding Puck at TPG and what the talent-led subscription model taught him
• Why food media felt like sports media in 2016 and why that was the signal to build
• The "power triangle" of food: hospitality groups, chefs/restaurants, and the agent class
• Why the agent class in food, the publicists, consultants, designers, and advisors, is the most underreported story in the industry
• Building Caper's founding team: Emma Orlow, Chris Crowley, and Annie Armstrong
• Why equitizing journalists changes everything and protects editorial integrity
• The subscription plus advertising model and why multiple revenue streams matter
• Partnering with Loewe as the first ad partner and the signal it sends
• Underground chef competitions in undisclosed New York locations: the events strategy
• Expanding beyond New York through contributors and category-anchored storytelling
• The podcast and video strategy coming in the back half of the year
• His advice for founders: the hardest thing is to start, and the journey is the reward

Find Caper:

• Website: caper.media
• Instagram: @caper.media
• Sign up for free or join as a member - two subscription tiers available
• Max on LinkedIn: Max Tcheyan
• Max on Instagram: @mtcheche

Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!



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Some brands feel like they were always meant to be national. Killer Brownie is one of them. But it took a 40-year journey, a nurse-turned-founder, and a tagline born from a dad sneaking Oreos to his kids to finally make it happen.

Chimene Mayne-Ross is the CEO of Killer Brownie, a gourmet brownie brand born out of Dorothy Lane Market, the legendary Dayton, Ohio specialty grocer her father built, that has grown over 500% since 2019 and is now coast to coast in Target, Kroger, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, and more. But Chimene didn't come into the business straight from the family table. She spent 25 years as a nurse first, building the people skills, the regulatory knowledge, and the leadership foundation that would make her the right person to take Killer Brownie national.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Chimene for a conversation that is warm, wise, and full of the kind of generational founder insights you rarely hear in one place. From a childhood of carob instead of chocolate (her mom was a health nut ahead of her time) and Oreos snuck by her dad (who always said "sometimes you gotta live a little"), to writing a proposal for her dad at 45 years old, hiring her husband as COO, growing from 300 Instagram followers to 135,000, going through two rebrands, and landing a partnership with Irresistible Foods Group, the family behind Kings Hawaiian, that has accelerated growth without ever touching the product.

This is a story about slow, steady, intentional growth. About knowing who you are and refusing to be diluted by trends. About the tagline that made Chimene cry because it was her dad's phrase all along. And about what it really means to be a third generation founder who takes something beloved and makes it her own.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up with a health nut mom who served liver and onions as an afterschool snack and a dad who snuck them Oreos
• The family legacy: Dorothy Lane Market, Dayton's beloved specialty grocer since the 1940s
• Why she chose nursing over the family business at 22 and what 25 years taught her
• Joining Killer Brownie in 2013 and writing a proposal to her dad for the chance to grow it
• What makes the original Killer Brownie so special: caramel, layers, and a gooey texture unlike anything else
• Current flavors: cookie dough, caramel macchiato, Mexican hot chocolate, the Brookie, the Kitchen Sink
• Growing 500%+ since 2019 and the three hires that made it possible
• The rebrand journey: two rebrands, and how the latest finally felt like coming home
• The "Live a Little" tagline that made Chimene cry because it was her dad's phrase all along
• Why she's unapologetically a dessert brand in a world of protein bars and fiber snacks
• Quietly cleaning up the ingredient list since 2013 without ever making it the brand message
• The Irresistible Foods Group acquisition and why the Kings Hawaiian family was the right partner
• Why "distraction leads to dilution" is her north star
• Taking Killer Brownie to Antarctica and feeding the expedition team
• Reading 20 books a year and why lifelong learning is her most important leadership tool
• Her goal: advising female founders and third generation family business owners
• Advice for founders: start with your purpose, know your why, and be prepared to work



Find Killer Brownie:

• Website: www.killerbrownie.com (with store locator and direct to consumer ordering)
• Instagram/TikTok/Facebook: @killerbrownie
• Available at Target, Kroger, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Mariano's, and select retailers coast to coast

Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!

You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod and sign up for our newsletter!

He hated pasta as a kid. Now he's the self-proclaimed Prince of Pasta, the Ruler of Rigatoni, the Sultan of Spaghetti, and one of the most exciting chef-turned-CPG-founders in the food industry.

Joe Sasto is the founder of Tantos pasta chips, co-founder of Ripi Foods frozen pasta, author of “Breaking The Rules,” and a familiar face across Food Network, Top Chef, and Netflix competitions. But what makes Joe's story genuinely compelling isn't the resume: it's the mustache, the energy, the happy accident that turned a forgotten tray of dried pasta in a Beverly Hills walk-in into a snack brand heading to Targets nationwide.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Joe for a conversation that covers the full arc, from growing up in the Midwest with a mom who served pasta with sauce on top (never married into the noodle), to landing on the pasta station at Quince because a cook was "unwillfully ejected,” to the moment he realized that cooking competitions aren't about ego, they're a sport. From building Tantos out of an accidental kitchen discovery, to getting Ripi Foods into Whole Foods nationwide with an exclusive Cacio e Pepe flavor, to teasing a potential pizza restaurant in New York, Joe is always moving, always building, always with a sauce splatter video ready to go on Instagram.

This episode is packed with genuinely useful CPG insights, including a helpful retail tip about exclusives that could change how you approach your next buyer meeting. And plenty of pasta puns. Because that's just who Joe is.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up hating pasta and how he ended up on the pasta station at Quince
• California farming, Lazy Bear, and why he still thinks California has the world's best produce
• How Top Chef changed everything and why he'd never go back (but also maybe would)
• The evolution from ego-driven competition cooking to approaching it like a sport
• The happy accident: finding dried-out pasta in a Beverly Hills walk-in and inventing Tantos
• Meeting co-founder Sean through Instagram DMs and building the brand together
• Breaking The Rules: years of cookbook doubt, writing it anyway, and the black garlic Caesar that everyone makes
• Ripi Foods: fresh frozen pasta, Whole Foods nationwide, and an exclusive Target launch
• The retail exclusives tip: why pitching exclusive SKUs to big box retailers gets you in the door
• Dream collaborations: Matty Matheson for Ripi, and the search for the perfect "pasta chip girl"
• Why surrounding yourself with smart, powerful women is the key to everything
• Treadmill running, cop dramas, and THC beverages as the perfect wind-down combo
• What he's most proud of: the headspace shift and the people around him now
• A potential pizza restaurant in New York City, details coming soon
• Advice for founders: find a co-founder who fills your voids, not one who mirrors them

Find Joe and his work:

• Instagram: @chef.joe.sasto
• Check out Joe’s new YouTube channel: Make Mama Proud
• Breaking The Rules: available on Amazon or signed copy via link in bio
• Ripi Foods: Whole Foods nationwide | www.ripifoods.com
• Tantos: Amazon and grocery stores nationwide | www.tantossnacks.com

Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!

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What is Big Dip Energy? You’re about to find out!

Alyse Whitney is a food journalist, cookbook author, Netflix judge, and certified Dip Queen who has spent nearly 15 years building one of the most distinctive voices in food media. Over 1,000 bylines. Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Rachael Ray Every Day. Managing editor of Chrissy Teigan's Cravings. Ina Garten's cell phone number on hand. And a cookbook, Big Dip Energy, that she wrote, art directed, propped, and styled in nine months while convincing her publisher to let her include a "compundium" of puns at the back.

Oh, and she's launching a new podcast and YouTube show called Dippin' In! And she announced it here first!

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Alyse for a conversation that is unlike any other on The Perfect Bite. It covers the Korean American adoptee who started cooking for her family at 12 because she thought their Shake 'n Bake pork chops were boring, the entertainment journalist who burned out writing 15 articles a day recapping Scandal, the food writer who got Ina Garten's cell phone number after a day of cooking together, and the Netflix judge who filmed her first ever TV appearance in Spanx while on her period in Albuquerque.

Alyse is maximalist in every sense, from her food, to her style, her personality, and her puns, and this conversation is a masterclass in what happens when you finally stop trying to make yourself smaller and just show up as the fullest possible version of yourself.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up as a Korean adoptee with non-cooking parents and becoming the family chef at 12
• The gateway food memory: making kimbap with her Korean Big Sib mentor program
• Why she got into dips (Hint: she almost choked as a baby because she hated chewing)
• Subscribing to Bon Appétit alongside J14 at age 12
• Burning out as an entertainment journalist writing 15 articles a day
• Getting a job at Cooking Channel because she was nice to someone at her Bon Appétit internship
• Getting Ina Garten to be Bon Appétit's first ever guest editor and cooking together in the Hamptons
• Being laid off from Rachael Ray Every Day and landing the Chrissy Teigan Cravings job
• Her first TV appearance on Easy Bake Battle with Antoni Porowski: in Spanx, on her period, in Albuquerque
• Getting called at 9:30am to replace a COVID-positive judge on Nailed It! by 11am
• Becoming a recurring judge on Chopped
• Big Dip Energy: Writing the manuscript in three weeks and art directing every page
• Her ADHD diagnosis and why she chose a 9-month book deadline over 18 months
• Being unapologetically maximalist after years of trying to hide herself
• Her Cherry Bombe Jubilee talk "Good Fat" on loving people the way we love butter
• Why she's finally treating herself like a brand
• EXCLUSIVE: Her new podcast and YouTube show Dippin' In!, announced here first!
• Advice for founders: Be authentic, show up, and stop making yourself smaller

Find Alyse:

• Website: www.alysewhitney.com
• Instagram: @alysewhitney
• YouTube: @alyse.whitney
• Substack: Dippin' In! (Launching soon! Linked in her Instagram)
• Big Dip Energy: Available wherever books are sold
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Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!

You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod and sign up for our newsletter!