Kevin Ouzts: The Necessity of Honest Food

Join Matt Maier, host of Regenerative Renegades, in a conversation with Kevin Ouzts, chef-turned-founder of The Spotted Trotter. They discuss the evolution of food and farming, Kevin’s journey from fine dining to charcuterie making, and the importance of local sourcing, community, and celebrating regional flavor. Together, they explore how culture, creativity, and conscious eating can shape the future of our food systems.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:14

Hello, regenerative renegades. We've got a great guest today from well, down south, I would say. We're up north in Minnesota. And uh we got a guest from down south. Uh Kevin Oots uh is joining us today. I appreciate you, Kevin, coming on with us and taking the time to do it. I know you're very, very busy, and uh it takes a little bit to take a pause, so appreciate you coming on board.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_04 0:44

Good, good. Uh Kevin's background, he's long been passionate about sharing his southern style charcuterie with as many people as possible. Now with Spotted Trotter, the Atlanta-based chef is delighting foodies everywhere. Uh the Spotted Trotter is known for bold and award-winning creations. Also dedicated to responsible farming. With great respect for the symbiotic relationship between animals and people, the spotted trotter raises its livestock humanely and utilizes as much of the animal as possible. Which we love. So that's awesome, Kevin. Um I would really like to hear. You've got a fascinating story. I don't really know it, uh, but I see these little bits and pieces around chef, farmer, charcuterie, you know, uh, I only know a little bit. So if you could start off by just taking us through, you know, your journey of getting to this point and, you know, what you're where you s where you see yourself heading, but let's let's talk history first and and hear about your uh regenerative renegade journey.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Absolutely. Um and again, thank you guys so much for having me. I um understanding your business and what you guys do early on was just such a um, you know, an exciting thing and just so much gratitude because I know what the what the world that you're in takes takes to do um, you know, and what it takes uh to be up against. Uh the uh the food system that we're currently in um is uh one that is gonna take a lot of fixing. Um and I think uh having uh partners like you guys and and knowing what you're into has just been an absolute uh joy to learn. Um I'm I'm really excited to have uh to be on board and to be able to be working with you and and to be able to have the opportunity to talk with you guys and and any audience you have, I certainly uh can attest that it's uh it takes one to get those kind of those people behind you, and and I'm excited to excited to be here.

SPEAKER_04 2:49

Well, let me let me just jump in there. We are very excited to find you. We're very excited to make those connections because a lot of times in this space you do feel like you're on an island. So the more connections we have with like-minded people and values, it was it was it's just great to discover basically a whole new world that we hadn't been exposed to in in your in your um in enterprise. So thank you. It's mutual, mutually um respected.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Absolutely. And I and I will tell you that um uh for where we are and um we we this the space that we're in, uh being a uh, you know, I think we're what 249-year-old country at this point, we have our work cut out for us. So um excited to be here. I will uh dive right in and kind of tell you how I came to to get to this space. Um uh I was uh uh chef by trade, but long before that I took to what got me to where I am. I um uh was was working well many, many, many, many years ago when I was just a young boy. I I worked uh worked in the restaurant business with my mom. My mom owned a restaurant for 15 years in Atlanta. Um I was uh put upon the earth, dealt with the great muscles or beautiful looks, but I think I have a pretty darn good palate. And I think I got that from my mom, who part of that story and part of what also is now the fight that we're having, is she was just diagnosed just two weeks ago with uh with cancer, and and she is uh uh yeah, so it uh this fight that I'm on and this journey that I'm on is just now also um put a lot into play with that. And and she is uh um just the the one that gave me my good talent and taste and flavor, understanding the nuances of great food and um being on this journey and having it come full circle for me is uh a part of what in parcels uh to learn that that she's got this. I think it's due in part to what we're putting in our bodies, and we can get into that a little bit later. But um my my interest in food was brought upon to me by my mother and um was something that I I remember, I tell this story very lightly, but I remember just being as a young boy having her, you know, uh not to be weird, but she'd come up and give me baths and I could hear her, you know, smell the breath on her, um, the things that she would create. She would have big lavish dinner parties and um, you know, she learned the culinary classics of French French cuisine. Um many years later, I I had the opportunity to just be in the kitchen with her as a young boy and and cooking with her. Um, but you know, many, many moons later we go through the diatribe of uh learning about who we want to be as young men and young women, and um, you know, we look to our parents to do that. Well, she was uh uh just a great asset and ally in that regard because I remember her cooking for me and cooking for our family and um remembering being around the kitchen and and those were some of some of my best memories.

SPEAKER_04 5:38

Yeah, what a blessing, what a blessing. You know, it it it occurred to me as you were talking how often um in these conversations that I'm having it goes back to some type of restaurant or kitchen for sure, and that seems to be a common thread. So I would just encourage young people if you have the opportunity and you want to be closer to food, but maybe you don't have a farm, any type of restaurant, you'll learn a ton big time. Yeah, and it's just good. It's good to be that close to food and it's good to the work ethic required. Um you just can't replace that. So I that that's cool to hear. Keep keep going, please.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Well, and so uh, you know, moving on, people said how I got started on on my journey with this is that I I was uh had the um was after high school went to go uh took a uh most people take a gap year. I took uh eight-year gap. Um spent about eight years figuring out what I want didn't want to do with that my life, and I think a lot of people spend that time figuring out what they wanted to do. Um I just tried a many, many things. And you know, uh if you're not if you're not failing, you're not trying. So I think uh moving through my my day after day cycle of just trying a bunch of different things, um finally looked around, and uh most of my friends were graduating from college, and I thought, I need to probably get my my stuff together. And so I I ultimately looked around and and decided to camp and go to school at University of Georgia, um, got a telecom degree, and while I was finishing school, um I met my wife who uh was finishing her law degree at University of Georgia, and we met and ultimately fell in love and and and decided that we were gonna spend uh the rest of our life together. We we got into uh uh the role and responsibility of of finding jobs and career paths, and I was working in advertising and I got a job uh working with UPS. Um, and then I moved, uh, worked with Home Depot and then started selling Microsoft licensing for a licensing company. And and I came home one day, uh, my wife Megan looked at me and she said, You're miserable. What do you really want to do? And I said, I want to cook. So onward and upward, we went and decided to put me through culinary school. She uh sacrificed a great deal for me to do that and um did that and then went to go work for a bunch of great chefs here in Atlanta. Um went through the the you know the ranks and roll roles to to get up and learn from the best. And so I had already, you know, been through college and knew what I wanted to do. So I was very, very uh direct and in trying to get through the the to find who I wanted to learn from. And I actually had a uh interview with a uh at the time, a very small uh PR firm called Green Olive Media, and they're still in business today. Um the woman that owns that company, Elizabeth Moore, sat me down and she said, Here's a great chef here in Atlanta starting out, and uh he's on his way to do some great things, and he he was and did. And so I went to go work for his name was uh Linton Hopkins, and he is a fantastic chef, eventually won a James Beard years later. But um under his wing, I kind of really understood and uh tried to to really peg down what and how I wanted to learn uh to work with food. I worked with Lyndon Hopkins, um uh he was a fantastic chef, but what he did teach me, uh Matt, is that I was um really trying to figure out at that time in in our food community in the United States in the Southeast, uh Southern food was was having its kind of day in the sunshine. And so Lyndon Hopkins uh and a chef de cuisine that worked with him uh taught me a lot about seasonality and the the really the perfect understanding of if we're gonna if we're gonna put food on the plate, it needs to come from our local region. And so when you start to think about the words farm to table and how that came into play, and Lyndon Hopkins was a massive proponent of that. Um he only worked with local farmers and local farms, and it really it stuck and it did a very, very good job for me to, and it made a lot of sense. And you think about, you know, I came from an environment where Cisco brought food to every restaurant in the country, and I worked for my mom uh very early on in the early, you know, late 80s, early 90s, and um, you know, it was it was just a time when food was having its its really its worst time because uh a lot of this just horrific things were happening in our food supply and our food chain. Uh the chemistry was coming full on. Um, you know, we're raising half of our produce is coming from these farms in Mexico where they're growing tomatoes in the middle of January and they they're not bred for nutrients or you know, flavor or you know, how the food can can help our bodies. It was more about how it could sit on a train and and be shipped across into Connecticut. Uh and so we lost a great deal. There was about a 30 to 70 year time frame when food was not being engineered uh for greatness. It was it was to the demise of of our humanity. I mean, it really truly I need to be so dramatic. But um, you know, we're all filled with just tons of horrific diseases now, and it it had to to come with the fact that we weren't, we were not, we were not doing the right thing for our food supply. And, you know, our government was allowing it to happen.

SPEAKER_04 10:44

And so at the end of the day, it was really about volume, not about nutrition.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Volume and money. And so we looked around and and for my the rest of the time that I was a chef, I tried to go work for great greatness. I wanted to work with chefs who were had that like-minded understanding of where our food came from, the seasonality of it, um, regionality, and understanding, you know, if you're gonna buy it from your farmer that lives in your three-state area, it's gonna be better for you socioeconomically, nutritionally, it's better for you, it's better for the environment. And so it just it all started to make sense. And so, you know, back in the early late 70s when Alice Waters put the apple on the table for a uh order for dessert, she said, this is what food should be. And so people started seeing that. But to me, uh, you know, I was this was in the early 2000s, for God's sakes. And I was thinking to myself, wow, you know, Alice Waters did that in the late 70s. When you think about social agenda and social changes and how long it takes for those things to really, really have an impact, it's it's it's decades, right? And so to me, I thought, wow, well, you know, I went out, reached the proverbial glass ceiling, as it were, in the in Atlanta, and had an opportunity through some of the network and the connections that I had with the chefs in Atlanta, um, went to go work for the finest restaurant in the world, which was the French Laundry.

SPEAKER_04 12:03

So you did? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

So I had the opportunity to go work for the yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

You say that so nonchalantly. So I went out. Wait a minute, pause. You went to go work where?

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Yeah. And so when I went out there, it it really changed my life. Um I went out uh under the under the guise of a great baker, uh, and he was a uh uh a chef uh baker that started uh uh Linton Hopkins has decided to start a bakery, and he had a baker that worked in Atlanta, and I started talking to him, but it turns out he was from San Francisco and he lived in Napa Valley. Actually, I think he was from Nashville, but he he actually lived with or worked at this place called the Acne Bread Company, and it was next to a bakery uh charcuterie in the Napa Valley called the fatted calf. So some very profound things happened for me in food when I worked at the French laundry. I think I looked around the kitchen, there was 18, 18 chefs, 18 people working, you know, 15 of which weren't getting paid, and I was one of them. And I thought to my gosh, to really spearhead and do this type of cuisine in the United States, this is what it takes. I mean, it takes it takes an immense amount of labor, free, cheap labor. Um, it takes an immense amount of volume of incredible food. And I got really discouraged and really um filled with a lot of disenchantment because I thought I felt kind of deceived um because I was like, this is not this is not I don't want to go and do like a sports bar.

SPEAKER_04 13:34

I don't want to make cheeseburgers, I want to do a really exquisite and so you know there's a parallel there to to to agriculture in this space where so many rely on the the cheap or free intern to make it work. Yep. And I've resisted that because I thought, well, dang, we should be able to figure this out on how to do this type of work and and pay for the value. Well, we're we're not quite we're not quite there yet. We're not quite there yet. Yep. So that's that's a definite parallel. I did I had no idea that that happened at the French laundry. I thought everybody was doing well that worked there, you know?

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yeah. Well, and and you know, it's and then he he has an incredible institution. So if you want to go learn from the best, you're gonna want to go out there and you'll do whatever you can. And so I don't really blame Chef Keller or any of those institutions. The idea is that, you know, it's an education. Yeah, it's an education. So you have to take it for what it is. But we got to work on there's a farm, the Thompson farm is across the street. We got to ferro wheat, they had like three different varieties of heirloom figs and heirloom, you know, just incredible produce. And and these were all being grown within a block of the actual restaurant. So to be able to have that environment, and what's really neat for me coming from Atlanta, and if this is could have come from any city in the country, the the head farmer that Chef Keller hired, his name's Tucker Taylor, was actually started a farm in Atlanta that Linton Hopkins would buy the lion's share of his produce from.

SPEAKER_05 15:04

Oh, you're kidding.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Wow. And so he got hired about a year earlier. Um, my wife and I made the trek to come out to San Francisco. We actually ate at the French laundry, and we didn't, this is a little side story. We were unaware that Tip was included. So she always jokes with me that we tipped on top of the cost of the and that's how I was able to get my extern ship there. But that I don't that's true. But um it was just kind of funny. But so anyway, we I finally get the extern. I get out and I'm working. You know, I wake up at 4 30 in the morning, I rode my back bike from Napa Valley to Yauntville in the morning. Um, and when I was in doing that process, I passed that charcuterie, then the fatted calf. Well, my understanding of this young man, uh Taylor Bodeker, who him and his wife Taponia, uh partner Taponia, um, started this beautiful charcuterie where he really ingrained himself in the natural and the traditional way to make salami. He's got a second, I think Taponia's family, they're second generation Italian, and he worked with some fantastic salami makers in in Cali in um in Northern California. So he really did it the right way. And so for me to go and transplant, and I remember calling my father-in-law, who is a West Point grad, and he's like, finish what you start. Don't, you know, you gotta do what you finish, start what you finish. And I remember calling him and asking for his advice. And he said, You've got to stick it out at the French laundry. And I was like, man, I was like, the things they were asking me to do, I thought were a little bit, I thought I was a little bit above, like I was having to fold napkins and do the, you know, you're doing the grunt work. And so I didn't come out there to do that. I wanted to learn how to cook, not from the best. So the projects that you were put that were put upon you were generally things that, you know, you were there to to really do those finishing touches that, you know, the to execute all these wonderful details that caused it, that enabled you to have that sort of cuisine and that experience, which was lovely. But I really was, I'm sort of a bit of an impatient person and knew I had the opportunity to be in Northern California for a very short period of time. So I wanted to soak it up the best I could. So I walked into uh the fatted calf one afternoon and I said, Listen, man, I know you've met through Alexander and he told me all about you. And I was like, Can can I come in and stage with you? Stodge is a term you use a stagiaire, it's basically free free labor. And he said, sure, come on in. And so he said, I'll teach you everything I know. He said, one caveat, he said, just don't open a shop in Napa.

SPEAKER_05 17:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Right. That's when the light bulb went off because I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. People didn't even know what charcuterie what was, much less, you know, opening one. So we jumped in the car that afternoon. It was a couple days later. He was like, We're gonna do a pig cooking at Robert Mondabi's brother's house. So we got in this car and we're we got two pigs in the back and we're rolling up the hills to Napa Valley and we stopped for gas. And I remember asking him, I said, How did you get started, Taylor? And he said, Oh, it was selling at the farmer's market at the ferry building in San Francisco. Well, that's when the biggest serendipitous moment happened, because I was like, immediately, I was like, I know what I can do. I call pick up my flip phone and I called my wife and I said, Megan, I said, I know what we're gonna do. And she's like, What's that? I said, We're gonna open a charcuterie in Atlanta. You hear how quiet it is, Matt? That's how quiet it was on the phone that day.

SPEAKER_04 18:28

We're doing what?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah, I make that joke all the time, but it was essentially such that it's so neat to be in the you know, 2000. This was in 2009. And to to to impress upon something in 2009 that nobody's ever done in the state of Georgia, it's a pretty neat feeling, you know. And then we we I got back to California. I took my trip and spent the rest of my time working with Taylor and had to make the trip back, and that's how I came up with the name, the spotted trotter, is I had 14 hours in the car by myself. I better, you know, use this time wisely. So I started playing, you know, the on a manopoeia and like the different. But if you look at the the the way the T and the the T's line up in the word spotted and the way they line up in the trotter, the trotter at the pig's hoof. And this pig that's on our logo is a Sintesanese pig from Italy. Uh, it's got a very long nose and a very sweet meat, um, but it's uh a beautiful pig, and so that's that's where the name came from.

SPEAKER_04 19:26

Wow. Um Well, you answered one question. That was gonna be a question. It's unique and it's cool.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

And we get in the car and get I get back, and um I was so hyped, so excited to do this, and my wife was in full support, um, thought I was crazy, but um I rented a little deli.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

But that's why she loves you. She knew that when she married you. Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

You know, so I rented a uh rented kitchen space in an actual deli that was already there. And the woman let me come in. Um, her name was Lynn Sowicky, and she let me come in and um she allowed me to rent space. The Department of Agriculture in Georgia said that you could do this, but you have to be out of her facility by the time she opens her doors in the morning. So that means I had to be there at 4 a.m. and I'd work for five hours. After it was all said and done, Matt, I was doing about 800 to 1,000 pounds of meat a week by myself. So I would come in and I'd make fresh sausages, smoke sausages, bacon, do everything I could. I wrote all my recipes. And then right before we opened, um, I broke my leg. Well, I knew that I had to have a HACCP plan. Well, when you sit down to write your HACCP plan, you don't have time. Or when you have a broken leg, you don't have time to do a lot of things. So I used my time really wisely. So I spent that time with my wife, with the Department of Agriculture, writing my Hassel plan to get this thing opened. And I flip-flopped. We did that, my leg broke before I was in making a thousand pounds a week. So I apologize. The my my my timeline gets a little messed up. But I I wrote the Hassel plan and then we opened it and I rented the kitchen space. So we did that for almost a year. Eight months I was in there. I woke up many a morning crying, what have I done? This is crazy. This is crazy. Well, the cool thing about the chef community in the Southeast is that they're really tight. And so I started networking the best I could to all the chefs in the community that I had. I dialed in with the slow, I started the first slow food convivia in Georgia with the Cordon Blue. Um, we worked heavily with Slow Food, we worked heavily with Georgia Organics, a wonderful community in in Atlanta. Um, and so really trying to network through the avenues that I had. But one thing that Taylor taught me was if you use the best and you stay top line, then you'll always sell to the best. And so my understanding of how to make the product was to try to use the finest ingredients that I could. All humanely sourced, pasture raised, never commodity. And where was a lot of people in the community that were still buying whole pigs, but the labor had just gone through the roof, right? We're we opened our business in the end of 2008. So you remember what was happening in 2008, the the bottom fell out of the um economy. And so we really did our best to try to model what Taylor did, which was to buy whole shoulder, whole, you know, uh primal, subprimal or primal cuts, um, and then be able to um make the sausages from that. So it was really cool because in the beginning, and so after I was out of that little deli in Decatur, we got our first bricks and mortar location, which was in a strip mall about four minutes from my front door of my home in downtown Atlanta. So had no business opening up a meat processing facility in a strip mall. Um all told it was about a thousand feet, a thousand square feet. So we worked about a year. After a year and a half, we got suite B and then suite C, but the entire build-out total was 2,200 square feet. For 10 years, Matt, we were making 5,000 pounds of meat in a 2,200 square foot kitchen. So we were doing 5,000 pounds of meat a week in a 2,200 square foot kitchen.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

So the strip mall worked out okay. No one kicked you out.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

It didn't have a loading dock. There was only one door to get in and out of. It was horrible. Um we were in that location, and while I was doing my deliveries, we were only selling to food service at the time.

SPEAKER_05 23:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

And we would get into the food service, you know, we have we landed big accounts. We're doing getting into like the Mandarin Hotel, Ritz-Carlton, we got into Delta through Lytton Hopkins. We were selling into some massive organizations. So my constant understanding of how to grow was like, I got to find a bigger space. So I would go and do, you know, the deliveries and stuff, and I would always keep my eyes peeled about where I wanted to be, but I didn't want to lose the nucleus of the city of Atlanta. And I didn't want to, you know, they were very loyal to us, and I wanted to make sure I stayed in the city. So I found the building that we're currently in, which was about a year and a half before the pandemic. We bought an 8,000 square foot building that we're in now. Okay. And I thought, oh, it's great, it's two stories, it'll be perfect. It's got a freight elevator. Well, unbeknownst to me, I was not a master of um understanding manufacturing because having a building that has two stories and you're trying to manufacture something, uh, lean specialists don't like that. Uh nor do your employees, and uh n neither do the economics of the uh um really it's about efficiencies. So I kind of bought the wrong building, but we've been able to make it so far. So it's been working okay, but we're really ready to grow. But at the end of the day, we started um and we opened up and we were selling cases, and then the pandemic happened. So we discovered that we had to have a product line to get to market and retail. Yeah. So this is when the most serendipitous thing happened. We looked around and there wasn't a there was nobody that could slice and package our meat in the southeast. Nobody. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:57

So we're which is hard to find anywhere. It really, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Yeah, it really is. So we found somebody, but he was in Virginia. He's still co-packing our product today, but we are in the throes of trying to open up and possibly the first um slicing, co-packing, and um slicing packaging line in the Southeast. Um, and we're we're in the throes of getting that done until the economics of uh 25 hit us, and we're kind of at a put that in the parking lot for uh just a little bit. But ultimately the story goes, you know, we are uh in a place now where we've got uh six distributors. Um we are you know pushing upon um trying to build this thing out uh the biggest and best we can, but we just need more space at this point. Now, something very serendipitous happened with regard to the way we brought our product to market, Matt. And this is probably the most important thing about what we do, because there's a lot of salami and charcuterie makers in the US. Yeah. But we looked around and we thought, you know what's not happening? You look at the history of the United States and the people making charcuterie, two countries that basically own the entire market space. You know who those countries are?

SPEAKER_04 26:04

Italy. I don't know the second one. Spain. Spain, sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Right? But you know who they're not talking about?

SPEAKER_04 26:14

The United States and any anyone else.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Right. And so I thought this is not right. I said, this doesn't make sense. We're a 250-year-old country and we're not celebrating the terroir, we're not celebrating our beautiful agriculture, we're not celebrating the breeds of the animals, we're not celebrating the nuances and the unique textures and flavors of the southeast, of the northeast, of the beautiful, you know, uh pastured lands in the Midwest. We're just not doing that. Yeah, and this is such an opportunity, right? And so my wife thought, you're on to something, dude. We need to, you know, let's harness this. And so uh we came up with the the the phrase New American charcuterie, and we got it, we got it trademarked. So we own the the copyright and the trademark name. And we think we take a lot, a lot of um importance to that. We we think it's it's super, super important to to come to the best that we can come and bring the best that we can um because we're representing um the flavors and these wonderful, amazing makers in in the United States, and we utilize some of their ingredients um to help, you know, promote beautiful American-made charcuterie. Um we've got about six varieties of salami now that have amazing, beautiful ingredients that are derived only in the U.S. Um, we just partnered this year with a new salami with Hatch Chili, um, a beautiful New Mexico chili that is in a lot of things, but we use it uh directly from New Mexico. And then we uh partnered with Mama Lil's pepper. It's a Hungarian goat horn pepper that's grown only in Oregon. Um it's pickled up there. We bring it down, we dehydrate it, pulverize it into a powder, and then um it goes into a cold smoked beefsteak salami with Mama Lil's and sun-dried tomato. Um one of our first forays into making New American charcuterie was um not sure if you know or not, but um charcuterie has to have a certain amount of sugar. Well, from a chef's perspective and trying to be creative, um, I looked around, I was like, most chefs are using like an inert sugar like corn sugar or beet sugar. Uh it's just flavorless, just to get the glucose and the set, the sweet set, so that the bacteria has something to eat. Well, I thought there's gotta be something more. We can do something better. We can do something that that is gonna really elevate this product line. And so instead of using beet sugar or corn sugar, we used sorghum syrup in this saladium that we made. And so when the bacteria woke up, it ate the sugar, but left the beautiful source. It's sorghum syrup is this beautiful umber syrup that's made by it's a cereal grain that's cooked in these big stainless steel kettles and it drips down and it's got this beautiful dark color. Well, the great thing about it is it's grown, you know, out in the wild and and not in the wild, but it's grown in pastures and it's got this beautiful pH. So when the when it cooks down, that pH just multiplies. So what we found was when the when the bacteria was eaten or when the sweetness was eaten up, it left that beautiful sour, but it also enabled the pH to go way, way down and the acidity bounced up, and it just had this incredible flavor profile, but also cured in two weeks less time than a regular salami did. So we essentially had a product.

SPEAKER_04 29:27

What a discovery.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Was a happy accident. Yeah. So that product is called uh black pepper summer salami, and it's made with sorghum syrup and toasted black pepper. And then we started looking around the agriculture in Georgia, and we thought, what else should we celebrate in Georgia? And so we looked around at the there's a Noiset, it's a type of salami grown in France or made in France that typically celebrates the hazelnut. Well, I thought, what's the largest agricultural export in Georgia? Peanut. So we did a toasted peanut and long cayenne salami that we squished during fermentation. And it has this beautiful oblong shape to it. So that's another thing.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

I'm looking at your menu on your website right now. There it is. I see it. By the way, let me just plug your website. You can tell your boldness just by looking at the menu on your website. The flavors, the things I don't even understand. But there's the black pepper sorghum, there's the southern smash noisette.

SPEAKER_05 30:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:24

I mean, it's amazing. It's a I was really blown away when I looked at your website. Thank you. Yeah, it's really cool. I mean, that's I it's innovation.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Yeah. Well, and and the thing to me, and and we can talk about it a little, but like when you think about the country's food system as a whole, we've gone through these, you know, and I think about when did we grow our own food the most, you know, it's like when people were doing the war gardens and like they had these places to where there was a sense of urgency to grow great food. Um we we we got really, really, and I use this term lightly, we got really lazy. Um and it and it really took us, it it really harmed us, right? It it it it took us away from knowing where our food came from, right? I mean, you can't even go to a grocery store now and find a a butcher inside a grocery store, right?

SPEAKER_05 31:17

No.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

And so these sort of things started happening at the same time when we were growing our business, and I thought, this is getting real scary, right? Like we aren't celebrating anything, and it's gonna become a monoclist, monoculturalistic culture where we're just gonna be all inundated with these things that people tell us are okay to eat. Nobody's questioning what they're putting in their body anymore. And it's just getting real scary. Um, and so when we thought about the the road that we wanted to take, it was we tried to we got SQF certified. Um, we just got gap certification on our entire portfolio of salamis as the highest standard of food safety and quality for the animals available in the US today. That was something important that we wanted to have on the label. So we're trying to really help move the needle without trying to shove it down people's throat by doing it in a way that, here, taste this and look how good it is. And that's that's the you know, that's the burden of proof. I want you to taste it and taste how different and better it is when you use great ingredients that are made the right way.

SPEAKER_04 32:22

And it is. I can say firsthand, you taste the product you make. Anything that I've tasted that you make so far, it stands out. Like it is amazing. And sometimes, you know, the differences are subtle. Sure. But they're still there. Yeah. And the flavor and the the like you say in your in your website, you know, the the marriage of those flavors and and how to go about that. You do it you can tell, you can tell that there's an attention to detail there that's really driving at flavor and enjoying that food, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

I mean, there and there's there are things that you see out in public, whether it's a cracker or a, you know, could be a drink of some type, but people are doing it more just just to do it to be weird, right? And I don't ever want to come across in our product line that we're just doing something to like, let's throw this on the wall and see if it stinks, sticks. We want to, we do a lot of RD. We'll run a recipe three, four, five, six times before we know that we've nailed it. Um, and and ultimately trying to really help people get and understand celebrating the terroir and the area of the regionality of that food is so important. And I think that, you know, most people have no idea that, you know, when you think about Minnesota, it's like, what's what's something that comes from Minnesota? It's like people don't generally know, right? And it's a it's a sad state of affairs when we're a 250-year-old country and we're not celebrating those type of things. I think when I first came into cooking, we had basically two things like bourbon and maple syrup. Like no one was really ever talking about things that, you know, came from a certain region. I mean, and and I came from the southeast, right? Like people think of New York as a big food Mecca and like LA, but like LA has still had some challenges getting their food system and their food scene, you know, harnessing and being excited about having that giant Mexico down there growing all that beautiful produce. And now I think, you know, over the last 10 to 20 years, have just finally started understanding um, you know, w how great what and what they're surrounded with. Um to me, I think about food mechas in my mind is like Louisiana, yeah, like the and just enriched culture of the French and the Cajun Creole and the Spanish cuisine that's available and the the historic heritage of where those foodways came from. And, you know, typically used they it was celebrated in Louisiana, but if you lived in New York, or you know, I think the advent of of the the new Hollywood chef was able to bring a lot of that stuff to the table. You know, I remember watching Justin Wilson on PBS as a kid and you know, him just waxing poetic about crawfish and and you know the different seasonings and things like that. But really that came about when you have the opportunity to market it and get it out. And um, you know, I was involved in in that in that time frame, working when when all those chefs came to pass with the food network and things like that. Um and it was really neat because um those those food systems otherwise would not have been um probably seen a lot or as much as they are now. Um so it it and and being able to do that with our with our product line, um, trying to celebrate those different um areas of the country has just been a it's been a valuable and important asset to to help us uh grow and to also put great food on the table.

SPEAKER_04 35:46

You know, and what comes to mind when you were talking about being having strict standards about pasture raised and then mentioning heritage breeds, let's say specifically of hogs. How do you know you you've got a product that you know is already elevated and you know a lot of the input isn't necessarily the meat itself as a percentage of the overall cost, right? Because it's it's it's a high high um labor kind of product. So how do you navigate what what something I haven't been able to figure out is how to navigate this hog and pork market in this in the United States, because it's all been driven down, cost, cost, cost, cost. Everything the the the precedent has been set that, okay, pork is always cheap because it's kafo, cheap, it grows fast, you cheap per pound, and you try to come in with something that, yeah, it tastes incredibly better to do genetics and practices.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 36:58

But yet to get through the gatekeepers to double the cost of goods, let's say, going in because of the practices. How do you how have you how have you traversed that?

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Well, I mean, uh to to if I was could tell you that we've been in a business where massively profitable, we're not. I mean, it it it's gonna take it's gonna take time. And I think, you know, what we've been hit with just in 2025, it's been a real challenge for a lot of people and and understanding what these tariffs are doing to people. Um, and the farmers are they're in their own epidemic right now. I think when you put a product out, it's it I it I hate to put that on the chefs, but it rests a lot in the folks that are feeding the masses, you know, and um generally d having that having that that educational piece, making sure that you're out there having those dialogues. Um and it's still, you know, it it it's it's this is gonna take just like Alice Waters in the 70s, it's gonna take your father, grandfather, grandmother, and grandkids all dying of cancer before people start to wake up and say, we gotta change something. We can't continue to do this to ourselves, right?

SPEAKER_04 38:07

And and that's been happening for a while. I I go back to when I was a kid and I I worked uh, you know, in uh layer and I and having a chemical incident, but we've told the story before on here. But the started doing research, and the highest incidence of cancer per capita in the 1970s, 80s, 90s was Iowa per capita. Um, you know, and I've known a doctor that uh was a doctor down in southern Minnesota, and she stopped because she said it's yeah, I can't do it anymore. I keep seeing farmers come in with cancer. And that's all I deal with every day as a general practitioner is referring people to treatment for cancer one after another. And most of them are coming in, you know, with advanced cancer because they're not the type of people that want to go to the doctor.

unknown 39:00

Right.

SPEAKER_04 39:00

So this has been going on for a while. A long time. A long time. And we all we all just kind of want to go, well, it just happens, you know, it just happens, it's part of life, you know, you're gonna get sick and die. Well, that's not what we are wired to do. We were wired to live a full life, and then all of a sudden, at the end of life, you decline and you die. Yeah, right? But you have a robust life your whole life. You don't get cancer at 50 or 60, you know, and we're so used to that now. It's just it's it's a tragedy. And I hate to hear about your mom. I'm a cancer survivor myself, so it it hits home. And um you're you're you hit the nail on the head though. It's like, when are we gonna really start looking at this? Because this it's just kind of silent killing and and it and we know a lot of it is environment and what we put in our bodies.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

10,000%. And you know what's so sad, Matt, is that we are now in a culture that we have been inundated by radio, billboards, television. Um obviously we're all carrying a cell phone now. We have social media, we have Facebook, all the ads that are running, and we are we've become immune to it, right? You can't go, you can't go, and it's a little bit different in Europe, but let me just think about this for a second. And I want your listeners to hear this. You go to a soccer, a kid's soccer game, I have a four-year-old and a six-year-old, the parents are bringing things like Cheez It's and Goldfish, and and and to they're they're non-understanding how bad these products are to put in their kids' bodies. They're inundated with red dyes and fillers and all this carcinogenic of seed oils. If people knew how badly it was for a seed oil to be cleaned of its color, and the the I mean, I just I it makes me so angry to think about. And we've allowed it in our food system for over 70 years.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

And we've been consuming it hand over fist without knowledge and understanding. And then you go through college, high school, and college, you're eating Gatorade and all these other things that are filled with these horrific things. And we're continuing to just blindly put it in our bodies and institute daily routines where we go out every day and we work the fields or we work the, you know, work on the line, or we do this, and we're go buying, we go into the we're going to the the coke machine and we're buying this horrible stuff. And it's just normal. And then you go into, you get sick, you go into hospitals, all the vending machines are filled with it.

SPEAKER_05 41:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

And then here's the worst thing. And the thing that just beguiles me. We go to now, we go to, I don't care what what institution or park you go to to go see a football game, baseball game, college, you see billboards being advertised with with hospitals. And and and you're being inundated with with insurance companies, throwing you like, come use me to sustain the sickness that you're about to get from the foods that you eaten. It's so messed up. And this idea that we think that it's okay. No one's questioning it. Our children go to school and they eat these foods that are just they take a chicken breast and they they can take it with a spoon and cut it. That's not chicken, dude. That's not what that food should do.

SPEAKER_04 42:31

Well, just school meals there. I have a lot of background in school meals.

SPEAKER_02 42:35

It's horrific, dude. And it's like nobody's questioning it. And the politicians get in, they get back in like the the money that's in our p political system now is is ruining this country.

SPEAKER_05 42:47

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

And so now we're in this place where you go to a football game, you go to a soccer game, you go to a baseball game, and watch it's surrounded by nothing but advertisements of alcohol, fat-filled sugar, chips, like candy bars, it's all just like normal.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

Kids just grow up and they're like, that's normal. You ask me how you can change it? It's like racism in this country. If you grow up in an environment and you've got children that are hearing a word like the N-word, they think that that's okay. It's generational understanding. There has to be a stopgap in our family homes where our children are not being taught to eat that garbage. Do not bring home Fritole, do not bring home Kellogg's, do not bring home these institutional foods that are destroying us. These things are made with chemicals that are not to be consumed by humans. And we all think it's just so normal. And I'm tired of it.

SPEAKER_04 43:46

Yeah, I'm I'm feeling a lot of guilt right now because before I turned on my research into food, I was one of those people.

unknown 43:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:56

I just trust, I just try I just trusted if it's for sale, it's gotta be safe. If it's on the shelf, it's gotta be safe. Do you like it or not? Do you like the taste of it? If you like the taste of it, we'll buy it.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

They look at you like you're crazy, you're like, you don't need to be eating that. They're like, they're like, you're weird. Like, well, yeah, it's okay. But here's here's the other thing is that when when we stop to think, let's make a change, we're so worried about you know these institutions are hundreds of billions of dollars they're worth.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

To make one social change, like I call them Chick-fil-A, they started in my backyard, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:32

Yep. Drew It Cathy opened these beautiful ch fried chicken sandwiches, incredible. You go to the mall, and it was you could find them at the mall.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

But here's the thing, dude. Chick-fil-A, if they changed, put one sandwich on their menu that was a pastured raised animal. Think of how much agriculture they could add to the value of people working in that environment. They could put good food on the table, and I guarantee you, Matt, if they did it, it would be the number one chicken sandwich that they sold. You know how many ingredients are you know how many ingredients are our Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich now? Over 53 ingredients in a fried chicken sandwich.

SPEAKER_04 45:11

Oh, how's that even possible?

SPEAKER_00 45:13

I and I the thing is, is like I was raised on that shit. But to know that if if truett Cathy was alive today and saw what his family had put and done to that chicken sandwich, he'd turn over in his grave.

SPEAKER_04 45:27

Well, that's true of that's true of any one of these chains. You know, I just had a discussion um about a uh Mexican chain that is very big. And you know, we've we've pursued having some pastured grass-fed beef on the menu. It's fine. It'll get on the menu as long as you sell it to them for the same cost as conventional.

SPEAKER_05 45:50

Right.

SPEAKER_04 45:51

Well, it's not possible. It's not possible. That'll just run us out of business. It'll just completely eliminate us if we said, okay, we'll do that.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 45:59

Uh we'd last six months and it'd be over. Uh so it yeah, it's I I love your passion around it. Even even when you live in the space every day, you still get numb to it. Yep. You still get numb to the fact that, oh, it's okay because everybody's doing it. Oh, it's okay because I've had this before. Oh, it's okay because I was raised on this. Right. And you're right, it's not okay. And I love what RFK Jr. is starting to point out. Of course, I wish there was more going on, but it's, you know, right away, those dyes. Yeah. We got to get those dyes out of food and vegetable oils. We gotta get vegetable oils.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

What even is even more sad, and and you know, I don't know the economic, you know, status of your audience, but when folks go to the grocery store and say they're on the downslope of an economic time and they're not bringing home a big enough paycheck, they go to the grocery store and the ingredients that they can't afford are the ones that are the worst for them. And that that's us that's we are in decline as humanity. Like we are looking at a generation that we are devolving. We are not evolving. And I don't care if you're on the left or the right, you need to look at what you're doing to your family if you're bringing that food home. Cancer, you know the one thing that cancer can't live without? Glucose. Sugar is in everything we eat at the grocery store. Everything.

SPEAKER_04 47:25

And let me tell you something. When I went through my cancer experience twice twice so far, I went to the so I went to the radiologist. Okay, I'm checking out my options, you know, like this is these are the things I gotta research and deal with now. And they tell me why I absolutely have to do radiology in this case. I I go to get up to the counter to to get my debrief or uh the end of my appointment. And there on the counter is a basket full of candy bars. Yeah. While I look around the waiting room and there's all these suffering people waiting for their treatment. And here, why don't you have some candy food to go to make you feel better?

SPEAKER_00 48:11

It's just like bonkers.

SPEAKER_04 48:14

It's like, what are we doing? What are we doing? We're feeding this cancer victim with sugar. Come on.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

And the fact that our hospitals are filled with vending machines that have nothing but garbage in them, it just blows me away, dude. And it, you know, you go into like I I'm a type one diabetic and have been a diabetic type one. Now, people that don't know the difference. Type one is a genetic disease. It's not type two, which is a you you can you can you can be type two diabetic disease.

SPEAKER_04 48:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

I started doing intermittent fasting and started doing long-form fasting about three years ago. My A1C now is 4.1. It's lower than most marathon runners. Now, you go to an endocrinologist and you tell them what's the most important thing you can do to be a healthy diabetic, they don't even mention fasting. You know why?

SPEAKER_04 49:04

No one makes any money off of fasting.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

They don't make any money off of it. But it is the number one thing you can do as a diabetic to help get your A1C in control. I have a 4.1 A1C. But the idea when the economics get involved and what we do as a community and as a culture, you don't ever think that it's gonna go right. So you looking around and like, what can you do at home and what how can you help fix what's happening in humanity in our food system? It's to generationally, you're raising children now, stop bringing that food in your home.

SPEAKER_04 49:41

That's grow, grow some of your own whole foods.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Grow your food, bring home whole foods. You know, there's so many great things that we've lost identity with to learn how to cook and to understand the conviviality of food, to sit down and make a meal with your children. It's just, it's, it's something that is lost and we need to get it back. Um, but helping people understand it's not just about making the food, it's what you've done for the family of that raised that food and the people that generationally have, you know, they're they're raising their own families growing that food. Um it's more than just that. And I think that we've lost, you know, it's it's it's a it's a it's gonna it's gonna be a tough battle. But one that I think that here at at The Spot of Trotter and what we do and and how we make our product line, we want it to be the most delicious thing you ever put in your mouth, but we want to make it the best way we can. And to get back to your earlier question is how to fight that fight with keeping the economics. It's it it is a battle every single day. Um, and trying to be, you know, we are we are one of the most expensive charcuteries in the country. But but we are the best. And we will you put it in your mouth, I'll stand my ground next to any piece of meat that you put in front of me, and I will tell you that you it will be the best product you ever put in your mouth. Yeah. Um But it it it goes without saying that it's not, it's not a it is not an easy battle, but I think it's one that when I move on into the next life or wherever I go after you die, I've put my energy and effort into something that will help make the world a little bit better when I leave.

SPEAKER_04 51:14

So tell me about other green shoots you say, you know, that you've seen about that that gives you hope. You know, I I I've I witnessed certain things in the industry we're in, and and wh while everything you said has to absolutely be taken seriously by anybody that hears it.

SPEAKER_00 51:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:31

What do you see happening that gives you hope?

SPEAKER_00 51:35

Right now, things that give me hope are um, you know, when you look at the outlay of what's happening with um growers and groups around the city and around the country. Um I think there are still some great institutions to buy your food. Um, you know, trying trying to look at there's a fantastic farmers market that's been in Atlanta for for almost, let's see, I'm I'll be fi I have 51 this year, and they started in 1974. It's called the Cab Farmers Markets. But it's one of the the most diverse markets you ever see. And finding those institutions give me hope, seeing that people and they're they're busy every Monday through first. I mean, they're open seven days a week and they're always busy. And so those things give me hope. I think um, you know, things that you do, obviously sharing that that knowledge and information and education. Um, you know, there's great farms and farmers, you know, and and everybody makes mistakes, but like at the end of the day, people that are that are really occupying space to make the world better in food, um, those things give me hope. I think um people that question um the run of the mill, like those people give me hope. Uh I have a quote right above my desk the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do, and Steve Jobs and that. Yeah. But ultimately, people have to question. And I think that we've stopped questioning, right? We we and we're we're spending a lot of time getting angry at one another when I think that that's that's just a waste of time. That's what they're doing.

SPEAKER_04 53:07

It is. We could just learn from each other. Yeah. You can decide what you want to accept or not accept. Everyone has their own mind, but just just be open to learning, please. Just learn something. And you know, and accept maybe that you are making mistakes, you know, because like you said, we all do. Making mistakes. I mean a lot of mistakes in food in my life for decades. And, you know, and you know, and it now is our chance to do something about it. And I guess what gives me a little hope, I don't know if you see this, but this generation that's coming up, you know, they're looking at food differently than I did. You know, they're saying it's a reflection of my values, it's a lifestyle, it's an experience. You know, I'm not gonna just take it lightly and say, whatever, you know, whatever gives me energy, I'm gonna eat. Um that that's that was my generation, you know. Yeah. Um so that gives me some hope.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

Instead of spending$180 on a new pair of kicks, they might be looking at, well, I'm gonna go eat with my friends at this great restaurant and or go buy this really cool esoteric cuisine. Um, I do see that, and we are seeing that.

SPEAKER_04 54:14

Or make it at home. Or make it at home. Yeah. You know, and buy my next coat at Goodwill. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

You know, and that's that we're seeing a lot of that. Uh, even people in high fashion are doing much more thrifting. And but I think, you know, the the top end of that and the ceiling of that is that they're looking out going, if we don't make some fucking changes soon, this world's gonna be in a really bad, bad position. And I think that, you know, people start to really start to think and start to question and start to understand if we continue to abuse nature and abuse the natural world the way we are, it's not and abuse our bodies. Yeah, and abuse our bodies. It they're they're not gonna be here, you know? Um and being a type one diabetic, I've had to sort of be pressed upon and forced upon me. But, you know, and I'm grateful for that because I have two little girls that we'll drive by, we'll it's it's to the point where it's getting a little annoying, but we'll go by a fast food restaurant and they'll be like, ooh, gross, you know. And I'm like, you know, that's that's what I want them to really be cognizant of and understand that those people aren't not looking to sustain. And here's the craziest thing, Matt. And I I think people have lost so just much touch with this. It's like we are sustaining our thoughts. We're sustaining our ability to to come in and wake up every morning and see our children and see our grandparents and our parents. And if we don't put things in nutrient dense in our body, our body won't be here to thrive and do that for those people and be here for ourselves and to have great thoughts and thinking. And it's it's so it's so right in your face. And it's so it's so lost on so many people. But like if you don't fill your body with nutrient dense things, and and not just not just what you're consuming from a from a food waste, but from what we're looking at, what we're reading, what we're hearing. Um, you know, it's like the the the it's like people like I I I have my windows down 365. Like I'll I'll be one of those people that you're like, what's that weirdo? It's six, you know, 45 degrees out, he's got his windows down. But like we've stopped, we've stopped walking outside with our bare feet, right? Nobody does, nobody gets grounded anymore. We don't go through and feel the energy of the earth anymore. And I'm not some hippie-dippy left-wing crazy person, but like those type of things they they helped our bodies, you know, fight diseases and and get away from those things. And now we're, you know, the other part that's just psychologically just tearing me apart is that there used to be a time and civilization started when we'd be lucky if we ate one meal every three days.

SPEAKER_05 56:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

Now we're eating six times more food and we're sitting behind a desk all day.

SPEAKER_05 56:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

Do the math on that, dude. And not enough people think about humanity, we're hunters and gatherers.

SPEAKER_04 57:03

We moved.

SPEAKER_02 57:04

We would hunt for a day and a half, two days, eat a big giant piece of meat, and then we wouldn't see food for you know two or three days.

SPEAKER_05 57:13

Two days, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

Now we're sitting behind a desk for eight to ten hours a day, shoving things in our face and our bodies, and we're and they're they're filled with all this calories.

SPEAKER_04 57:24

And they're empty.

SPEAKER_02 57:24

So we just keep eating them because we have edible food and we're wondering why we're all sick. Right. And it's like, come on, dude, you gotta, we gotta wake up.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

We gotta fucking wake up. It's so sick. And so, you know, and and and I think the hope is that you're right, that our generation is starting to see, you know, I there's a lot of horrible things that have happened with social media, but some of that, that, that ability to look at what's going on and to see, see some of that transparency has been very refreshing.

SPEAKER_04 57:55

Um well, I love what you hit upon about just you know, the relationships and living to our fullest potential, whatever it is, has so much to do with how we take care of ourselves first.

SPEAKER_01 58:08

Totally.

SPEAKER_04 58:09

And and and waking up and not being full of inflammation and achy and tired and just waking up with a natural energy that's gonna drive you to think clearer thoughts, to do more, to be more physically active. Uh that I mean, if if someone could fast forward to the groggy kind of poisoned way of living and just know the vibrant nature that we have naturally, I they would make that change faster, I think. Big time. And and I can st I I'm a hypocrite because it took me years to get there. And I still haven't, there's no destination, but I'm still on that journey. But I know that I can I can feel good from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. and not even think about being tired. Right. You know, like I can just do it and I don't even think about it. And I enjoy the hell out of it.

SPEAKER_05 59:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 59:11

You know, that I don't have to prop myself up. Right. Um, yeah. And and it's all possible through through food and a little bit of management, a little bit of thinking about how what activity we need. It's all very, very possible.

SPEAKER_00 59:25

Yeah. And I think you're talking about the culture of, you know, the the the generation today, the the the way that they're coming in and thinking about, you know, occupying enough space in their day. There's the the time blocks are what they are. We only get 24 hours a day. But being able to spend more of that time focused on sustaining their body and their mental stability, you know, it's it's like you get you get people all the time that get frustrated with people thinking about how, oh, I got, you know, I gotta have a mental break day. Well, you know, 20 years ago they would laugh you out of the office if you said that. Right. But now it's like you really have to think about you're gonna get ten times and these are the Asian cultures have been thinking about that for you know, centuries. It's like they want you to to to be refreshed and have a good sense of mind. And you know, working in the culinary industry, you you were lucky if you got 12 minutes by yourself, right? To think about what you're doing. And so there was a big change, and I think around when Anthony Bourdain committed suicide and we were thinking about people in the kitchen and and helping people have you know, you gotta come to this. It's it's a it's war. Every night, you know, you're gonna be putting your best bet on the table. Um you you you better be ready. And so um, but I think in in the in the world we live in, looking at the youth of today, I think helping them understand and and supporting that that notion of, you know, coming to the table with a good, you know, enough spending enough time taking care of yourself, right? And making sure that your your body's good, that you're sustaining it with the right uh, you know, exterior things and and the right food uh and the right liquids and you're and you're putting those things in your body because, you know, my hope is that you're gonna have kids one day and you're gonna be able to help them understand that generational change. And and that that's that does give me hope. I think those are those are some really significant things. I'm glad you asked that question.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:15

Well, yeah. Well, you answered it very eloquently, in spot on and passionately. So, Kevin, I just I want to thank you again for coming on. Um you're you're gonna inspire very, very many people through this podcast, but also in the broader world. And I, you know, and you ooze with energy. And you say you're 51, right? You said 51. I'll be 51 in January, but 51 coming up, and you ooze with energy of a 21-year-old. So yeah, well, it's just obvious. And you know, you gotta ask the question if you're listening, where is this coming from? You know, where where is this coming from?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:55

So um, well, I just appreciate so much what you're doing. I appreciate the projects we're working on together. Uh I hope we can continue to work together and push this food fight forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

100%.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:09

Um, you know, I I I want to say I I hope we can see progress every single day in that in that movement. So thanks again, Kevin.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:19

Eat eat less meat, just eat good meat. That's the thing. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:22

Cut it in half and you know, cut your portion in half, but g make it really, really good. Because you'll get more nutrition anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:30

That's it. So yeah. 100%. Thank you guys so much for what you're doing. And um, I love love what love the energy, love what you guys are after, and um, I'd love to help in any way I can. And I'm looking forward to working with you guys. Thank you again. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:43

Likewise. Yeah. Take care of yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:45

All right. Thank you.