327 Franco Fubini - Delivering unmatched flavour to 2000 of the world's top restaurant and unlocking consumer demand

A conversation with Franco Fubini, co-founder of Natoora and author of In Search of the Perfect Peach, about flavour as the key to unlocking consumer demand. We talked about what leads to great flavour, which is of course soil health, but first, we need amazing seeds. How do we make sure farmers get paid accordingly when they grow the most amazing pumpkin or peaches? We tackled creating demand for flavour and lots of it starting with the world's leading restaurants, and chefs who are relentlessly looking for the best flavours on their plates.

Most of the food today in the global north flows through supply chains and ends up in supermarkets. So how do we build enough demand and strong supply connections between the farmers who are purely focused on flavour and the ones that supply supermarkets, maybe first online but then also retail? It took Franco 20 years, but now Natoora is starting to crack that code, supplying over 2000 of the world's leading restaurants and some leading supermarkets all with radical seasonality, because we don’t have 4 seasons but 365. Finally, food miles are overrated and won’t change the food system, plus super diverse farms won’t lead to the best flavour; we need specialisation and scale.

---------------------------------------------------

Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits on www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. 

Support our work:

• Share it
• Give a 5-star rating
• Buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture

----------------------------------------------------

More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/franco-fubini.

Find our video course on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course.

----------------------------------------------------

The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/

KOEN10 for 10% off
https://rfsi-forum.com/2025-rfsi-europe/

Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/

Chapters

• 0:00 The Flavor Revolution in Agriculture
• 8:57 The Evolution of High-Quality Food
• 17:22 Redefining Flavor and Seasonality in Agriculture
• 28:22 Adapting to Climate
• 31:58 The Foundation of Flavor in Agriculture
• 39:32 Challenges and Opportunities in Food Industry
• 46:35 The Future of Food Consumption
• 1:03:37 Influencing Sustainable Food Sourcing
• 1:16:42 Fostering Flavor Appreciation and Sustainability
• 1:26:06 Learning and Investing in Sustainable Food
• 1:30:34 Investing in Sustainable Food Brands
• 1:38:16 The Significance of Winter Tomatoes
• 1:42:24 Supporting Sustainable Agriculture Practices

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Flavor, flavor, flavor. According to our guest of today, flavor is the key to unlock consumer demand. But what leads to great flavor or, as we coined it in our conversation, flavor bombs? Of course, soy health, but maybe more important or better. Firstly, we need amazing seeds, but then we have a farmer who grows the most amazing pumpkins or peaches. How do we make sure he or she gets paid accordingly? That's what we tackle today creating demand for flavor, and lots of it, starting with the world's leading restaurants, chefs who are relentlessly looking for the best flavors on their plates. But let us not stop there. Most of the food today in the global north flows through supply chains which end up in supermarkets. So how do we build enough demand and strong supply connections between the farmers who are purely focused on flavor that we can supply supermarkets, maybe first online, but then also retail? It took our guests of today 20 years, but they're starting to crack that code, supplying over 2000 of the world's leading restaurants in six cities globally and some of the leading supermarkets, all with radical seasonality, because did you know we don't have four seasons, but actually 365. And another one food miles are overrated. And it won't change the food system, plus super diverse farms, it won't lead to the best flavor. We need specialization and a certain skill. As you can hear, we covered so much in this fascinating and really fun conversation. So grab a cup of coffee or tea or, even better, make yourself some amazing fresh fruits or vegetables, because this is a long one, but trust me, it's worth it.

Speaker 1: 1:38

This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast. Investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume, and it's time that we as investors big and small and consumers, start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet.

Speaker 1: 2:15

To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community and so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you and if you have the means and only if you have the means, consider joining us. Find out more on gumroadcom slash investing in RegenEgg. That is, gumroadcom slash investing in RegenEgg, or find the link below. Welcome to another episode today with the co-founder of natura. People are more and more cut up from the origins of their food. This makes flavor, nutrition and farming practices that protect the planet almost impossible to find. By working directly with growers, they create a more sustainable way forward for farming. By giving everyone the tools to understand the power of our food choices, they empower everybody to become drivers of change. Welcome, franco.

Speaker 2: 3:15

Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure.

Speaker 1: 3:17

I mean, that intro could mean a lot of different things, but we're going to have ample time to unpack it. It's a very nice set of sentences and I think there's a lot of very practical things you're doing to accomplish that. But to start with, a personal question and I've read your book that I can highly highly recommend comes out, I think, the 22nd of September. We'll put links below, of course, in the show notes, and a shout out to Chelsea Green for sharing a pre-release copy of that so we could have this conversation. But to start, for people that didn't read the book yet, what led you to focusing most of your awake hours on flavor nutrition to that extent? And then, of course, the farming practice side, like how, from all the other career paths, like why did you end up falling into this one for the last 20 odd years?

Speaker 2: 4:05

end up falling into this one for the last 20 odd years. It's a combination of a real selfish need for really good quality product that I struggled to find. I always spent a lot of time cooking and I think it was in really kicked off. After university, I moved to New York.

Speaker 2: 4:23

I was working in finance at Merrill Lynch and what I would do for my spare time, aside from going out and enjoying New York City as a single 20-year-old, was to cook, and I had the benefit of spending a lot of my childhood traveling around the world because my stepfather was a diplomat, so I was exposed to a lot of really good ingredients as a child, and it's one of the things I touch on in the book. I was living in countries where the industrialized food system hadn't arrived yet, not in the way that it is today, so the access to fruits and vegetables that I had was very different to the one that you normally have today, particularly in the large cities. So there was this real, as I say, selfish need that I had to get access to really good quality products so that I could cook and eat it and enjoy it, and that was one of the main drivers. The other thing was more on the entrepreneurial kind of professional side, which was wanting to do something on my own.

Speaker 2: 5:27

I think there was a lot of it that came from my grandfather who had his own business and was very present in our family and in our childhood, and at some point those two worlds connected this idea that I wanted to do something on my and the fact that I recognized that what I really enjoyed was food. So those two things came together.

Speaker 1: 5:52

And it's quite a step. I mean, sourcing for your own kitchen is one thing, sourcing for kitchens of others is a whole different beast. How did that like? It sounds now like a natural next step, but of course there were many in between ones like how did that happen? How did that? How did it became a business instead of a hobby? Um, to to source the best ingredients for for your own cooking yeah, so I was struggling to find them for myself in a way uh what was the most?

Speaker 1: 6:24

what was the biggest thing missing? Like in terms of, I mean flavor, but in terms of ingredients, what was the one, the one you started it with?

Speaker 2: 6:30

Like okay, it's usually the same right. It tends to be. Fruits is where you find the flavor. The flavor gap is greatest.

Speaker 2: 6:39

So things like tomatoes peaches you know, I have actually have a nectarine that I was trying here downstairs. Peaches, you know, I have actually have a nectarine that I was trying here downstairs. It's it's fruits. It's where it's really starts, and I think tomatoes is probably a quite iconic one, because tomatoes are one of the one of the few fruits and vegetables that we really consume across the world in really high quantities, because the variety of what we eat is very limited nowadays, so tomatoes would stand out as something that I really missed back in the day.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Because you had the privilege to eat tomatoes, to eat different flavor bombs, let's say, in your childhood, and couldn't find it anymore when you were living in New York City, basically. And so where did you start? Where did you start looking Like, where did you begin? I started at well.

Speaker 2: 7:28

So Natura started in London. I started going to farmer's markets. So I was going to the Union Square farmer's market back in the late 90s when I was living in New York. So in terms of getting access to local quality, well-farmed produce, no question Union Square had it, but in terms of that, as you say, the flavor bomb, that wasn't available.

Speaker 2: 7:50

But it was only at the time that I hit that I moved to London, that I get to London, that after a couple of years of being there that this idea started brewing back in my head. It's a bit of a long story of how I got back into it, but that's when I took the decision that I needed to make a change in my head. It's a bit of a long story of how I got back into it, but that's when I took the decision that I needed to make a change in my life, that I needed to change my career and that those two things came together. Right, that I recognized that if I wanted to do something on my own, what made sense was that I did it in the in the space of food. Right, that I needed to move into the food industry, because it's the one thing that I really enjoyed and that I was passionate about. So I think I was.

Speaker 2: 8:28

I consider myself lucky in that.

Speaker 2: 8:30

I think a lot of us naturally know what our passion is, but I think for most people and I see this with a lot of my friends they don't necessarily have a passion that they can point to, particularly as you're starting your career.

Speaker 2: 8:44

And I knew that I had that and it made a lot of sense for me to say, hey, hold on right, it's fine to want to do something, and I had tried setting up a couple of businesses, one with my brother that didn't work out. So it was that recognition I need to do something in food. So a lot of the thoughts and a lot of the I guess you could say frustrations that I felt in New York when I was cooking a lot and looking for quality ingredients resurfaced in London, and that's the time that I said, okay, well, I do believe that if I'm facing these frustrations, there's got to be other people that are facing the same frustrations. How do I make good quality food that I believe is accessible, and I believe the restaurants are getting access to it. How do I make that available to a wider audience? And I believe that. You know, at the time the internet and e-commerce had begun, so I felt that that was a natural progression.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Right was to create a home delivery service that essentially acted like an online farmer's market and so it really started with making the higher quality food or the high quality food, and we get to the flavor and all of that in in a bit that restaurants have access to because they, they are at the forefront or they should be at the forefront of of looking for the absolute best flavor uh, flavor, tomato you can find, et cetera, et cetera, making that accessible for home cooks like yourself, and then you pivoted at some point. But how long did that last? In terms of home delivery and being the online farmers markets which we've seen, unfortunately, many of and many didn't succeed. Yet there are some exceptions here and there, I think it's possible, but competing with supermarkets and others and others, it's, it's, it's not an easy business. How did that, um, how did that develop?

Speaker 2: 11:02

I mean the, the home delivery lasted, uh, longer than it needed to, or longer than it should have. It was a very emotional decision to close it, uh, but it lasted the better part of, I would say, 10 years of Natura. So from 2004 until 2014, I think it was, it had become a very, very small part of our business. So what used to be 100% of our revenues morphed into 2%. I think it was 2.3% by the time we finally took the decision to close it. And that is a whole other story that, if you want, we can get into, but it's all about, as you said, it's a very, very difficult business to operate in and our business had very much moved and progressed from there.

Speaker 2: 11:49

We also. When we started out, the idea was not just fruit and veg, but we were doing meat, fish, dairy and all of the dry goods that support your weekly shop. By 2014, we had really become a fruit and veg specialist, so really focusing on building our expertise in fresh produce, our supply chain was 80% fruit and veg and our sales were 80% fresh fruits and vegetables, and most of our business was to restaurants by then. So that's how it kind of, that's how it kind of evolved.

Speaker 1: 12:23

How did that happen? Did restaurants start to buy, or how did that sort of transition happen, as you assumed at that point, like that the restaurant had access to the best food anyway and you needed to bring that to the rest of us, let's say? And then at some point you found out that restaurants actually there was stuff to improve there as well Like, how did that, um, that transition happen?

Speaker 2: 12:44

So to answer that I need to go back a couple of years before Natura, which is I went to work when I decided to to finally say, okay, enough is enough, you've got to, you've got to do something. I started looking for work in the food industry and I ended up going to work at a company called Solstice, which the founder is no longer there a guy called Philip Britton he was a Michelin star chef from England had set up this business and he was supplying the top end restaurants in London with primarily fruits and vegetables. And I went to see him. He had wanted and had kind of started a home delivery service. That was basically you give him a call or send an email and he would send you an order to your home. And I said, hey, you know, you're selling product to the fat duck and to the ivy. You should be selling this product to the consumer, but you should be utilizing better technology to do that and to really push this service.

Speaker 2: 13:37

So he hired me and I built a home delivery service within Solstice and that got me working with the restaurants, because most of the business, most of Solstice's business at the time was supplying restaurants and that's when I started to see the produce that we were getting access to from England, from Italy, from Spain, and again, a little bit of the gap not as much of a gap as you could see as a consumer going to the supermarket it was certainly a hell of a lot better, but I could see that there was a real opportunity also to up the game in terms of what was available to restaurants From there. I set up Natura, I move into Natura, and that's then we go a few years on, 2000. And end of 2006, we're only doing home delivery and we decide to acquire a company called Portobello Food Company which was, in simple terms, doing exactly what we were doing, but with Italian product. They were mostly focused on dry goods Parma ham, you know, parmesan cheese they were like a nostalgic service for, you know, italian expats.

Speaker 1: 14:43

Selling la bella vita yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:45

Selling la bella vita At a time when it was very hard to find those ingredients in even in a city like London and they had about 15 to 20 restaurant customers. And when we did the acquisition, the guy who had set up the business this guy called Ludovico Filotto. He said to me you know the restaurant business like there's real opportunity there. And, to be very frank, when we bought it it had nothing to do with the restaurants. The decision was entirely about blending our fresh food offering with the kind of Italian dry goods food offering and believing that we could consolidate customers and from there continue to build our e-commerce business. So what ended up happening is the e-commerce business never grew. 10 years on. It was smaller than it was when we joined the two businesses, but the restaurant business those 20 customers turned into hundreds of customers and a flourishing business.

Speaker 1: 15:44

And then, when did that relentless search for flavor really took off? Because you go much further than I think any other company supplying to restaurants is going. Maybe that has changed now, but you definitely were one of the first if not the to really go as deep as you can possibly get to find the perfect pitch, which is the name of the book. But any other category, any other product you're going for, it's flavor, flavor, flavor and probably a few times more flavor behind that. Where did that relentless focus started? From the business side of you? Of course, as a home cookie, we're looking for that, but there's a difference between those two, um, or there was at least.

Speaker 2: 16:26

In this case, there isn't anymore so the first, the first restaurant to come to us, which came on the back of portobello Food Company because they supplied the River Cafe. So we were supplying River Cafe with olive oils and tinned tomatoes and a few other specialty Italian ingredients. They knew that we were bringing in fresh fruits and vegetables for our home delivery service and they said, hey, rose Gray and Ruthie Rogers came to me and said, hey, we need help sourcing better quality Italian fruits and vegetables. Can you help us? Right, we know that you've got the logistics in place. Can we do this? So that happened in about 2008. And we start working with the River Cafe. We start working with Theo Randall, who had just left the River Cafe to open his first restaurant, and a couple years later, it was in about 2009,.

Speaker 2: 17:22

The middle of 2009, I took a decision, which is the decision that kind of changed the course of Natura and led it on the path that it is today, which is where this relentless obsession with seeking flavor which, from a business perspective, is when was the real decision? To, one, focus heavily on fresh fruits and vegetables. Two, to become the best. And three, to really lean in in terms of investment.

Speaker 2: 17:48

And it was in the middle of April, of May of 2009. I did a bunch of changes to to the organization. We got rid of a lot of product that we were selling to restaurants and we started really leaning in to becoming the company that we are today.

Speaker 1: 18:03

And how I mean difficult is not the right word how challenging was that to to build the supply chains that are not made for flavor? I think it's. It's's good to pause a second on how not focused our current food system is on flavor. It's focused on a lot of things, but flavor is really not one of them. It's probably the last one on the list and then you start showing up and say, okay, how do we get these peaches from the moment they are almost perfect to perfect onto a restaurant plate in London in a way that makes sense, just to give people an idea of the current system not focus on flavor and then what you had to build to make sure flavor gets to our plates when we're in one of those restaurants.

Speaker 2: 18:48

It's incredibly, incredibly challenging and I think, to add to the challenges, the nature of fresh fruits and vegetables is that they're very perishable.

Speaker 2: 18:59

So, not only are you trying to rebuild the supply chain, but you're also dealing with a product that moves to that supply chain that is highly, highly perishable. So it's not just the shelf life right that you don't have a lot of days to move the product you also have a product that is highly delicate. So, yes, a cabbage is not very delicate, neither is a potato or a carrot, but most of the fruits and vegetables are highly, highly perishable because they are very delicate as well. So they suffer from lack of humidity, they suffer from being bruised, from mishandling and so forth. In order to kind of illustrate to those listening how those challenges compound, it's really about people and movement. So you need to build alignment, from the farmer all the way through to the driver that ends up delivering the product into a restaurant kitchen. There are a lot of hands and a lot of steps that occur during that process, and that is what links that whole supply chain. So there's a tremendous amount of alignment that needs to be built, which is a lot of times harder than you think. Yes, a lot of the people that work within that supply chain the farmer, some of the buyers that we have in the markets already believe in flavor and it's easy to align them on that.

Speaker 2: 20:29

But it's how do you ensure that the product is harvested at the right time, is packaged correctly, is transported and handled correctly all along the chain?

Speaker 2: 20:41

A shipment from Sicily might end up in a market in Fondi because we feel that it's easier to drop it off there.

Speaker 2: 20:48

It could be left outside of a cold room when it should have been left inside of a cold room for six hours, and that can damage it. So you're having to build this alignment across a number of different people, some which are part of natura, some which are not, and some which are third-party companies. That is probably the single greatest challenge. It's not finding the product and it's not convincing the customer that it's worth it, but it's how do you ensure that the product navigates? And then, once it gets to Natura, there's a whole other human education piece, which is how do we ensure that the team within Natura understands how to handle that product? And that is very, very challenging. And it's particularly challenging as you're scaling, because when you scale, you're hiring quickly, and when you hire quickly, you're hiring people that don't necessarily have the skills or knowledge that you need to know how to handle something as delicate as a wild strawberry or as a really ripe peach.

Speaker 1: 21:45

And so now, just to give people an understanding on size, how many people are you? How many restaurants do you work with? Different locations? I mean, you mentioned the US and London, like just to have an understanding for where you stand. This is the middle of 2024. And what do you? Yeah, will you describe Natura? What is it at the moment?

Speaker 2: 22:06

So in terms of numbers, so we're about 500 staff around the world. We're present in eight cities around the world, of which six we are actively selling product to our sourcing hubs. So Los Angeles and Milan we currently do not sell product there, but they're very, very important sourcing hubs for the US region and for the Italy, for the European region, and then six other cities around the world where we are serving restaurants and consumers and some retail partnerships that we have. We also have a couple of stores. We have a handful of stores in London, where we were, you know, customers can walk in and buy our, buy our product and sometimes eat some of the food that we prepare in in in one of the, in one of the cafes that we have in Notting Hill, we also have a bakery, alma, which is a whole grain mill and bakery that we launched a little over a year ago. That's producing fantastic whole grain bread.

Speaker 1: 23:10

I saw them at Grantswell this year, yeah something quite rare.

Speaker 2: 23:15

We service over 2 000 customers in those six cities. Um, and I'd have to calculate the amount of product that we that we move, but it's in the millions of tons a year of fruits and vegetables that we that we move and you went for a concept I mean, apart from the flavor, but it's very closely connected to the flavor which is seasonality and radical seasonality.

Speaker 1: 23:38

I think there's a seasonality that we like to or we see like oh, what's in spring and what's in autumn, but you take it a few steps further and thus also your customers and also your farming partners. Can you unpack radical seasonality a bit more for the audience?

Speaker 2: 23:54

Yeah, I like to look at seasonality through this Again, I touch on this in the book through this lens of, as I say, 365 day continuum. Like the, seasonality is always evolving, it's always changing as each day goes by. So when we look at radical seasonality, when we, when we first came up with a, with a concept of radical seasonality, it was really to give customers and also that includes chefs, um, this idea that you need to run a much finer comb through seasonality than just utilizing the four seasons that we are very comfortable with, because that added detail that you get by looking at seasonality on a day-to-day or on a week-to-week basis educates you, gets you to look at product at a varietal level, right. So to say that peaches are a summer product is correct, but it would be the same as saying, you know that you drive a car it's a lot or that you drive a convertible right in the summer. What is a lot more interesting, and that feeds into seasonality as well, is that you have, you know, a rencloed plum that is available for four weeks of the year right in the late summer, and that comes from southern France and that is a very specific, unique variety of plum. That's the equivalent of saying that you're driving a Mazda, miata or something equivalent, right? So you're starting to get into the specific of the varietal. And when you get into the specific of the varietal you get into the specific week window where that product is in season. So that's what you get with this idea of radical seasonality. It's about being much more granular, much more deep in the analysis of product as it moves through the season, and what that does for the consumer is it gives them the tools, or her the tools to cook better. Because you can start gaining deeper knowledge right into when something is in season and how best to use it, because you're paying closer attention to the, to the individual ingredient, and you're also paying close attention to what is within that window.

Speaker 2: 26:16

The other thing I can say about it is that traditionally, when we think about the four seasons, you say okay, well, summer products go well with other summer products. And what I find really cool is that at those extremities of the seasons, right where spring turns into summer or where winter turns into spring, you still have that call it micro window of one or two weeks of seasonality. They are overlapping in the conventional sense, but in that week window, nature is not really overlapping, it's just existing. And what you'll find at those seasonal extremities is you'll find something like late citrus pairing incredibly well with the first broad beans of the season or favas for the US listeners and that is really exciting because there you can see the contrast Right and you can see how micro seasonality and radical seasonality works, because you can see a typical winter product like an orange, working incredibly well with a typical um spring product and that I can imagine for chefs, opens a whole new world, because this overlap that's not an overlap like what is in season now, now which could also shift through the years, and we'll get to that later um unlocks flavor combinations that you probably normally wouldn't put together Precisely.

Speaker 1: 27:57

And how difficult have been the last couple of years. How is climate weirding or climate change or the seasonality windows that are moving or seem to be moving in many places? How has that affected your business?

Speaker 2: 28:13

I thought you were just going to ask about how's the restaurant sector doing, because it's going through a very difficult time. But no, on climate change, it's changing rapidly. Um, you know, when I first started, and even if I think back 10 years ago, we didn't have a lot of conversations about climate with farmers. Now, of course, you're always talking about climate, right Are things?

Speaker 1: 28:37

ahead of schedule. Good year, bad year. Behind the good year, bad year.

Speaker 2: 28:40

How's the weather been? Of course you know weather. You talk about the weather but yeah, you talk about the weather, but you don't talk about climate. Exactly Talk about weather, we don't talk about climate or climate change. The last five, seven years that has really accelerated and the amount of more extreme events that we are seeing throughout our supply chain and this can happen in Australia or in the US has accelerated significantly.

Speaker 1: 29:06

And what does it do to chefs then? It requires even more flexibility and more craftsmanship basically to deal with that, because flavors also get out of their normal curves Exactly.

Speaker 2: 29:22

I think you need more flexibility, and I think you need more flexibility as a chef. You need more flexibility also within the supply chain. Um, you need more flexibility also within the supply chain. You need that. You need to build that resilience, which is something that, fortunately, has been not planned, but certainly integral to the way that we have built our supply chains.

Speaker 1: 29:43

And there's another concept in the seasonality. You mentioned a book which is early peak and late, um, which you mentioned sort of, but without mentioning it just for for the audience. Um, because even within when a product is quote, unquote in season, um, it goes through different phases which most of us know, um, but still it's it's important to touch upon. Like an orange changes over time, like depending on the type, variety, on the soil, obviously, and the season, uh, it's not the same flavor. That's why maybe the late one pairs so well soil, obviously, and the season, it's not the same flavor. That's why maybe the late one pairs so well with the first fava beans, because there's a different flavor compared to the more acidic one at the beginning. Like, how did that concept land with like early peak and late, with chefs and also with farmers, because that puts a whole different. Like peak could be two days and that's different than, oh, we have two-week windows. That's a whole different story.

Speaker 2: 30:34

Yeah, I think it landed really well. It has very much stuck with our customers. It's become central to the way we communicate, central to the way that we explain product. Yeah, so, as I was saying, it's become really central to the way that we communicate product Because, as you say, it gives you further information that helps you become a better cook, it helps you to understand the product and help you to understand that the product needs to be handled differently and has different use cases, in a way, to borrow a business term as it progresses through the season.

Speaker 2: 31:21

I have to say that the early, peak, late was something that I borrowed from the Japanese. There's a very good book I don't know if that's the book that I read it in Kaizeki. It's a Japanese cookbook that talks about the concept of EPL. It's a quite well-known concept in Japanese culture and, interestingly, the Japanese which I find fascinating have sometimes a late orange might have a different name than a peak orange or an early orange. So as a product moves through the season and it evolves, it will have a different name.

Speaker 1: 31:58

Which makes a lot of sense if you think about it and from what you've seen, because you've visited so many farmers that are relentlessly looking for flavor as well. What are the key points there, or the key building blocks? For, of course, this is a podcast where we talk a lot about regeneration, a lot about soil not so much about seeds, although we should do that more often and we talk with quite a few farmers as well. In your experience in the 20 years of visiting some of the best farmers when it comes to flavor, and also in some of the best farmers when it comes to flavor, and also, in that case, actually when it comes to ecosystem management and facilitation of life in that sense, what are the building blocks you see to build really good flavor? In this case, fresh fruits and vegetables, but I'm pretty sure they are the same in other categories.

Speaker 2: 32:52

Not in order of importance, but I think the first thing is finding the right farmer. I think that the individual is fundamental to driving flavor, because they're the ones that are in control of taking the right decisions. And what you want is you want to find individuals who, wherever possible, they're taking decisions for flavor rather than against flavor. So, just to give you one example, you could you can water plants anytime during the day. You'll have a farmer who will water the plants when it's most convenient to them and to their farming protocols, and you will find somebody who will water the plants when it's most beneficial to drive flavor right, so when it's most beneficial for the plant in order to drive the right kind of flavor that you want, even if that means higher production costs because they're having to go out into the field a second time to water when it's the right time. So that for us, is foundational Do we find the right individual that we believe is committed to flavor and is going to make the decisions that are necessary to drive to maximize flavor? But I would say that the two pieces within farming that are most conducive to driving flavor are first the seed, because the seed dictates the variety.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Driving flavor are first the seed, because the seed dictates the variety, and that variety is fundamental because it carries that DNA, those genetics that are going to define whether that fruit or that vegetable is actually tasty. And then the second component is soil right? Do you have a soil that is biologically healthy, rich, that allows those plants to extract not just the macronutrients but a lot of the micronutrients that are fundamental. Right? Do you have the fungal networks in place that provide all of that richness, which is critical in delivering flavor? But I will say that I'm a big believer that soil on its own is not. The answer Is that if you don't have the right genetics, you can improve on those genetics by farming in fantastically healthy soil and by being a really good farmer, but you're going to be limited by those genetics and by being a really good farmer, but you're going to be limited by those genetics.

Speaker 1: 35:38

So I think you use the example in the book of a zucchini or of a courgette that if you have amazing seed, amazing variety in amazing soil, of course you can have an amazing outcome, but if you have a supermarket variety in amazing soil, you're still limited to like.

Speaker 1: 35:49

The upper limit is yeah, it's just limited by the genetic selection that we've done there and how much of a like the farmers you work with and the growers you work with. They take not necessarily hit, but of course they might have higher production costs, they might have a lower yields because they they go relentlessly for flavor Like. Does it benefit working with you? Like in terms of price? Like are you able to compensate them for that and if so, how? Because that's always the, the, the challenge in in a lot of these circumstances, like commoditization, which of course you're not part of, but it's as soon as it goes into a commodity um system, it's very difficult to to get paid for flavor and thus to be rewarded for all the hard work you did, did before. Like for the growers you work with, um, is it also a financial beneficial relationship, let's say, or are? Are they doing it mostly out of love?

Speaker 2: 36:45

It definitely is a financial. There's a financial reward, I think, otherwise it wouldn't be sustainable. You touched on it in your question, right in terms of the market, right in terms of the market. So the how is you know, of course we can pay them, we can pay them more, but we can only pay them more because of the how, which is creating a market that is willing to pay more. Right, if we're paid more, we can then pay more. Otherwise, you're not building a financially sustainable model. So the how?

Speaker 2: 37:24

I actually didn't realize how important what we had built was on the consumer end until a friend and farmer mentioned it to me. The quality of customers that you're capable of building, or the quality of customer base that you're capable of building, is the single most determining factor in the quality of the produce that you are allowed to buy. You can want to buy the best peaches in the world, right. But if you don't have the customers that are going to pay the right price for them, you're not going to be able to buy them. Price for them, you're not going to be able to buy them. So I say this weirdly, because I guess it took me a while to recognize this, even though we had been building this from day one.

Speaker 2: 38:10

I recognize now that the work that we've did with our customers and the support that we in turn received from our customers primarily the chefs that were willing to buy quality product and pay the right price for it are what enabled Natura to actually build the supply chain that I wanted to build right, this flavor-first supply chain, which then feeds into creating a really interesting market for a producer that values flavor and for them to be able to scale that production on the back of Natura and to be paid and rewarded for it. The good or great outcome out of it is that when you focus on flavor, whether you're Natura, whether you're a restaurant and, importantly, whether you're a farmer is that even in moments of economic difficulties, you end up doing well because quality always wins out. Otherwise, when you compete on price, you know things are. Things are very different, and it goes back to your comment during the question about you know the industrial commodity market, which just doesn't value what we need it to, and it becomes a zero sum game.

Speaker 1: 39:23

So people are chasing yields and chasing pricing, and how is it going now? You alluded to before and I didn't ask that question, but I will now like. In a time where restaurants are suffering, first of all, why are they suffering, and do you see the same with your customers, and how does that ripple through as well to to the growers? How is the current, let's say, a snapshot of the, the current situation in the value chain?

Speaker 2: 39:49

I mean the the restaurant industry is going through what I think is a very, very difficult time. Um, you know, I do say that restaurants have been around. I don't know 400 years is correct, but anyways, hundreds of years that we've been, we've been eating at restaurants. So I don't know if 400 years is correct, but anyways, hundreds of years that we've been eating at restaurants, so I don't think they will ever go away. They're part of our culture.

Speaker 2: 40:08

But a couple of things have happened since COVID. There's an economic downturn, to borrow the English term. There's a cost of living crisis. In any case, consumers around the world have less money in their pocket. Goods and services have gone up for all of us, both for businesses and for consumers. So everyone is a little bit tighter and the restaurant industry has faced a labor I wouldn't call it crisis, but complications in the labor market, with a lot of people moving away from restaurants. Those that stayed in restaurants demanding more money. Change in lifestyles as well, so that has pushed labor costs up at the restaurant sector. They faced price pressure in terms of ingredient cost. What that has led to is higher cost when we go out to dinner. So not only do we have less money in our pockets but it's more costly to go out and eat.

Speaker 2: 41:07

And what COVID accelerated or instigated was a different attitude to how we utilize cities. So cities are starting to change. Mondays and Fridays are no longer what they used to be. A lot of the neighborhoods within cities don't have the same footfall that they used to have and that is changing the economic model of that kind of neighborhood and ecosystem and how a restaurant can function. So a couple of different things have come together to put a lot of pressure on the restaurant sector. There's a lot of uncertainty into predictability of when you're going to be busy. So we hear a lot from customers that are busy on a Tuesday and quiet on a Wednesday and then two weeks later they'll be busy on a Wednesday and quiet on a Monday or a Tuesday. So the industry, you know, from our perspective, given the vast range of restaurants that we supply and the vast number of cities that we're present in, is globally undergoing a very difficult moment.

Speaker 1: 42:09

And for this focus on flavor. What are the next steps? In that sense, it's amazing, of course, supplying to 2,000 restaurants. Are restaurants, are there another 2 000, let's say, in in the same category that have an interest or could develop an interest for flavor, or is there? Is that sort of the the market you can tap into and there are other ways of having more farmers focusing on flavor and thus having all the ecosystem benefits and other benefits we we want like? What do you see as ways to, not only for naturum but in general to to grow the impact of of a flavor first food system?

Speaker 2: 42:49

I think there's a, there's a lot of room. I don't think I will um see the time when there won't be you know, there won't be an a, a growing market for what we're doing, what what we're trying to do. I think it will only accelerate. So I think there are tens of thousands of restaurants that are still within our reach. There are a lot of cities around the world that you know, I hope one day we will be present in.

Speaker 2: 43:20

And then you have the consumer side, where we've only started to scratch the surface. And when I say we, I don't mean Natura, I mean we as a society have only really started to scratch the surface in terms of better consumption of the food that we choose to eat, whether that's when we go out or when we cook at, cook at home so I think that we're in the very early stages of, uh, this transformation.

Speaker 2: 43:47

I think that it will accelerate, um, and I think that it's backed by some very strong trends, particularly from consumers that are really looking not just in terms of food, but just generally in terms of being far more conscious with the consumption of their dollars. I think that we're still in a growing market.

Speaker 1: 44:11

Have you seen that shift?

Speaker 1: 44:12

I think we've seen, of course, the starting boom of organics, and not necessarily connected to flavor, obviously slow food as as well, like this focus on um origin, focus on on artisanal um, on flavor as well, like good, clean and fair food in that sense, um, and it seemed to hit a certain group of consumers, but not like didn't get out of that that that early adopter side, like are you suggesting or seeing that it's um, like the consumer side of things is starting to to heat up or starting to to get stronger because the demand needs to be there.

Speaker 1: 45:24

If we all want the ultra processed food and and that's okay, then it's going to be very difficult to to focus on flavor and we've probably in many cases, a long question, but we've probably also lost a lot of the flavor profiles we inherently have but in the last few decades have been lost. How do you see that downward trend of getting worse and worse in terms of cooking and obesity and all of that towards actually a group of consumers that's growing and that's really actively seeking out this? Why is it different now, would?

Speaker 2: 45:56

I think it's the question I think you I know you make a very good point that there's almost two curves right. I think that we haven't reached the bottom, yet, the bottom yet if you, yeah, you look at some parts of the of the food industry and you think, wow, this is continues to worsen it's not interesting.

Speaker 1: 46:16

It's like food, like substances. I think it's the brazilian official scientific term.

Speaker 2: 46:20

Yeah, food, sorry, say again like substances I don't, don't like substances.

Speaker 2: 46:25

I don't think that's fair I think you're totally right with the brazilian to write yeah, you shouldn't be calling it food, um. So yeah, there's. There are these two curves. I think, sadly and interestingly in some of the, some of the more, in those countries where food is strong is a stronger component of culture. So I think about Italy and France as two good examples. In Europe, interestingly, that downward curve is still going down. It's almost like they were behind the curve on places like the US and you're still seeing that downward trend, this less cooking at home, more industrial food forming a part of people's diets, but the numbers anyways, are staggeringly different between the US and the UK, for example, and in places like Italy and France.

Speaker 2: 47:22

I think what's happening to answer kind of the last part of your question what's happening with the second curve is that consumers nowadays I see this with my kids in terms of whether it be tobacco, whether it's alcohol, in a way, the climate, the use of energy they're much more aware. I have a 9 and a 13-year-old. They're much more aware of those concepts than we were. And you're already seeing with consumers that are 18 to 30 that the way that they choose to spend their money is shifting and it's only accelerating and that's the part that gives me hope. It's those consumers and that curve. I do see it continuing to accelerate.

Speaker 2: 48:21

You know podcasts like yours as one example a lot of the conversations that are occurring around flavor and around food quality food, ultra processed food, the industrialization of our food system. These conversations are gaining pace. People are more aware of them, and even in places like Latin America, because of our communication nowadays, right. So places that were a decade or two behind the industrialization, the speed with which communication is moving and with which knowledge is moving across populations and cities has picked up to it's almost instant. So you have regenerative farming occurring now in Argentina, which is fascinating, right, because the Argentinian meat industry has gone through its own sad decline. So I think communication, the internet, social media, all the platforms, plus this accelerated awareness and increased awareness to the urgency that we have to address some of these challenges.

Speaker 1: 49:43

The urgency that we have to address some of these challenges has created consumers that are going to only accelerate again the shift towards better quality food and better quality consumption in general. And you mentioned health not so often, actually, but also very much to healthy soils. Family's health is a big key to unlocking consumer demand because, let's face it, climate and soil, carbon and soil, water sponge, et cetera, are great for geeks like us, but not really for the general public. But health is. How important? Do you see health not versus flavor, but sort of next to flavor as a potential pool for consumers to spend in this way?

Speaker 2: 50:37

I think it's fundamental and I think it can and it needs to play a critical role, because I think you have. What I've noticed is that you've got two undercurrents that are pushing certain consumers that are open to change, and I would say that one is joy, one is flavor, one is wanting a better experience out of my food.

Speaker 1: 51:19

Yeah, you have this great sentence in the book like where hope lies is in creating memories. Which chefs and restaurants is all about that, obviously, or food in general, like at the table. We'll get back to that, sorry, and the second part, because I interrupted your answer.

Speaker 2: 51:34

No, no, no, it's fine, yeah, so it's that joy, it's those memories, right. And I think the second part, which is almost stronger, is the health current undercurrent that is people recognizing that a healthy lifestyle starts with what you eat, and it's a phenomenal driver. I mean, you look at the. You know the growth and fitness apps. You look at things like Whoop. You look at all the conversations that people are having nowadays on gut and the microbiome.

Speaker 1: 52:08

That didn't exist five years ago.

Speaker 2: 52:10

No, it didn't. And it's so tied to you know region ag. It's so tied to you know the microbiology and soil. It's exactly the same thing. So when people get to a certain age, health becomes even more important between food and health, and then you go back and you create a link between food and soils and how they're farmed. That is a fantastic tool to stimulate the right kind of demand. So I weirdly, I kind of think that the health argument is almost stronger than the flavor argument, even though I think flavor is a much more emotional uh and visceral, uh connection and do you measure like in your supply chain, like off farm, like what do you measure in terms of of quality and and is there a connection to health?

Speaker 1: 53:05

have you looked into to, to some of the early companies starting to do that like measurement in, in terms of when things flow through your supply chain? How important is that?

Speaker 2: 53:34

behind a large-scale research project that can analyze convincingly so that you can get some convincing data that can be utilized. I remember doing some analysis years ago on a handful of products, a couple of tomatoes. I remember we did carrots and we sent them to the lab. We sent certain carrots to the lab, one grown from Francois in Dunkirk and a basic carrot that we carry and you see very big differences in nutritional composition, unquestionably.

Speaker 1: 54:09

And in the book you made an interesting comment or there's a whole section on specialization. Book you made an interesting comment or there's a whole section on specialization, and often we have this ideal image in our mind on farmers that are stacking all kinds of different enterprises and have 30, 40 different types of vegetables and fruits and animals and 10 other things. You make a very strong case for not doing that and and going another, another direction and I would love to unpack that a bit with you.

Speaker 2: 54:36

I'm glad you think it was a strong case.

Speaker 1: 54:38

I mean you make a strong case of flavor. You have to specialize for flavor and like, if you do, I mean if all the other things? I think there's an onion grower in the book very specifically, but there is this ideal image in I'm not going to call it a myth, but an ideal image. I think you mentioned Polyphase Farm, or at least the Omnivore Dilemma in the book, as this super stacked but you're saying super stacked farm with all kinds of different things growing on it and first of all, it's difficult to sell. We've actually had quite a few conversations about it on the podcast. Like there is a limit to diversity in that sense, economically speaking, there is economies of scale. We might have to get out of the mindset of single farms and how do we manage a landscape more commonly and that specialization comes into play and all those economic rules. But you're saying actually it's also really good for flavor. You have to focus and so what's your case there?

Speaker 2: 55:39

so I start. This is where we we take what I what I think is a pragmatic view of the urgency and the scale of the problem and what it takes to deliver a significant impact.

Speaker 1: 55:59

And for you? What is significant impact for you Is that hectares, Is it mouths? You feed Kilos? What are you looking at?

Speaker 2: 56:05

The amount of good quality product that the world consumes, and by good quality, I mean product that's been farmed in a regenerative, sustainable way, a way that doesn't harm our soils but actually improves the, you know, the factory that we have. If you will right, soils ultimately are the engine that we have to produce food, so we need to protect them and we need to invest in them. Them and we need to invest in them. So that, for me, is is, you know, impact is measured in terms of the amount of food that is consumed, that has been produced in a way that is sustainable for our planet right, and that it's sustainable for us, because food that's been well farmed and good soils as we just talked on, touched on is nutritious nutritious and is good for our own well-being. So delivering significant impact is tied to changing consumption habits, and in order to change consumption habits, you need to meet people in the middle right To believe that. I'll give you one common example, which is not the stacked farm enterprise, but it's one that will ring true for a lot of people. Is the localism argument right? Is local food desirable 100%? Is it good to support local communities 100%? Is it better to eat something that is, you know, two miles away from you versus 500 miles away from you, you know for sure, assuming that it's farmed in the same way. Right, because if what you're buying two miles from your house is intensively farmed with a lot of chemicals, it might be better to eat something that's organically farmed 500 miles away. But I don't want to say that I don't believe in local food and local food systems I do. What I do think is that if you take that too far, to the extreme, you're moving away from the reality of the planet and the world that we live in, and the impact that you're going to have is going to be incredibly limited. So having a very localized food system or cafe fantastic, but that on its own is not going to give us the change that we need and at the pace that we need. And that's where compromise starts coming in and being pragmatic. So this is where I move into. How do we become pragmatic? The reality is we live in a globalized world. We travel, we move around, families are spread around the world. It's not the same as it was in the 1950s, so the need for travel remains 1950s. So the need for travel remains. So you need to.

Speaker 2: 58:59

I'm a believer that, in order to have the level of impact necessary is that you need to look at the current environment. Right, you need to look at the current demographic environment of sorry, the current economic landscape and the different demographics of individuals within the food system. You need to look at how food moves and what the current food system looks like, where food is produced and where is it consumed, and the habits that we have. Right, do we travel? Do we not travel? How busy are we? Are we all going to turn around and cook and bake our bread tomorrow, like we all thought during COVID? You know there's not a chance in hell that that's going to happen.

Speaker 2: 59:33

So you look at the current environment and what that environment tells me is you need to find solutions that bring consumers into the fold, and in order to do that, you need to meet them in the middle. So that, to me, is a fundamental first point when you look at a farm, the localism argument I made is the same as a farm that is hyper diverse and stacked in terms of enterprises. Right, that's producing chicken, eggs, honey and 300 vegetables. The problem with that is twofold for me. You touched on. In order to achieve really good flavor, you need to specialize, right, and that is something that I wholeheartedly believe in. Going back to the Japanese, the Japanese have demonstrated this that perfecting an art requires specialization, right. You do the same thing over and over again through your whole lifetime, your whole career, and the Japanese believe that even then, you're not you haven't reached perfection.

Speaker 2: 1:00:41

If you grow melons so we have a fantastic melon farmer, oscar, in Mantova If you grow melons like he does melons, watermelons and pumpkins, which are all parts of the same, they're all same plant family you can get really really damn good at growing them. You get really fucking good at growing them If you're growing like some of the other farms. We work with two or 300 varieties of product. You have two challenges there. One is you don't specialize, because it's impossible to get really good at farming 300 things. The other thing is that your soil, your farming practices and your microclimate is not suited to growing 300 types of vegetables incredibly well. So there's a specialization piece comes in to drive flavor.

Speaker 2: 1:01:38

The other piece that I think is fundamental in the specialization piece is what I call accessible scale. So it's a term that I came up with because I believe that scale is fundamental if we are going to address my first point of the reality that we live in and the food system that we exist in right. We need scale if we want to see significant change. In order to achieve scale, the farms need to be able to deliver scale right. They need to be able to produce large quantities of product. So, in order to produce large quantities of product, you can do so when you specialize, if you take 200 acres and you grow only melons on them.

Speaker 2: 1:02:22

So, to give you a sense, oscar has about 400 plus acres in production, of which he farms on maybe 250 to 300 in any given year, because the rest is in rotation. He can farm large, large quantities of melons and watermelons and pumpkins. The important thing about this is that, if you are going to deliver impact, most of the food is consumed in supermarkets and will be consumed in supermarkets in the next 10 to 20 years. We will not do away with the supermarket model. Why? Because there's this inbuilt infrastructure. It's like the piping that we have in built in cities. You can't just go like this and say, right, we're going to deliver water.

Speaker 1: 1:03:06

Everybody gets a bio toilet, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:03:09

Exactly. Everybody gets a bio toilet. So you live within the constraints and the infrastructure that we've built. The supermarkets have the last mile delivery nailed because they've got these outlets and we have these ingrained habits that might change, but for the moment are where they are.

Speaker 2: 1:03:26

In order to deliver food to a supermarket, in order to deliver melons to a supermarket, you need to go with a minimum amount of volume, otherwise it's going to be impossible to even have a conversation with them. So we need quality farms to scale, and that's where this accessible scale concept comes in right. It's scalable farming, but that is accessible. I'm not talking about 1000 acre farm, I'm talking about 50 to 500 acres or 1000 acres, but that gets specialized, gets really good at farming, gets really good at soil management and produces beautiful, quality food that is healthy for the planet, it's healthy for our guts, and that is produced in enough of a quantity that, if blended into a supply chain, can deliver a diverse set of products, so that individual farm does not need to seek high levels of biodiversity but it can fit within a supply chain that delivers that biodiversity.

Speaker 1: 1:04:26

And you're saying let's use the chefs and restaurants as a sort of beachhead or as a first mover and find those within that supply chain that can deliver and can scale and can deliver the flavor and are able to grow with that, basically, and are able to eventually get into the quote-unquote normal supply chains or get blended into places where most of us buy and probably for the foreseeable future will buy food, which is, supermarkets and the traditional outlets. And that's the crucial, one of the crucial roles of chefs and restaurants to to identify and open up those, those small lines between mantova and london and then slowly they get bigger because they have to go through, and I think you mentioned a few times in the book as well, like don't underestimate the logistics, like it's easier to get something from Sicily to London than from Cornwall because all those traditional lines like go through there because of all the vegetables not amazing quality, but that can change and flow currently through that system.

Speaker 2: 1:05:30

Yeah, I mean the chefs. In a way they were our beachhead. I mean not in. In a way they were our beachhead, I mean not in a way they were.

Speaker 2: 1:05:39

The chefs were the ones that had the ability, the palate, the desire, the foresight to believe in what we were doing, wanting to work with the best product. They could get their hands on out of passion and out of a desire to produce beautiful food. They could get their hands on out of passion and out of a desire to, you know, produce beautiful food and collectively they've delivered a lot of impact. If I look at the amount of quality product that we sell, the amount of melons from Oscar that we sell, the tomatoes from Rafaela, the quarter del Vesuvio, like we move 1000s of kilos of tomatoes, tomatoes, and we started moving a couple hundred kilos of tomatoes, or less than that, you know, maybe five to ten boxes, and that is the collective, the collective purchasing power of a group of restaurants in London specifically. So the chefs, the chefs not only have the power to collectively shape supply chains and be the ones driving those supply chains, they also influence consumers.

Speaker 1: 1:06:43

It's exactly the way of influencer chefs, like you call as well. Like the last 20 years, like chefs became very famous in many places and maybe the next wave will be farmers. Let's see, I keep hearing people say let's do a chef's table, but for farmers, um, I, I hope somebody does it in a way, and multiple people. But like that wave is like like really, um, you serve that wave or in a sense, you, you were part of that wave as well. To, like, a lot of chefs came out of the kitchen, became personalities cookbooks, recipes, knives, the whole, the whole merchandise became personalities in our you know, which 20 years ago I don't think existed exactly it's.

Speaker 2: 1:07:24

It's exactly that and that's where the influence comes in. And the other piece of influence is we all go out and eat and you know, you see, you see what's on the plate. You get exposed to new ingredients, you get exposed to different flavor combinations how often are you surprised when you go out for a dinner? Um depends where I'm eating. I have to be careful I'm, I'm, I'm perhaps a bit too critical, but I'm, I'm often disappointed. I'm often disappointed at the sometimes the lack of seasonality that I see on menus.

Speaker 1: 1:08:04

Um, and then you go and talk to the chef, or like how does that?

Speaker 2: 1:08:07

or you annoy your family, like again I just he goes into the kitchen I mean, if, if you ask uh, wife Daisy, she, yeah, she'll have a lot to say about my, about going out to dinner with me. But no, I'm, you know, I take it in stride, but I it's natural that when, when I look at a menu, the first thing that I that I instantly see but it's not even by wanting to is whether things are in season or not. It's just a, you know, kind of an instinct because of what I do. And you know, I think that, like any industry, there's a lot, there's a lot of change that needs to happen in the restaurant sector. I think that the quality of ingredients that goes into restaurants can improve. It can always improve, but I think that there are areas where it can greatly improve no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 1:09:16

Think, like we only buy a few boxes a week, like we only like it's, it's, but it's that collective piece, like 2 000 restaurants is a lot of boxes. And and thinking of the end goal, which is supermarkets, or which is where most people buy, like that's where the hundreds of millions and billions of tons of food goes through. Um, yeah, I don't think they necessarily think of that. They're influencing and they're creating little nodes between a grower in Spain and growing in France and a restaurant in London that eventually could lead to something on the shelves and waitress and that's it. It takes a step to to, it takes a switch to to get to that. And so how are the supermarket procurement people? Have you met many? How do we get them as excited about radical seasonality as some of your chefs are? Most of your chefs are.

Speaker 2: 1:10:07

I wish I knew the answer. I mean I've met a fair few. I wouldn't say that we've dealt with a lot of supermarkets. We've dealt with a few and we have some wonderful relationships, namely with Okado and Waitrose. And we've done quite a bit of work with Whole Foods. We've been working with them for many, many years in the UK. We've done a few things in the US. We work with Monoprix in France. I think you know. I don't know if I have an answer to how do we get them more excited?

Speaker 1: 1:10:46

I think Do we need, as consumers, to knock on the door like, oh, we want it? Like, how do we? It's very tricky. Like in restaurants you can ask even Most people don't but in a supermarket it's not. I'm going to ask the person that is filling the shelves like oh, where's the season?

Speaker 2: 1:11:02

It's a tricky one. Listen. If we can shift consumer demand, then that will change what those supermarket buyers are buying, buying. Having said that, you know the question you ask about how do we get them excited? If we can get them excited and sometimes we have been successful that does accelerate the transformation Because, as you rightly say, a consumer might want a really good unwaxed lemon at their store, but you know they're going to email Whole Foods and say, hey, you know I shop at the Williamsburg store. You know I would really like to have unwaxed lemons, like no. But if those unwaxed lemons make it to the store, there might be hundreds of customers that start buying them and other customers that weren't aware might also start trying them. And that's where you get the acceleration, which is what we've been able to do with Ocado.

Speaker 1: 1:12:04

I mean, I always say that For the people outside the UK what is Ocado?

Speaker 2: 1:12:07

Ocado is a pure play online supermarket that operates across the UK. They service, I think, about 80- 85 percent of the uk's and they can reach 80 85 percent of the uk population. In the in new york you have fresh direct would be a similar equivalent.

Speaker 1: 1:12:28

Like you know, um, you can only buy from them online which is interesting for you as a as as somebody to work with, because I think you can start smaller and they can. They don't have. I mean, they have shelves, but online shelves, there's something fundamentally different. They can steer way more than a supermarket can, or differently, let's say.

Speaker 2: 1:12:49

Completely, completely. We were able to do what we did with Okado because they were, because they are an online business, an online supermarket, because they are an online business, an online supermarket, but what we have accomplished with them and with their support, I'm convinced that most of the industry still doesn't recognize how revolutionary what we did with Okada was and that most people don't recognize how revolutionary what we did with Okada was, and that most people don't recognize how revolutionary it was back in the day and, to some degree, how it still is revolutionary, Because I've said this before to a few people, like you can be I was talking to Dan Saladino a couple months ago and we were having a conversation on Great book as well.

Speaker 2: 1:13:42

Yeah, great book. And you know the fact that you can go on Ocado and back to those Renclode plums and that you can go today in the UK and buy Mark Simonsato's Renclode plums and get them delivered to your house. And these are Renclode Dorets and they are. He is the best producer of Renclode Dorets that I have ever come across and I've tried a lot of Renclodes in my life.

Speaker 2: 1:14:14

It's revolutionary, like you're taking a product that is at the pinnacle of flavor in terms of that variety.

Speaker 2: 1:14:22

It's a old variety, super unique, farmed in a beautiful way, maximizing flavor. He's taking risks to make sure that he harvests, you know those weeks later, so that flavor is at its pinnacle and that is accessible to 80% of the UK population if they choose to go in and buy it. That is revolutionary If we think about where we need to get the food system, the direction that we need to get the food system to move towards, and the same I can say about you know hundreds of other products that we sell in Ocado throughout the year, but I don't think the industry recognizes that. But if we can replicate that across other cities, other countries, that will definitely accelerate, because it's all a flywheel effect, right, if you have people that can access product at their local supermarket and they recognize that they, you know, try a peach that is far better or get access to carrots. That wants pushes you to choose a different quality of, different quality of flavor, different quality of food.

Speaker 1: 1:15:45

And a few questions that we always like to ask, and one is definitely on the. You mentioned investment somewhere in one of the previous answers. Let's say I like to ask this in a way. Let's say we do this in a theater, we're in New York on Wall Street and there's a room full of investors investing their own money and investing other people's money. They're excited. Of course, we might have had a good dinner before and interesting some flavor bombs to expose people, but if there's one thing you want them to remember, because people forget, and the next day at the desk we would like them to do something um, what would be that seed um pun intended definitely here that you would like to plant in in in a room full of people that are working daily? I mean, it used to be your background as well with with finance and these are financial professionals in uh investing in the food system.

Speaker 1: 1:16:36

They're interested in food. They came in the food system. They're interested in food. They came for the food system and they are interested to. Maybe they haven't invested yet, but some for sure have. I think there could be, let's say, some private wealth in the room, some foundations and some professionals, let's say, working in the finance sector, but people that are deciding on money flows. What should they really really take home?

Speaker 2: 1:17:00

That if we can shift consumer demand, the production capability right, the land, the varieties, the farmers are there and the product can be made accessible. We can farm it and we can put it in front of the consumer. So it's purely a matter of believing that the shift can happen.

Speaker 1: 1:17:32

And what do you tell people when they throw that? How do we feed the world and we need technology and vertical farms, and like there's not enough space and land. I mean, you've spent so much time on land and I know you have answers to this and maybe many people have asked this question, but I'm asking for a friend that gets these questions very often what do you answer to? What is your go-to answer or story or narrative there when it comes to, oh, this is old, old, this is all naive, and and uh, let's say go back to horses, and things like that I think that it's a transition.

Speaker 2: 1:18:11

So there are a lot of mouths to feed, and price is a consideration as well. Right, you can Not everyone can afford to buy the best tomato, so there are a number of things that need to happen, but I think this idea that we need to produce this enormous quantity of food we throw away. I can't remember the numbers now, but there's a large percentage of food that gets wasted. I can't remember the numbers now, but there's a large percentage of food that gets wasted, so we certainly overproduce at the moment. There's a distribution problem, right, so some people are underfed and then we have other people that eat, have access to more food than they could ever need. So we can produce the food. What we struggle to do is distribute it correctly and make it accessible to everyone.

Speaker 2: 1:19:05

You also have an issue of value, where we're spending a lot of money on things that we don't really need and we don't spend as much money on food, and that's where some of the affordability argument comes in. But I'm very confident that we can produce the food that we need as a human species to survive, and do so in a way that is non-industrial in terms of how we approach it Because the land is there, the yields are there, the production capabilities are there. In terms of the transition that I touched on, I think transition is really important. Right, we can't switch off the industrial food system and move to horses and you know, I know that wasn't a serious comment.

Speaker 2: 1:19:59

The horse is, but you know, to follow that example, you know the idea is not to go backwards in time and not utilize technology, but it's how do we utilize technology to farm in a way that is intelligent and smart and that actually produces the type of food that we need to be eating? And that actually produces the type of food that we need to be eating? You know again that, what was it? It's not, um, it it's a, it's a food. Uh, it's a food substance or it's a food.

Speaker 1: 1:20:24

It's not really food like substance, yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 1:20:27

I think the the bigger issue is not so much we've got all these mouths to feed it's. We are being peddled this concept of food that isn't food and a lot of us don't recognize that because of where we've taken society and where food has gone Like. A lot of people eat things that they find at the supermarket that are highly processed and they believe that they're actually making good choices. But it's very hard nowadays to make those food choices. So a lot of the food that we produce, all of this overproduction ends up in processed food, which is what a lot of us are consuming. So I think the data is there to back up that we can't produce enough food to feed the world and do so in a way that is far more beneficial for our soils and for the planet and for ourselves. What's?

Speaker 1: 1:21:16

your favorite go-to story when, when, like example, or you've seen when people discover real flavor or like flavor bombs, or flavor like deep flavor again, um, I mean you have number of stories obviously in the book. When you taste, uh, the onions, we there's a big part of the book tomatoes and of course, the peach. Um, but other people that maybe are mostly on on ultra processed food and somehow by accident by eat bite into a peach, like you mentioned. Have you seen that often? Um, and if so, what's what are? And maybe also even with chefs, like really surprising moments when it comes to flavor. You don't need to make names, of course no with chefs.

Speaker 2: 1:21:59

One that comes to mind because you don't need to make names, of course, no with chefs. One that comes to mind because I was mentioning it to someone, to Josh, who works here in New York, was Claude Bozy, who's a fantastic French chef, who's been working in London for a very long time now, and he was in the warehouse with a, with a friend, a chef friend, I can't remember he. He was from, uh, not not from london, and I had him try a gold rush apple from the south of france, actually farmed, uh, um, farmed very close to where where mark grows the rain clothes and actually mark is also an apple farmer and does some gold rush. But, um, these, these, uh, gold rush, were from a farmer called Matthias, and the gold rush is a quite modern variety. Um, I find it exceptionally, exceptionally good. Uh, it's got this perfect balance of sweetness and acidity and and it's incredibly, incredibly crisp.

Speaker 2: 1:23:02

Um, so first thing was it wasn't even a flavor thing, as I was, I was, uh, I learned this thing from my dad that if you, if you tap an apple, if you flick an apple, you can do this with watermelons, but you kind of need to lift it and put it. Put it close to your ear if you can. When you flick an apple you get a certain sound and the pitch of that sound will tell you whether the apple is more flowery in consistency or more crisp. And the more hollow the sound is if you're hitting like dead wood the crisper it is. So I showed this to Claude as in I flicked the apple and he couldn't believe it. He was like, oh my God. So the three of us were there like flicking this apple on you know continuously, and it was like, wow, this is mad, how the sound that this apple makes. And then I cut one open and I grabbed a bergamot A bergamot is a citrus Used a open and I grabbed a bergamot A bergamot is a citrus used a lot in the perfume industry, the oils and I basically squeezed a bit of bergamot juice on top of the apple and I had them eat it and that was a flavor bomb moment. And I remember Claude telling me that he I don't know if he ended up doing it or not, but anyways that inspired him to create a dish. But anyways, that inspired him to create a dish On the consumer end, and then another one that I've heard a lot of people tell me over the years particularly with people that work at Natura is the first time they tried a winter tomato, and how it marked them for life, how they will never forget the moment when they tried that tomato and how that kind of just completely changed the bar and what a tomato could taste like.

Speaker 2: 1:24:42

But an interesting one is here in the US, one of one of my my kids, max the youngest, the mother of one of his school friends told uh, told us that we had ruined fruit for his kid because every time she serves him fruit she's like this doesn't taste like the fruit that max gets in his lunchbox so that's a compliment.

Speaker 1: 1:25:14

I think, yeah, yeah that's a compliment?

Speaker 2: 1:25:16

I think, yeah, that's a good compliment. But it's nice to see how you can see this kind of flavor moments in children, right when, even though I don't know what Max's friend eats every day, but like all kids, they're exposed to good food. They're exposed to some ultra processed foods, but you can see that even in a, you know, in an eight, nine year old, they can still recognize flavor and fruit and and they will want that good flavor.

Speaker 1: 1:25:44

They don't just want a packet of crisps or uh or a soda, which is interesting Also from a an education perspective, of course, when you start being small and you're brought up in that, like I imagining in your kitchen was the case, how much of that is is relearnable I mean the winter tomatoes, an example but like we also hear for worse, not spoiled. We're ruined by the ultra processed flavors and by the intensity and the saltiness and the fatness and everything together and and we also almost have to relearn flavor. Is that something you see or do you say when you get hit by flavor properly?

Speaker 2: 1:26:24

that changes everything With certain products. The latter. But you take a fig right, an incredible fig should do that. But sometimes people have difficulty with the fig because of texture, because of the flavor profile, the seeds. It's not like eating a beautiful peach or a beautiful tomato, which is more accessible, tomato, which is more accessible.

Speaker 2: 1:27:06

So, in some ways, depending on what you've eaten growing up and what that balance was of ultra processed foods versus fresh, and also how much variety you've been exposed to, yes, there is a relearning. I think that is needed and that is necessary, and I think you could look at it similar to I don't know good whiskey or scotch, where there are those tastes that are more complex and that require a development of your palate to really appreciate, right, to really really enjoy. So I think there is a lot of education that is needed and I think on the flavor side is one. But I certainly think that education at an early age is really fundamental. That's something that is absolutely necessary. Both some of the topics that we've discussed, right, I think children should be exposed in school to soil science, impacts on climate, nutrition, diet. Those are all things that are really fundamental, not only for them but because that's what leads to the right kind of consumption. And again you multiply that across millions of children and you get a different type of consumption coming through.

Speaker 2: 1:28:27

But also kitchen sorry, cooking right, which when I went to school we still had some home ec classes and now that's totally been scrapped from the curriculum. But people don't know how to cook. You don't know how to cook, you don't know how to feed yourself, you know you go back to that whole. How are you going to eat an artichoke if you don't know how to prepare it? So I think the culinary skills need to be taught and the food system related education needs to be brought back in. As I said, everything from diet to nutrition, to soil science, to that kind of link to biology, I think is really important and making the future consumers and the future leaders of tomorrow aware from a young age of the importance of food and how it is grown, farmed, to us as a species, us as a responsible citizens within our, within the planet really important and to wrap up with with two final questions.

Speaker 1: 1:29:36

One, coming back to the investment side what? What if you would be in charge of a large investment fund? Let's say you had to put a billion dollars to work, or British pound, wherever you might find yourself? I'm not looking for exact amount and of course this is not investment advice, but I'm looking. What would you focus on? What would be big buckets where you would put part of that billion if you had not unlimited, but a significant sum of resources to be invested? So it has to come back at some point. Could be very long. You can maybe use some of it for some lobbying, et cetera, but the majority has to be put to work with the intention at least to come back at some point. What would you do with the intention at least to come back at some point?

Speaker 2: 1:30:17

what would you do, I think, considering that it's an investment portfolio, I will kind of answer it in that vein. Yes, if I were to invest money without necessarily the need for a return return, I think education, as we just touched on, is a fundamental one, whether that's lobbying and any other activities that could stimulate and foster that kind of change that is necessary at the curriculum level.

Speaker 2: 1:30:59

For me is the absolute best use of energy at the moment. Right, it's the consumers that are coming behind us. But, given that what you asked is if I was operating a kind of investment fund, where I would invest in is I would start owning or investing in companies that have the brand capable of stimulating change in the food system, which means they need to have a brand that shifts consumer demand. Right, and I say brand because of the way the world works and the need for consumers to drive the shift of the food system. It's not going to happen through a supply shock. It's got to happen with consumers demanding better food, and the way that you do that is by building brands that convince consumers of that. Whether you do it through flavor, whether you do it through transparency in supply chains, better farming practices regen, whatever, it is fundamental that we stimulate those brands that are capable of then stimulating consumer demand.

Speaker 2: 1:32:30

The other thing that I would do is I would look at there's two other things that I would look at building in the portfolio. One is I would look at there's two other things that I would look at building in the portfolio. One is I would look to build or invest in companies across the supply chain or through the supply chain, so that you have the brands that that are funneling product into those brands. Or take a farm that actually reaches the end consumer, has the ability to go direct to a supermarket, so that you start stimulating also some of the production side, because I think there is some strong investment case for good economic arguments for making money on the production side. Because I think there is some strong investment case to for good economic arguments for making money on the production side.

Speaker 2: 1:33:22

I've seen it firsthand in a number of cases and also that can help stimulate or accelerate the shift right. So it's not just the brands or the consumer brands, but it's also having that production momentum. The final thing that I would do is and this is less on investment, but is I would build the portfolio in a way that I could leverage synergies across the portfolio, because the challenge ahead of us is so big. The food system is likely the biggest system that we operate and it needs more than one actor. So what I would, the way that I would conceptualize the fund is a fund that actually acts concertedly across the food system so that I can build synergies across companies.

Speaker 1: 1:34:15

Um, because you need multiple actors acting at the same time to stimulate the consumer demand to shift the system so and in your position, have you had people approaching you with, not not with these kind of questions, but with with this? But then seriously, like you've seen so many farmers, like people asking you where should they invest? On the farmland side, or on the farmer side, or on the processing or the shipment or the, let's say, the value chain side? Like, how has been your interactions with the financial world or the investment world?

Speaker 2: 1:34:54

I've had a little bit of it, not a lot, I would say.

Speaker 1: 1:35:12

I've had a little bit of it, not a lot, I would say. I tend to talk a lot more to entrepreneurs and people building magic wand and you could change one thing overnight, anything possible. We've had better flavor, like better flavor palettes, global consciousness, but also all subsidies disappear. Animals outside I mean whatever comes to mind first can be extremely large or extremely small and pragmatic. What would you change if you had a magic wand?

Speaker 2: 1:35:41

I would make sure that the cost of a product included all of the externalities. True cost accounting yeah, true cost accounting immediately.

Speaker 1: 1:35:54

That would shift significantly.

Speaker 2: 1:35:57

Yeah, it would cause a lot of havoc if you were to be able to do that immediately. Yeah, we've had an episode on it.

Speaker 1: 1:36:04

But there's obviously ways of transitioning. But if you had a magic wand and the damage would be sort of controllable, then it's definitely an interesting lever.

Speaker 2: 1:36:13

Yeah, yeah. There's no question that, not just in food, but in in in so many industries, when you look at moving towards a more sustainable existence on this planet, right, kind of more in harmony with nature and, um, with the other animals that inhabit the planet and the way that we should be behaving, the way that we consume, the way that we extract resources so that we can consume, is at the heart of the problems that we have and that needs to shift.

Speaker 2: 1:36:57

And the lack of true cost accounting, this ability to continue selling product that causes tremendous amount of externalities that are then you know, paid for by either the planet uh, the ecosystems that they get produced in or, um, by society, is just simply old-fashioned, wrong, and we need to move into a new model, because the reality is that the only way that you're going to get consumers to wholeheartedly choose better is when the T-shirt that caused a lot of harm cost three times as much as the t-shirt that was produced sustainably.

Speaker 1: 1:37:49

What is the most surprising flavor story that comes to mind? And of course you called it the search for the perfect peach, but maybe it's the winter tomato or the green citrus. What is a story could be from the book or elsewhere that really surprised you the most or really moved you in terms of flavor?

Speaker 2: 1:38:11

It would have to be the winter tomato, and it would have to be the winter tomato.

Speaker 1: 1:38:17

What is the winter tomato?

Speaker 2: 1:38:19

What is the winter? Tomato, tomato. Why is it so?

Speaker 1: 1:38:21

important? Why does it make people that work at natura change, like talk about the time before the winter tomato and the time after they tasted the winter tomato?

Speaker 2: 1:38:30

so the I'll. I'll answer first why. What is the winter tomato? Because I think it'll put it into context. So these are tomatoes that are grown in the wintertime and it's a farming innovation that's relatively new, because it's of this century, where you farm tomatoes in the wintertime. You do this in the wintertime because you want to do it at a time when you can stress the plant. In the summertime you can't stress a plant as much because you would kill it off very quickly because of the intense heat and the need for water. So it's a farming technique and a farming innovation as I like to see it. It's a farming technique and a farming innovation as I like to see it, that takes a new spin on farming a tomato outside of its normal or its natural growing season, which is the summer.

Speaker 2: 1:39:32

The reason why it's really dear to me is one because I just find the flavor. Every time I have an amazing winter tomato, it still blows my mind. I like the term you use, the flavor bomb. So to me it's like I never get tired of it. It's totally different to a summer tomato. It's almost like the contrast, right. The summer tomato is really sweet, kind of luscious, uh, soft in a way right. It sort of melts in your mouth. The skin is soft. Um, the winter tomato has a thick skin. It's crunchy. The texture is like really crunch. It's almost like eating an apple and you have this saltiness that is balanced by the sweetness. So it's a really weird flavor experience for somebody who's used to eating really good summer tomatoes the first time they have them. Because it tricks your mind and that's one of the really neat things about it. It just really shifts your perception of what is possible.

Speaker 2: 1:40:40

And I think, for me, the reason why the story is really dear to me and touches me is that I came up with the word winter tomato or the term winter tomato. I made it up because I made it up because, interestingly, that same chef that I talked about, claude, he kept telling me, and the River Cafe as well, that he couldn't put the tomato on the menu because tomatoes are a summer product. And actually, with Claude, as much as I told him, this product exists in the winter and spring, like you cannot farm this product in the summer. So this is a seasonal product. Yes, it's a tomato, but it's in season at the moment. He never put it on the menu, but those challenges that I faced forced me to think about how do I market this to chefs and this you know the seasonality story I came up with. Well, it's a winter tomato and I grouped a couple of tomatoes and I go into a lot more detail in the book, but I grouped a couple of tomatoes and classify them under winter tomatoes.

Speaker 2: 1:41:47

What is very touching is that winter tomatoes are something that you see on menus all the time written and journalists talk about winter tomatoes and you know, now we have cookbooks where people mention winter tomatoes and I just find it I don't know. I I it will always be with me. That that's, that's a term that I came up with and I put in a newsletter and we started using and it's become a term that the industry uses. So that's why it's very close to my heart, aside from the fact that winter tomatoes are one of the most incredible fruits and vegetables in the world, without a doubt.

Speaker 1: 1:42:23

I think it's a perfect end to this conversation. Thank you so much for, first of all, the work you do, for writing the book and for coming on here to talk about it.

Speaker 2: 1:42:33

Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure. Thanks for reading the book, for supporting it in a way, and thanks for all the work that you do, which is really important as well.

Speaker 1: 1:42:53

Show notes and links we discussed in this episode. Check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom. Forward slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend? Or give us a rating on Apple Podcasts? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.