My Food Job Rocks‪!‬ Adam Yee

This is an episode of Crisis Meets Opportunity, a podcast I do every Monday WEEKLY with my friend Kai Wang. Enjoy listening about our week, current events, and the insider details on the launch of Sobo Foods!
Episode breakdown is generally 2 current events, a business diagnosis and a thoughtful end-of-episode thing about life advice.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6mCouRehIWU8tQsHqWqvMM
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crisis-meets-opportunity/id1615486011
 

Today we’re interviewing Karen Chiu, Senior Brand and Business Development Manager at Lypid Food. A foodtech ingredient company that creates Phytofat, a plant-based fat that’s healthier and more sustainable than animal fat.
I actually was able to meet Karen before the interview in which she invited me to try the phytofat burger at San Burino. This was a really interesting place in Taipei as it felt like I stepped into an American mini mall.
Anyways, we couldn’t do the interview over there so we did it when I was in Kaohsiung online.
Karen’s specialty is branding and she actually did a bit of branding in the United States. She’s specifically interested in community and what aligns in what Karen does has to do a lot with community.
 
Karen’s first job is with Green Monday, in what I see is a company with a huge presence in Asia. This company does a really good job with brand integrity as it seems like everyone in every Asian country knows them. She then talks about her experience working for both Green Monday and Lypid.
We also get into a deep dive on how to put a unique ingredient into the hands of restauranters and the feedback loop you develop when launching a successful collaboration.

Today we’re interviewing Evelyn Sun, Investment Manager at Foodland Ventures, a VC firm in Taiwan.
Ok so now we’re going to see Taiwan’s view on food tech. For those that don’t know, Taiwan is a powerhouse when it comes to innovation.
I went to about like, 3 museums per country and one of the most memorable museums I went to was the National Science and Technology Museum in Kaohsiung, the coastal southern city of Taiwan. Oh man, Taiwan smokes everyone when it comes to the thoughtfulness and more importantly, the investments they put into business-to-business play is impressive. 92% of the world’s tennis rackets, their semiconductor industry is a behemoth,
 
What I found interesting is Taiwan’s view on loyalty. The people in Taiwan love being Taiwanese. I’m not going into the politics here but what was interesting is that the General partners in Foodland Ventures were successful American entrepreneurs who came back to Taiwan to cultivate and grow better businesses.
Anyway, Evelyn shares with me some of the focuses and innovations happening in not just food tech, but also things like ag tech and restaurant tech. It really is a great overview of Taiwan’s entrepreneurial tech industry.

Today we’re interviewing Mai Bach, Co-founder and CEO of Oochacha, one of the first vegan restaurants in Taiwan that serve raw smoothies. She’s a social entrepreneur who walks the walk and talks the talk.
Mai and her husband/business partner did a 6-month trip around Asia and then settled down in Taiwan to start a vegan business. Sound familiar?
Mai is an amazing conversationalist. I didn’t even edit this episode all that much because she just spoke so eloquently and was just full of knowledge.
She talks about Taiwan being this small but big city and why she decided to set up shop here. Mai also goes through her vegan experience in Taiwan and talks about how hard it was to get nourished as a Vegan. So like all great entrepreneurs, she recognized a problem and then developed a solution which was green smoothies.
Also, why don’t Asian vegans eat garlic, onions, leeks, shallots, all the alliums? I was so confused by Mai demystifies it, it‘s apparently a Buddhist practice because alliums flare up the emotions. So if you’re ever entering the vegan Asian market, you might be at a disadvantage if you’re using garlic and onion. Wow, I don’t think I could ever cook without those.
Vegan is a relatively new term in Asia and it’s also super diverse so it’s been amazing unearthing on just how nascent the industry is 
Overall, Mai’s journey building Ochacha is a masterclass example of finding a niche, finding out how to build something in a foreign country, and just being persistent in the decade in building this amazing concept
We have a really good discussion before we actually started the podcast so I kept that in.
Sorry for the Noise, we actually do this in Mai’s café in Taipei. At lunchtime, it was packed.
 

Today we chat with Yuki Hanyu, Founder and CEO of IntegriCulture Inc., a cellular agriculture platform company developing cell-based meat and the technologies needed to produce it efficiently at scale.
He is also the Founder of the Shojinmeat Project, a citizen-science nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing an open-source, inclusive future for cellular agriculture.
Before starting Integriculture, Yuki started the Shojin Meats, is a project Yuki started that allows you to create cultivated meat from home. Yuki explains the unique process in the episode which I find quite insane.
If you had no money, and no expertise to create cultivated meat, how would you do it? Yuki gives us a playbook in this episode on how you could create it, in your house!
Yuki talks about crowdfunding a movement by using out-of-this world marketing tactics such as posting on video and putting a manual at a comic convention and reminds me of the early days of Apple, where a bunch of scrappy enthusiasts gathered together to create something amazing.
I first met Yuki in California at Alex Shirazi’s Cultured Meat Symposium where in his presentation, he showed a video of him making cultivated meat in his apartment.
If you get overwhelmed by technical jargon, you’re not alone! Yuki is an extremely smart and hyper-energetic drive.
We also talk about some of the frustrations of regulation of cultivated meat and the governmental understanding and perception of cultivated meat is well, across the board. There is some hope that Japan is being proactive about this type of technology.
We also talk about a lot of different anime and manga, science fiction shows and scenarios! So again, if you get lost don’t worry, it’s all part of the interview on how Yuki finds inspiration in his work, by the way, you might notice why Adam knows so much about this topic? Well… hard to explain
Yuki is amazing. His transparency, his brain, his drive and his geekiness is really magnetic. You’ll also see a geeky side of me, which I think was quite useful when talking to Yuki.

Today we’re interviewing Satoshi Umino, founder of Sustainable Foods Asia, a consulting firm that helps companies enter the Japanese market. Satoshi personally works with companies to prop and pop up restaurants and educates consumers about unique food ingredients.
I’ve met Satoshi multiple times when I was back in the United States and it’s been real good bumping into him. It seems like a lot of Japanese companies are going to the United States to find the next big innovation. Our manufacturing partner has been courting through Japanese companies through his facility so something’s there.
Satoshi does a great job describing the Japanese’s culture when it comes to tasting food and it’s been real interesting learning about how he’s introducing new food to the Japanese market. Pay attention specifically how he introduces things like jackfruit, spirulina and moringa, all fantastically new ingredients, to Japan
Our world is global, and food itself is global and people like Satoshi are needed to explain just why our global food system is so cool.
Satoshi echo’s Akiko’s interview in what the Japanese consumers look for in terms of the values go for food and some clarification on what the Japanese want in their food.
It’s always amazing just thinking about the new friendships I’ve made throughout this journey and just having a network of global faces that I’ve seen coming to America has been absolutely wonderful.