Pass the Honey, Tell the Story: Douglas Raggio & Chef Josh Bernstein
The focal point of today's discussion centers on the concept of authentic food and the individuals who contribute to its creation, specifically highlighting the innovative approach of Douglas Raggio, the founder of Pass the Honey. Raggio is dedicated to transforming the honey industry by promoting clarity and sustainability, addressing the confusion surrounding sourcing and quality that has pervaded this market for years. Accompanying him is Chef Josh Bernstein, a Florida-based culinary artist whose childhood experiences fishing with his father have profoundly shaped his culinary philosophy. In this episode, Chef Josh prepares two exquisite dishes, one featuring Pass the Honey honeycomb and the other utilizing premium Aussie Select lamb, all while sharing anecdotes that emphasize the importance of sourcing and storytelling in the culinary world. Ultimately, this conversation serves as a testament to the intricate connections between food, its origins, and the passionate individuals who elevate it beyond mere sustenance.
Takeaways:
- The honey industry has been plagued by confusion and fraud, prompting the need for clarity and transparency in sourcing.
- Douglas Raggio's company, Pass the Honey, aims to redefine honey consumption by offering clean, single-source honeycomb directly to consumers.
- Chef Josh Bernstein emphasizes the importance of storytelling in cooking, reflecting on his childhood experiences with fishing and how they shape his culinary values.
- Honeycomb serves as a versatile ingredient, enhancing dishes beyond traditional uses, and can elevate the dining experience when paired creatively with proteins and salads.
- The conversation explores the challenges of educating consumers about honey and honeycomb, particularly regarding misconceptions about their quality and uses.
- Regenerative practices in beekeeping are essential for improving the livelihoods of beekeepers and ensuring the sustainability of honey production.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Pass the Honey
- Aussie Select Lamb
- Propagation Whiskey Bar & Kitchen
- The Burnt Chef Project
- US Culinary Open
- Pizza Tomorrow Summit
- New York Restaurant Show
- California Restaurant Show
- Florida Restaurant Show
Mentioned in this episode:
RAK Porcelain USA -Tableware
We use RAK for all in-studio tableware—clean, durable, and designed for chefs.
Citrus America
Citrus America – Commercial-grade juicing systems built for speed and yield.
Transcript
You've just stepped inside the walk and.
Speaker B:Talk, podcast number one in the nation for food lovers, chefs, and storytellers.
Speaker B:I'm Carl Fiadini, your host, shining a light on the flavor, the hustle, and the heart of the industry.
Speaker B:We're the official podcast for the New York, California and Florida restaurant shows, the Pizza Tomorrow Summit, the US Culinary Open at Napham, and the North American media platform for the Burnt Chef project, recorded.
Speaker A:At Ibis Images Studios, where food photography.
Speaker B:Comes alive and I get the first bite.
Speaker A:Find out more info@thewalkandtalk.com.
Speaker B:Today's episode is about real food and the people behind it.
Speaker B:Our featured guest is Douglas Rajo, founder of Pasta Honey, a company redefining what clean single source honeycomb should look like.
Speaker B:For years, the honey industry has been clouded by confusion from unclear sourcing to inconsistent quality.
Speaker B:And Douglas is working to bring clarity, transparency, and regeneration back to the process.
Speaker B:Joining us in the kitchen is Chef Josh Bernstein.
Speaker B:He's a dear friend of the show and of mine.
Speaker B:He's a Florida bay chef who grew up fishing with his father and now brings that deep connection to the ocean into every dish he creates.
Speaker A:Today, he's cooking two dishes, one using.
Speaker B:Pasta honey, honeycomb, and the other with Aussie select lamb, while sharing how his choice childhood shaped his values in and out of the kitchen.
Speaker B:It's a conversation about sourcing, storytelling, and the people who make food more than just something we eat.
Speaker A:My man.
Speaker A:Chef Josh, welcome to the program.
Speaker C:Thank you, Carl.
Speaker C:It's a pleasure to be back.
Speaker A:It's been a minute.
Speaker A:It's been like a year.
Speaker C:It has been too long.
Speaker A:Would you call me?
Speaker D:You heard me.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:All right, so listen, you did.
Speaker A:You did stuff today.
Speaker A:All of it was fantastic and beautiful.
Speaker A:Why don't you start with the.
Speaker A:With the first dish?
Speaker C:Pass the honey.
Speaker C:I tell you what, that was amazing.
Speaker C:The best honey I've ever tried in my life.
Speaker C:I mean, you think that you've had honey before until you've actually been past the honey.
Speaker C:That honey was amazing.
Speaker C:Very savory, very clean.
Speaker C:Not sugar taste to it.
Speaker C:I mean, I don't know how to really describe it.
Speaker C:You have to try it yourself.
Speaker D:It was.
Speaker C:As a chef, I was very, very impressed with that dish.
Speaker C:We paired that dish today with some roasted beets and some spicy pecans, gorgonzola cheese, a champagne citrus vinaigrette, and some Florida citrus orange, along with some frise salad.
Speaker C:And I gotta tell you, I was very impressed.
Speaker C:It was really good.
Speaker A:It was one of the most colorful dishes I think we've had in house.
Speaker A:John.
Speaker A:Yeah, I got a head shake.
Speaker A:That's good enough.
Speaker A:That means it's true.
Speaker A:You know, at the end of the day, you picked.
Speaker A:You picked the right ingredients for that dish to kind of pair with the.
Speaker A:With the honeycomb.
Speaker A:It was wonderful.
Speaker A:So with that said, you know, I've been doing this a lot lately.
Speaker A:I kind of feel bad.
Speaker A:John, you did it again.
Speaker A:Photography outstanding.
Speaker A:Someday you're going to talk.
Speaker A:It'll happen.
Speaker A:It's going to happen.
Speaker A:Sign with John.
Speaker A:Josh, explain the next dish.
Speaker C:So I had the opportunity to cook with Aussie select lamb product, fully cooked product.
Speaker C:And I chose the prime rib version of the Aussie lamb.
Speaker C:And I'm glad I did, because the dish that we created with it was a lamb Wellington.
Speaker C:And when you think Wellington, have you ever really thought lamb?
Speaker C:Probably not, but I gotta tell you, it was pretty cool, man.
Speaker A:When you told me you were gonna do a Wellington, you were almost like, man, what did you say?
Speaker A:You were like, man, this is kind of old school.
Speaker A:Whatever.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker A:And he said, no, you're taking a classic and you're turning it around and you're doing something completely different with it.
Speaker A:Because who the hell has done blaming cured lamb in Wellington?
Speaker C:I would venture to say I'm probably maybe the first one to do so.
Speaker A:They say there's nothing new under the sun, but I think this might edge, that might sink just across the goal line.
Speaker A:I think you did it.
Speaker A:I'm just saying.
Speaker C:And we did the traditional mushroom japsell, the prosciutto, the parma, and what we paired it with lamb, traditionally, a lot of people have mint jelly, some sort of mint with it.
Speaker C:And so we made a blueberry mint demi to go with it, and we paired that with some tri colored caramelized carrots and some pearl squash and zucchini.
Speaker C:I just thought the dish went really well together.
Speaker C:And when we sliced that Wellington in half, when you got that pink, dark red color you were looking for from a pre cooked product, mind you, it just my mind blowing.
Speaker C:It was awesome.
Speaker C:I can't wait to see the pictures when they come out.
Speaker C:I know it's going to look great.
Speaker A:And it tasted wonderful.
Speaker A:You know, people, I know that when someone listens to this podcast, like, regularly, like we have, you know, hey, listeners.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Appreciate y'.
Speaker D:All.
Speaker A:When.
Speaker A:When people listen to this and they go, yeah, this guy's always saying that everything is great.
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker A:But there's a reason for that, because everybody that we bring in house, they're professionals.
Speaker A:Like, we do vetting There's a vetting process now.
Speaker A:See, Josh, I know Josh.
Speaker A:I know what he does.
Speaker A:Chef is amazing.
Speaker A:So I knew whatever he was going to do today was going to be a home run.
Speaker A:But even past that, when somebody comes into the building and we do what we do, we already know what's coming.
Speaker A:It's not like we're taking a chance.
Speaker A:It's a guess.
Speaker A:There does a lot that goes into the engine of production.
Speaker A:So freaking love you, man.
Speaker A:Thanks for coming out today, Carl.
Speaker D:Thank you so much.
Speaker D:It's always a pleasure to be here.
Speaker A:Isn't this fun?
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:I tell you what, when you called me and said, would you like to do this again?
Speaker C:I made sure I canceled everything I had today.
Speaker D:You literally did.
Speaker C:I did.
Speaker A:I know I did.
Speaker D:I had to cancel quite a few.
Speaker C:Things today, but it was worth it.
Speaker A:All right, so listen, you know, Douglas, Rajo, you made it to Florida, to Tampa from New York, and number one, sincerely appreciate you making that trip to be on the program.
Speaker A:Number two, sincerely appreciate you coming on board with us as a brand partner.
Speaker A:I'm going to say something before I introduce you.
Speaker A:I'm going to drop a nugget here.
Speaker A:I'm dropping a bomb.
Speaker A:Douglas.
Speaker A:Rajio is going to be the second podcast under the Walk and talk umbrella.
Speaker A:Of course, the name of his company is called Pass the Honey, and you can rest assured that the podcast is called Pass the Honey Podcast.
Speaker A:Douglas, welcome to the program.
Speaker A:Thank you very much.
Speaker D:I'm excited.
Speaker A:Tell me about it.
Speaker D:Feels weird to hear.
Speaker A:Isn't it weird to hear?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Was it weird to come here?
Speaker D:I mean, it's been a week.
Speaker D:I'm not going to shy away from that.
Speaker D:But, yeah, I'm very glad I came.
Speaker D:So it was meeting chef, meeting John.
Speaker D:Seeing you guys in action, seeing the production behind the scenes, it's impressive.
Speaker A:We do a lot of prep work before you guys ever make it here.
Speaker A:And thank you.
Speaker A:And in the end, what we're really trying to do, impress the audience and impress you guys, the guests.
Speaker A:Pass the honey.
Speaker A:How did it actually come to life?
Speaker A:What were you doing before you decided to literally jump in with the bees?
Speaker D:If I'm amping up the drama, I will say I was hating my life.
Speaker D:Previously, I had a venture capital fund and a private equity fund.
Speaker D:Thought I was going to create all these independent food brands.
Speaker D:Turns out venture capital just further consolidates the food system.
Speaker D:I then scuttled that and then created a private equity group to kind of create independent businesses.
Speaker D:And then we took in a really Toxic investor.
Speaker D:We had to fire sale the company.
Speaker D:And in that time I was getting run down and I was making honey lemon ginger teas, trying to keep my immunity up.
Speaker D:Most consumers go to buy honey for its nutritional benefits.
Speaker D:It's kind of legacy of healing, if you will.
Speaker D:Around that same time I had watched an episode of Netflix's Rotten and the first episode was on honey fraud.
Speaker D:And I learned that there's just an insane amount of fraud in the honey industry.
Speaker D:And here I was seeking out health benefits in my honey lemon ginger teas, putting highly questionable liquid honey into my honey.
Speaker D:So I thought, oh, I'll just use honeycomb.
Speaker D:Went and bought some.
Speaker D:It was really expensive and I nicked a bit and at that point I put it on the counter and thought I'd come back to it tomorrow.
Speaker D:And I came back the next day and it was an ant farm.
Speaker D:And I was like, well shoot.
Speaker D:They went, you know, 30 bucks and committed to my integrity of my honey, I decided I was going to go and buy another one, you know, spend another 30 bucks and haha, I'm going to put it in the fridge.
Speaker D:That'll outsmart the ants.
Speaker D:No one's slacking Honeycomb, you got to go nick some.
Speaker D:And that was really thinking like, why isn't this convenient?
Speaker D:You know, how can we.
Speaker D:If that's the fullest integrity and the fullest flavor of true honey, why isn't it convenient?
Speaker D:And that was really the genesis of the company.
Speaker D:And from there I thought I could make some mailbox money with some patents and just license it to beekeepers.
Speaker D:And then I couldn't find a beekeeper in the United States to sell us Honeycomb because there's pesticide accumulation in the wax.
Speaker D:And that was really disheartening.
Speaker D:It's thinking, oh wow, I can't even buy it in the States.
Speaker D:That's bizarre.
Speaker D:And you peel that onion a little bit more and there's no organic standards for honey because you can't fence or feed a bean organics based on inputs.
Speaker D:And it's like, well that's even more bizarre because I see it on jars.
Speaker D:Then you peel the onion again and you realize, oh wow, beekeepers are going out of business because all the fraudulent imports are driving the prices down that they can't make a living any longer.
Speaker D:And it's like, well shoot, that that's also, you know, another crappy situation.
Speaker D:And if you look at all of it's like, well, how can we actually stabilize beekeeping as an industry because our modern food system is based on it.
Speaker D:Like without a honeybee, we don't have a bounty of food that chefs like Chef Josh can make delicious meals.
Speaker D:And so all those things kind of came together at various points in time and we decided we were just going to make a change.
Speaker D:And that was creating a conveniently formatted honeycomb for consumers and chefs.
Speaker D:And if you make something convenient all out of baby carrot, you can start to increase consumption.
Speaker D:We can also educate a little bit more.
Speaker D:We can engage consumers, diners in the food service realm.
Speaker D:And the honeycomb, people haven't seen it in a while.
Speaker D:It's kind of fallen off the radar.
Speaker D:So we're bringing it back, like sexy.
Speaker A:Have to bring sexy back.
Speaker A:We also have to bring.
Speaker A:But we also have to bring back more beekeepers.
Speaker D:100%.
Speaker A:And how do we do that?
Speaker D:You give them a way to make money and have a living.
Speaker D:No one's passing generational beekeeping operations down any longer.
Speaker D:It's like farming.
Speaker D:It's this kind of weird, sad, dying industry that we all depend on that no one seems to take any sort of long term view on.
Speaker D:It's not really a priority per se.
Speaker A:But what's the pathway to get that done for us?
Speaker D:I feel that honeycomb is a wedge.
Speaker D:Honeycomb is a wedge to change the conversation, to change a consumer's awareness and perception of honey because it's a pattern erupt.
Speaker D:People haven't seen honeycomb in that format.
Speaker D:They were used to seeing honey in a little teddy bear.
Speaker D:That's super cute.
Speaker D:And that's like the nemesis of our business.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:If we can sell more honeycomb, we can give beekeepers a product that they can sell at a price that they can have a life on.
Speaker D:That would be my.
Speaker D:That's Catalyst one.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:And then you have the ripple effect from that.
Speaker D:It's the.
Speaker D:If we can have that item that beekeepers can have a stable income, we then can then move to educating consumers on honey fraud.
Speaker D:Why does this honeycomb taste different?
Speaker D:Chef Josh, he made a comment, he said, this tastes unlike anything I've had.
Speaker A:So what is the biggest misconception about honey?
Speaker A:You know, it's in every store.
Speaker A:You mentioned the cute teddy bear.
Speaker A:What are we missing?
Speaker D:The biggest misconception is that the honey you're buying is honey.
Speaker D:I think if I had to back it all up, the consumer's been defrauded for decades.
Speaker D:The numbers are staggering.
Speaker D:It's 80% of all liquid honey is actually fraudulent.
Speaker D:And by fraudulent, I mean it's been cut with other processed sugars.
Speaker D:They cut it like drug.
Speaker D:So For a consumer that's seeking out the nutritional benefits like myself, you're not getting that.
Speaker D:Essentially you're having a candy bar, which is why people experience crashes as well.
Speaker D:That and the honey is cheap and freebie, and people are giving out little honey sachets.
Speaker D:And honey comes from the earth, it comes from flowers, it comes from terroir.
Speaker D:So would you expect wine to be free?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker D:But yet here's honey that has all this nuance and health benefits and history and flavor and.
Speaker D:And the insect that creates it is integral to our food system.
Speaker A:How is there an organic symbol on a honey if it's unquantified?
Speaker D:Valid question.
Speaker D:You asked the USDA in the National Organic Program, the nop, and there are no apiculture standards because again, you can't fence or feed a bee.
Speaker D:However, there has been proposed guidance, and I put up my quote, fingers on that, of qualifying honey as livestock because it's kept.
Speaker D:You can still feed a cow, you can't fence a pee or feed a bee.
Speaker D:So if you look at things like pesticide adjacencies, you could have a pristine 10 acres right next door.
Speaker D:Somebody could be spraying whatever they're spraying.
Speaker D:You could have somebody 2 miles away, 10 miles away spraying.
Speaker D:And it comes into the wind pattern.
Speaker D:So the sheer amount of wind landscape research we have to do, landscape management practices, we have to, before we even get to beekeeping practices, to just qualify that it's pure honey without some sort of contaminant in it is difficult.
Speaker D:And we're losing forage zone as well.
Speaker A:Isn't that something where they're able to run tests on the actual honey itself?
Speaker A:We do honeycomb where it's coming from.
Speaker D:Yeah, we do nuclear magnetic resonance testing.
Speaker D:It's like an MRI for food.
Speaker D:It's the highest level of testing you can do for any food.
Speaker D:And we look for pesticides, contaminants.
Speaker D:We do it to the parts per billion, which is a thousand times more stringent than organic standards.
Speaker D:We also look for sugar water feeding because that's another way of adulteration.
Speaker D:And then we do a pollen analysis that we match to regions that we've qualified that are removed from industrial agriculture.
Speaker A:Wouldn't then in that testing, it would show some levels of pesticide.
Speaker D:What I've been told from the lab is you never get a zero.
Speaker D:So there is always some level of something.
Speaker D:But again, to the parts per billion, it's coming at 0.000, whatever the heck the number is.
Speaker A:So does that mean that the companies with the organic stamp are going off of this analysis or is it cover your eyes and rubber stamp it?
Speaker D:So here's the.
Speaker D:The upside down manner of organic is that it's all practice based.
Speaker D:It's disclosed.
Speaker D:I get a sheet and says, this is what I do and this is what it fits.
Speaker D:It's like a rubric, right?
Speaker D:We look at outcomes.
Speaker D:So our regenerative standards are outcomes based.
Speaker D:We test before, during, after for honeybee health, beekeeper livelihoods and ecological diversity.
Speaker D:We're still figuring out the tests on the last one, but making sure beekeepers are paid a fair living wage, making sure the honeybees are kept safe and that they're not being exposed to pesticide, stress mites, all the other stuff that happens in the beekeeping industry, which is why we decided not to go after the organic.
Speaker D:So your original question was how is organic on bottles?
Speaker D:There are certifying agencies that certify things as organic.
Speaker D:They're using agar or livestock guidance as the honeybee guidance.
Speaker D:It doesn't line up and I don't know why it's still on jars because it shouldn't be, because it doesn't fit.
Speaker D:If you ask the group that came up with the program that says it doesn't exist, but then you have other groups that are third parties that are charging money for things, I'm uncertain.
Speaker D:So early on, we decided just to sidestep it all.
Speaker D:This is such a mess.
Speaker D:No regulatory guidance, no US domestic sourcing at volume that we could find.
Speaker D:Huge level of fraud.
Speaker D:The role of the honeybee.
Speaker D:We just decided we're going to work with UC Davis and we're going to create regenerative standards, our own quality standards.
Speaker D:And from that moment, we started involving the industry and we did a white paper with like 350 different apiculture experts and we got some million acres for research and a lot of other things are going into it.
Speaker D:It's a total mess.
Speaker A:So as you're doing that, how long were you in business already with pasta honey?
Speaker D:Pasta honey?
Speaker D:The patent work took about a year and a half.
Speaker D:The supply chain standards and practices with UC Davis took about a year and a half.
Speaker D:And those were in parallel.
Speaker D:It took us another year and a half just to find a source that met our standards.
Speaker D:And now we're at the point where we're building the supply as well as building demand.
Speaker D:So we're having to balance both sides of the equation.
Speaker A:So it sounds to me that there was foresight in this specific area of making sure that the product is at its highest quality, that it's actually real.
Speaker A:Honeycomb, real honey from the rip ran out of the gate.
Speaker D:Yeah, it seemed wrong.
Speaker D:It seemed totally wrong that this was this industry that had this total underbelly that no one seemed to know about or care about.
Speaker A:So when you decided one day, hey, honey, let's do honey honey, when you did that, obviously you already knew that there were some challenges.
Speaker A:What else stood out?
Speaker D:Honest answer.
Speaker D:I thought I could make a quick buck with licensing a patent.
Speaker D:And then you start to learn these things and you're like, wow, that's interesting.
Speaker D:And had I known everything I know now, then I probably wouldn't have gone forward because I thought, that's too much.
Speaker D:But lucky for me, unlucky for me, I guess it was kind of drip fed to me.
Speaker D:And so as we progressed further and we saw the market opportunity and we saw kind of the catalyst for change and the ability to change the conversation.
Speaker D:When do you get a chance to reintroduce an entire generation to something that's been around for millions of years?
Speaker D:And the fact that children under, I guess younger adults 30 and below even don't know what honeycomb is, that's a pretty unique position to be in to say here, this is what this is.
Speaker D:It's like introducing the avocado 20, 30 years ago.
Speaker A:So in a strange twist of events, obviously I know what honeycomb is.
Speaker A:I'm not a kid either.
Speaker A:But because of past the honey, you know, we actually started work on a, on a short film, short documentary, and we did the trailer.
Speaker A:And then over the course of a weekend, you know, Douglas and I had a conversation and we said, yeah, let's do this, let's do this.
Speaker A:I said, okay.
Speaker A:And I started calling around, I called my cinematographer and simultaneously I get a call from a friend of mine and they say, hey, go try this restaurant in Plant City.
Speaker A:It's called Propagation Whiskey Bar Kitchen.
Speaker A:Okay, cool.
Speaker A:Same day, end up going to dinner, I see the bartender, which was, you know, this documentary is going to have a cocktail element to it with the honeycomb.
Speaker A:Beautiful bar bartender looked pretty cool.
Speaker A:So I went over and introduced myself.
Speaker A:Turns out he's the bar manager.
Speaker A:Long story short, I explained what we were doing.
Speaker A:He's all in.
Speaker A:Twenty minutes later, owner comes over, we're talking, he's all in.
Speaker A:And I'm like, well, I just need to find beekeepers.
Speaker A:He goes, wait a minute, I know a guy.
Speaker A:I'm like, man, it's 10 o' clock at night, what do we know guy?
Speaker A:He says, come with me.
Speaker A:I'm like, we're in Plant City.
Speaker A:What are you talking about?
Speaker A:It's 10.
Speaker A:It's Plant City.
Speaker A: It's: Speaker A:Like, what are we doing here?
Speaker A:So we end up going to a mead bar, and we get introduced to the owner.
Speaker A:He used to do hives.
Speaker A:Well, he says, well, I don't do hives anymore.
Speaker A:I don't beekeep anymore.
Speaker A:But I know a guy.
Speaker A:I said, okay, great.
Speaker A:By Monday, I had met a beekeeper, and it was somewhere in Lakeland.
Speaker A:Really nice guy.
Speaker A:And Mike, he hooks me up with his mentor, John.
Speaker D:That's cool.
Speaker A:Coolest thing ever.
Speaker A:By Wednesday, we're shooting.
Speaker A:Within five days, we had the trailer.
Speaker A:It was like a two or three minute trailer.
Speaker A:And it's badass.
Speaker A:And this came from you and me.
Speaker D:Here's the thing.
Speaker D:Beekeeping is out there.
Speaker D:It's always been there.
Speaker D:It's been around for centuries.
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker D:But it's like, under the radar.
Speaker D:And it's a very welcoming community.
Speaker D:It's very.
Speaker D:They understand the role they play in the food system.
Speaker D:Other people know they're important, but don't know per se as to why they're important.
Speaker D:And that's what we're trying to bridge that gap, that knowledge gap.
Speaker A:Why are they important?
Speaker D:I think bees pollinate one third of our food system.
Speaker D:So if we want berries and almonds and mangoes and any other thing that looks delicious on a plate other than a root vegetable.
Speaker A:Are you telling me that without bees we don't get mangoes?
Speaker A:Is that what you're saying?
Speaker D:It's a vast majority of fruits and vegetables are pollinated by bees, Honeybees in particular.
Speaker A:Obviously, I'm playing with you a little bit, but, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, it's.
Speaker A:It's a.
Speaker A:It's a huge thing.
Speaker D:Things get real boring without honeybee.
Speaker D:Real boring.
Speaker D:Chef over here is not going to be jazzed about his dishes if he's working with just a yam every day.
Speaker A:That's the truth.
Speaker A:Since we've met, Douglas, I see.
Speaker A:I see beekeepers.
Speaker A:You know, I'm driving.
Speaker A:You know, we're kind of country where we're at, so I'm driving and I'm like, oh, look, know apiary.
Speaker A:Oh, look, beaky.
Speaker A:It's pretty cool.
Speaker A:So I actually got to put on the bee suit and the whole thing.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:It's really.
Speaker A:It's probably one of my best.
Speaker A:The best experiences that I've had.
Speaker D:Were you intimidated at first?
Speaker A:So I don't know.
Speaker A:I still don't know, but I guess I'm not now.
Speaker A:I don't know if I'm allergic to you, you'd know.
Speaker A:Normally, I eat honey.
Speaker A:For the last five years, I eat honey.
Speaker A:I break out.
Speaker A:I just as well assume that if I.
Speaker A:If.
Speaker A:If I got stung by a.
Speaker A:A bee, I might have a reaction.
Speaker A:So I've always just kind of been aware of that.
Speaker A:And every now and again, I'm like, well, I don't care.
Speaker A:I like honey.
Speaker A:I want to have some.
Speaker A:And then I break out.
Speaker A:Miraculously, lately, I've been eating honey, and it doesn't happen.
Speaker A:Certainly doesn't happen with your honeycomb.
Speaker A:So we go to the.
Speaker A:We're at the apiary, and I'm dressed up, and I'm like, okay.
Speaker A:I'm not scared, but I'm aware.
Speaker A:Like, okay, hyper aware.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:I'm hype.
Speaker A:I'm acutely aware.
Speaker A:Like, all right, I Hope there's an EpiPen around.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:I'm like, who knows?
Speaker A:But the bees were in good spirits.
Speaker A:They were not aggressive.
Speaker A:They were very docile that day.
Speaker A:And, you know, we got to.
Speaker A:You know, I got to actually move the crate around, open the.
Speaker A:You know, pull the.
Speaker A:Pull out the comb, and, you know, we're actually dipping our finger, you know, with the glove, and it has a glove on, you know, dipping the thing in there.
Speaker A:And through the.
Speaker A:Through the net, you're tasting the honey.
Speaker A:My God, it was the coolest experience I ever had.
Speaker A:Yeah, it really was.
Speaker A:Like, I've never done anything like that in my life.
Speaker A:There was an intimidation factor, but mostly because I didn't want the ambulance coming.
Speaker A:You know, I have a little bit of pride with that.
Speaker A:I don't want to be rolled out.
Speaker D:So, yes, congrats.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker D:On being a pseudo beekeeper.
Speaker A:I was being a Douglas, but.
Speaker A:Okay, so all of that's great.
Speaker A:Why is it that pasta, honey.
Speaker A:What makes your honey any different than somebody else's?
Speaker A:Why is your honeycomb different?
Speaker D:One is the format, you know, making it convenient, so eliminating the need for a knife or skilled labor or portioning or, you know, waste.
Speaker D:I ended up throwing half mine away, which was really irritating.
Speaker D:That would be kind of the first and foremost, the regenerative standards.
Speaker D:A company that's actually putting their money where their mouth is and doing real work.
Speaker D:I mean, having a full 501C3 behind us and a million acres for research, a company of our size shouldn't be able to do that.
Speaker D:But it's because we're doing real work, working with groups like the Culinary Institute of America, doing things like a History of honey course for them, a honey concentration brand partnerships with both consumer brands, like a big spirits brand we're working with for their gins, their bourbons and their Proseccos as a garnish.
Speaker D:Working with operators because we have the 501C3.
Speaker D:It's an awesome opportunity to do an LTO.
Speaker D:My dream is like the Waffle House or something or Pancake IHOP and saying, do you want a honeycomb on that?
Speaker D:A percentage of proceeds going back to the pwning.
Speaker D:Research.
Speaker D:It's real research.
Speaker D:It's not just 1% for the planet.
Speaker D:Where does that go?
Speaker D:No one really knows.
Speaker A:Well, the fact that you're having the work you're doing as part of any university curriculum, I I to me.
Speaker A:So when we first met, that was one of the more interesting things because that shows it's more than, it's different than credibility.
Speaker A:It's more than, than credibility.
Speaker A:It's, I guess it's just, it's just.
Speaker D:Cool to be able to say you're doing a history of honeycores about the history of AP culture and agriculture and the role of honeybees and beekeepers in our food system with the emerging chefs of, you know, the world is an insane opportunity.
Speaker D:And there's scholarships with that, there's externships associated with that.
Speaker D:We have an apiary on campus that students get their hands dirty.
Speaker D:They'll do what you did.
Speaker D:It's just very, it's a multi.
Speaker D:Multi.
Speaker D:It's my lifetime, like legacy, I think me and my wife.
Speaker A:It's just cool.
Speaker D:It's just cool, period.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Douglas, you talk a lot about regeneration and I don't know that the average person is going to really wrap their brain around that just because it's not part of a, you know, vernacular for Christ people.
Speaker A:What is that?
Speaker D:So regenerative as a term has not been defined.
Speaker D:It's not owned like organic.
Speaker D:My take is that we leave it better than we found it.
Speaker D:I want to leave beekeepers in a better position.
Speaker D:I want to leave the hives in a better position.
Speaker D:I'll leave the regions in which we're harvesting in a better position.
Speaker D:And honey and bees in particular have a unique ability to do that.
Speaker D:You can't say that as much as others, perhaps.
Speaker D:So that's our take on regenerative.
Speaker D:Now we're also, I mentioned earlier, we're the outcomes based camp.
Speaker D:There's also a practice based camp that kind of layers on top of organic.
Speaker D:And for us, organic doesn't exist.
Speaker D:So that wasn't even an option.
Speaker D:Also, the sheer levels of fraud in the honey industry kind of just pushed us in the direction of testing.
Speaker A:To your earlier question, so why is it that chefs like Josh are important in helping consumers rediscover and reimagine honeycomb?
Speaker D:The chefs drive culinary exploration, they drive trends, they show consumers ways to use unique items.
Speaker D:Chefs also know what honeycomb is.
Speaker D:They don't have to educate them on why it is, where it's from.
Speaker D:I think even above all that.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker D:Came from the CPG world.
Speaker D:It's a lot of kids with MBAs looking to make a quick buck, you know, build it and sell it type stuff.
Speaker D:And there just isn't substance, there's not the majority of those brands and that you're coming from a world like that into a world of agriculture and the culinary world.
Speaker D:It's all steak and no sizzle.
Speaker D:Like there's work to be done and we don't need to, you know, wax poetic about things, but let's, you know, let's do some good work, let's feed some people, let's make an impact and it's authentic.
Speaker D:And so not only is my natural desire, I prefer working with people in the agriculture industry and the culinary industry, but if we're looking to usher in a new paradigm of honeycomb as the next avocado, chefs are the only way that's going to happen.
Speaker D:So working with chefs like Josh to do a salad, the general consumer is not going to think to put honeycomb on a salad.
Speaker D:They're still in the, like, I'm going to put it on a charcuterie board level.
Speaker D:I'm going to start getting honeycomb toasts and honeycomb on pancakes and waffles and acai bowls and on top of steaks and on cocktails.
Speaker D:We're a complement to other things.
Speaker D:Like that's our role.
Speaker D:We're a zhuzh, if you will, to use a culinary term.
Speaker D:So, yeah, working with chefs is an absolute no brainer.
Speaker D:And it's a group of individuals that I, I naturally gravitate to how my wife's a chef or an assumed to be chef, she's in culinary school.
Speaker D:So I want to disrespect any chefs out there while saying that, or disrespect her for sure.
Speaker A:Not disrespecting, I meant landmines at every turn with that last one.
Speaker A:Josh, from a chef's perspective, how do you follow that?
Speaker C:I agree 100%.
Speaker C:I mean, I believe that the normal consumer is not going to go to a grocery store and see A honeycomb and say, I'm going to go make a salad out or I'm going to top it on a steak with some gorgon double cheese or no, you know.
Speaker D:And see what he did there.
Speaker A:He just used it up.
Speaker D:The juiced.
Speaker C:I used it.
Speaker C:So, no, I think that.
Speaker C:I think that getting it out there and giving people the.
Speaker C:The knowledge and showing them how versatile this type product can be is super important.
Speaker C:So I, I can agree and, and understand Cole Harley, why he would want to work with chefs in the industry and, and get his product out there.
Speaker D:And if we're taking a business tact here, a consumer, you talk about solving pain points with businesses.
Speaker D:The consumer doesn't have a pain point.
Speaker D:They don't know about honey fraud.
Speaker D:They don't have that.
Speaker D:That.
Speaker D:That yearning to understand.
Speaker D:But chefs have real pain points.
Speaker D:They need to, you know, get bigger tickets.
Speaker D:They need to have things that work in the back of house.
Speaker D:They have to have things that don't muck up, you know, the line.
Speaker D:So to go to a chef and say, look, here's a $5 to $10 upsell across all, all parts of your menu.
Speaker D:Use it as a topper, and you're gonna get five to ten dollars on every ticket.
Speaker D:And no knife, no skilled labor, and no waste at the end of service.
Speaker D:It doesn't have expiration.
Speaker D:Those are things that a chef's gonna light up about.
Speaker D:The general consumer, you know, is a general consumer chef.
Speaker A:You grew up in Jacksonville.
Speaker A:You come from a fishing family.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker A:You love the seafood.
Speaker C:Love it.
Speaker A:You're a chef.
Speaker A:You have to be creative.
Speaker A:I know that you love to prepare fish and seafood, so something like honeycomb would probably work terrifically in some application.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker C:How.
Speaker D:Well, thank you.
Speaker A:That was my next pleasure.
Speaker C:Well, I think that you touched on this earlier before that, or Douglas touched on this earlier before.
Speaker C:It's a compliment to the dish mostly.
Speaker C:And so when I get something like honey that I know is going to be sweet, and honestly, this honey was sweet and savory, which was really unique.
Speaker C:I would get something spicy, maybe a blackened mahi mahi over a, you know, some sort of nice rice beel off with a mango relish.
Speaker C:And in that mango relish, we incorporate his honey.
Speaker C:You know, just to top it off would be amazing.
Speaker C:You know, I just.
Speaker C:Dreaming and salivating about something like that right now makes me want to go fishing right now and catch a fresh mahi and make a mango relish with his honey.
Speaker D:Did you see what he just did?
Speaker D:No.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:You have to understand Something.
Speaker A:This is when we have conversations.
Speaker A:This is what he does.
Speaker A:And it gets me hopped up.
Speaker A:I am a mirror to the people who I'm with.
Speaker A:So if the three of you were duds, I'm gonna dud out too.
Speaker A:When the energy is there and he's coming to me like, you know, like, we spoke.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I said, well.
Speaker A:He said, look, well, who's.
Speaker A:Who's the guest?
Speaker A:What's it gonna be?
Speaker A:What are we cooking?
Speaker A:Whatever.
Speaker A:And I start giving him data points.
Speaker A:I wasn't qualifying you, chef.
Speaker A:He started rattling off all sorts of amazing sounding dishes.
Speaker A:He threw so many at me, and he's like, well, what do you think?
Speaker A:And I'm like, I can't process what you're doing.
Speaker A:What you just said to me.
Speaker A:I can't even do it.
Speaker D:Will it pull you off track for this podcast if we explore his creative brain?
Speaker D:I mentioned it earlier, and you said that we could talk about it.
Speaker D:It's now that time.
Speaker A:It is absolutely that time.
Speaker A:This man is an avid fisherman, a tournament fisherman.
Speaker A:And when he gets to go out, and I don't want to speak for you, but when he goes out on the boat, he gets to clear his head.
Speaker A:He gets to talk about regeneration.
Speaker A:This guy does that, and he comes back with this fire, and that's what I really appreciate.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of chefs that we deal with, and everybody has their superpowers.
Speaker A:That is this man's superpower.
Speaker A:And he's fast.
Speaker A:He's quick on the draw with the creativity.
Speaker C:Thank you, Carl.
Speaker A:You're welcome.
Speaker D:So, chef.
Speaker C:Yes, Doug?
Speaker D:You just rift on a dish that I never, ever would have thought of.
Speaker D:And we work with a lot of people on developing recipes, and no one else has come up with that.
Speaker D:And you came up with it in 30 seconds flat.
Speaker D:So when you're.
Speaker D:When someone gives you a hero ingredient, in this case honeycomb, where's the first place your brain goes?
Speaker D:Like, if you have a rubric of building a dish, do you start with the flavor profiles?
Speaker D:Do you start with texture?
Speaker D:Do you start with presentation?
Speaker D:Like, where do you.
Speaker D:How do you navigate coming to a finished dish?
Speaker C:All the above.
Speaker C:You know, definitely.
Speaker C:You know, texture, you know, flavor profiles, you know, understanding where the product's coming from, you know, and.
Speaker C:And you just.
Speaker C:You start thinking about, you know, as a chef, you start thinking about a million different ways that you can incorporate this product into a dish.
Speaker C:And, you know, that's.
Speaker C:That's what I do.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker C:I don't know, man.
Speaker C:I. I think.
Speaker D:How'd you Land on a salad, of all things.
Speaker C:Well, what I was thinking about was cheese nuts, you know, because when you think honey, like we talked about earlier, the.
Speaker C:The.
Speaker C:The safe bet and the quick suggestion everybody else.
Speaker C:Else has is charcuterie.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:You know, and so you start thinking about certain components on charcuterie board.
Speaker C:And, you know, I. I was like.
Speaker A:Well, what about a salad?
Speaker C:You know?
Speaker C:And what really inspired me was when we were talking about the bees, I thought flowers right away.
Speaker C:And so when I was creating the dish in my head, which I do a lot, I started thinking, how can we make this look like a flower on the plate?
Speaker C:And so colorful, you know, so root vegetables, the frise, lettuce, citrus from here in the state of Florida, you know, and so I started putting all those components together in my head, and.
Speaker C:And I dreamed of putting that honeycomb right on top of that.
Speaker C:Realistically, it's the center of the flower, and that's what I wanted it to be was the center of the flower.
Speaker C:The center of the dish was the honeycomb, because it's the center of the flower.
Speaker A:Josh, when you told me one of the dishes was a salad, now, I trust you.
Speaker A:It isn't like we've never met before.
Speaker A:It's not like I haven't had your food.
Speaker A:But when you told me a salad, I was a little deflated at first.
Speaker A:The truth.
Speaker A:It's the truth.
Speaker A:I'm like, oh, man.
Speaker D:Pulling no punches today.
Speaker A:I was like, man, this is.
Speaker A:But I said, wait a minute.
Speaker A:This is not like.
Speaker A:This isn't some Cracker Jack, Chef, whatever.
Speaker A:This is Josh, I know he's going to be creative with this.
Speaker A:So I just said, well, tell me the ingredients.
Speaker A:And he starts running down the ingredients list.
Speaker A:And I'm like, okay, wait, this sounds really interesting.
Speaker A:And then he finished it with Carl.
Speaker A:It's gonna be in the shape of a flower.
Speaker D:Boom.
Speaker C:I already.
Speaker A:Yeah, I already knew that he was in another level with this.
Speaker A:You know, he went matrix on it.
Speaker A:And I was like, all right, cool.
Speaker A:Sounds awesome.
Speaker D:He nailed it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Well, I appreciate that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:I mean, you know, it's the bee, it's the pollinator.
Speaker D:It's the.
Speaker C:You know, about the flowers, you know, and so that's what I was thinking.
Speaker A:And then he says to me, he says, well, well, you know, Carl, the other dish, it's kind of like, I don't know.
Speaker A:I know it's played out, and it's like an old, old school.
Speaker A:But I was like, don't say that.
Speaker A:What are you talking about?
Speaker A:He's like, well, I want to.
Speaker A:I want to do the Wellington, but with the lamb.
Speaker A:With the Aussie select lamb, I go, that's brilliant.
Speaker A:You're taking a classic and you're doing something that.
Speaker A:Honestly, I don't know that I've ever seen anyone take a cured lamb loin and used for a Wellington.
Speaker A:That's crazy.
Speaker A:So originally when he says that, I said, okay, I'm okay with that.
Speaker A:But then when he starts describing it, and.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I'm like, oh, man, these are both going to be.
Speaker D:The whole is greater than the parts, or.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:Let's.
Speaker A:For sure.
Speaker D:I'm tying it to a flower.
Speaker D:Is.
Speaker D:That's.
Speaker D:No pun intended.
Speaker D:The chef's kiss.
Speaker D:Yeah, that is the.
Speaker D:Our honeycomb is the flavor.
Speaker D:That's what flowers taste like.
Speaker D:It's where it comes from.
Speaker D:If we don't touch it.
Speaker D:It's.
Speaker D:It boggles my mind that a bee pollinated tens of thousands of flowers for that one bite of honeycomb, and nothing's touched it till it hits your tongue.
Speaker D:But we just cut it from the hive.
Speaker D:You asked questions earlier, you know, like, is this just Kaya?
Speaker A:It's cut and packed.
Speaker D:No processing B makes it.
Speaker C:And as a chef, we.
Speaker C:We can appreciate that.
Speaker C:You know, the.
Speaker C:To get food is not so processed.
Speaker C:It's fresh.
Speaker C:And this is.
Speaker C:You know, Carl and I were talking.
Speaker C:This is why I really embrace fishing and love fishing and have my whole life, because I know where I'm sourcing my food from.
Speaker C:I know what else you can get.
Speaker C:Families, bellies, you know, to go offshore 20, 30 miles and bring back a species that's indigenous to the state of Florida and come home and cook it myself and prepare it myself.
Speaker C:There's nothing better than that.
Speaker C:You know, you can't go to a grocery store and take that piece of salmon or that piece of grouper out of the display there and take it home and know that that fish was two, three days old.
Speaker C:I mean, that these boats go out for eight to 12 days sometimes.
Speaker C:And you don't know if that fish was called seven days ago, eight days ago, and then how long was it to process it, you know, so that.
Speaker D:Connection to, like, the origin is clutch.
Speaker C:So knowing that that.
Speaker C:That honeycomb that we cooked with today was not processed at all.
Speaker C:You know, we talked about how it wasn't heated.
Speaker D:It wasn't.
Speaker C:There was nothing done to it.
Speaker C:It was put in a package, sealed, and delivered to my hand.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker C:I mean, when you eat it, you think about that, and it just makes it taste that Much better.
Speaker D:That is a.
Speaker D:And I'm curious from a culinary perspective, when you're serving guests, diners, guests, whatever.
Speaker D:I've never seen anybody interact with a garnish like they do with honeycomb.
Speaker D:And it's a lot of that, like, want to talk about educating and engaging consumers and guests.
Speaker D:For a wait staff to say, would you like a honeycomb on that?
Speaker D:What is a honeycomb?
Speaker D:Might come up, which gives you that.
Speaker D:That little door opens up.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:To educate.
Speaker D:When they're tasting it, the taste is different.
Speaker D:Well, that's a regenerative honeycomb.
Speaker D:That is the true taste of honey.
Speaker D:What you're getting in the store may or may not be that level of interaction.
Speaker D:Tableside is, I think, lost a lot, 1,000%.
Speaker D:So if we can play a role with chefs to reengage the consumer, the guest, the diner in something that they may not have seen, if they're an older generation, they'll start telling you stories of their youth.
Speaker D:It's bizarre.
Speaker D:Oh, my neighbor had one.
Speaker D:I was a kid, and all of a sudden the kid's storytelling comes up.
Speaker D:And I've watched a grandmother and a granddaughter in a coffee shop buy one, and the granddaughter had no clue what it was.
Speaker D:And the grandma started telling the stories of their youth.
Speaker D:And the grandeur asks the questions that most young kids ask, what is it?
Speaker D:What do you do with it?
Speaker D:Can you eat it?
Speaker D:How do you get the honey in there?
Speaker D:But it was mind boggling to see those just drastically different experiences with those that age demographic.
Speaker D:And we get asked, who's your demographic?
Speaker D:It's like, well, who's the demographic for a banana?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:We're a commodity.
Speaker D:And what are the uses for a banana?
Speaker D:Well, they're pretty limitless.
Speaker D:Same with honeycomb.
Speaker D:You can use it with fish.
Speaker D:You can use it on a salad, you can use it on a cocktail.
Speaker D:We haven't seen an end in sight, which is so weird.
Speaker D:It breaks everything I've known about business and cpg.
Speaker D:Just talk about quality.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:Talk about how you, how you pay your producers.
Speaker D:Talk about your impact on the earth and the ecosystem.
Speaker D:Draw the consumer into that story somehow, some way.
Speaker A:I agree.
Speaker A:Chef, you've studied commercial fishing in high school.
Speaker A:That's not typical.
Speaker A:I don't even heard of anything like that before.
Speaker A:Talk a little bit about that and how that kind of breadcrumbed your way into your chef life.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So it's not very typical and pretty much unheard of.
Speaker C:I started my ninth grade year of high school in Jacksonville at Fletcher And I remember my teacher coming in and putting a pamphlet down on the table and telling everybody, hey, this is an OJT program on job training.
Speaker C:You can go and be a plumber, electrician, things of that nature.
Speaker C:The pamphlet, I'm like, I'm not doing any of that.
Speaker C:And I flipped it upside down and threw it on the table.
Speaker C:On the very back, it said, commercial fishing.
Speaker C:And I, of course, it peaked my interest.
Speaker C:I was already fisherman, grew up fishing with my father.
Speaker C:And I picked up the pamphlet and asked teacher, I said, is this real?
Speaker C:And she said, yes.
Speaker C:So I took the opportunity, and I was bused my 9th and 10th grade year to Marine Science center in Mayport in Jacksonville.
Speaker C:And we Learned.
Speaker C:And then 11, 12th grade year, I drove there myself.
Speaker C:But we learned commercial vision and.
Speaker C:And we learned about boats and motors and the ocean and how to preserve the ocean.
Speaker C:We learned all about fish and different types of fish and how to clean fish and how to utilize every part of the fish.
Speaker C:It was really cool.
Speaker C:But I started working on day boats while I was out there.
Speaker C:So my 11th and 12th grade year in the summer, I worked on head boats and day boats.
Speaker C:And it was as a young man, I was making money.
Speaker A:I was out with a lot of.
Speaker C:People catching lots of fish, and I was in the ocean every day.
Speaker C:And that just was an amazing experience.
Speaker C:Your question was, how did that get me into the chef world?
Speaker C:I really enjoyed the fish.
Speaker C:I enjoyed, you know, coming home and creating dishes.
Speaker C:I was already working in restaurants part time as well, and I worked at one particular restaurant at the beach RPs, and I worked with some really talented cooks slash chefs.
Speaker C:And it was all about seafood.
Speaker C:The quality of the seafood there was bar none.
Speaker C:It was amazing to see somebody take a piece of Gruber and cut it a certain way and make it taste so amazing on a sandwich, or to take crab and stuff it and bake it with a little breadcrumb on top and to taste that flavor profile was just.
Speaker C:I mean, my mind was blown.
Speaker C:And I was 17, 18 years old, you know, and so I kind of really started getting into it.
Speaker C:And, you know, as I told you before, I was really into food when I was younger, for my grandparents, you know, always cooking in the kitchen, and then everything was from scratch, you know, so to.
Speaker C:To be involved in that environment at such an early age, I knew that that was my passion.
Speaker C:It was my love, and I was going to do something with it in my life, and here I am.
Speaker D:If we had more programs like that.
Speaker A:Now, I think we'd have a whole different generation of people.
Speaker C:A thousand percent.
Speaker C:Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker C:Know, and I, I feel I've got a, a daughter in, in high school right now.
Speaker C:And it's, you know, it's some of the things I hear, some of the things I see.
Speaker C:It's, you know, I mean, because let's face it, back in the day, we didn't have technology.
Speaker D:That distraction we just had today.
Speaker C:You know, there was no cell phone, there was no, you know, TV show that you ran home to watch.
Speaker C:It was, you were Outdoor Talk to us.
Speaker A:What's the biggest challenge in helping people to better understand what honey is?
Speaker A:Where it comes from?
Speaker A:Honeycomb.
Speaker D:I think that one of the bigger challenges is the honey industry as a whole has been pushed down so hard on the price that the perception is that honey is cheap and should be free.
Speaker D:And I say that because when we show up with real price of honey that's harvested properly, it's more expensive.
Speaker D:And certain consumers, I wouldn't say all by any means, but certain consumers think, well, why would I spend that much on a honeycomb?
Speaker D:What is it?
Speaker D:What do I do with it?
Speaker D:It's like those two, like unawareness of the category.
Speaker D:The price difference from a 3 cent an ounce liquid honey and a teddy bear and us is drastic.
Speaker D:But you're also not buying honeycomb as a sweetener.
Speaker D:You're buying it as a snack or a garnish.
Speaker D:And so that shift is what we're navigating right now.
Speaker D:So when you talk about challenges, it is the challenge that is it honey or is it honeycomb?
Speaker D:Are they one and the same?
Speaker D:I don't know.
Speaker D:I believe honeycomb is distinctly different than liquid honey because liquid honey has a process to get in the jar.
Speaker D:And where it loses nutritional benefits, it also has the ability for more fraud to enter the equation.
Speaker D:Honeycomb cannot be heated, cannot be blended.
Speaker D:It'll break it.
Speaker D:So like that singularity alone is what allows us to have that different conversation.
Speaker D:But it's still that.
Speaker D:Is it honey, is it comb?
Speaker D:What do you do with it?
Speaker D:That's the difficulty is just delineating what it even is.
Speaker A:The fact that they'll open a tomb in Egypt and they'll find a jar of 3,000 year old honey and it's still good.
Speaker A:That should be the biggest eye opener in the history of anything with food about how important it is to have such a product and to actually have beekeepers, to actually have apiaries, to actually put effort into universities and curriculum.
Speaker A:I don't know if there's anything else food wise that can do that?
Speaker D:I don't either.
Speaker D:That's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
Speaker D:But then, you know, we talk about in the culinary world challenge there is that a lot of chefs, when they first see the comb and Chef Josh, I'd love to get your perspective when you first see it, they start thinking menu cost or meal costs.
Speaker D:We're going to break a meal cost pretty quickly, depending on where you're at.
Speaker D:I mean, most places they don't think of it as an upsell or a garnish.
Speaker D:The would you like a honeycomb on that?
Speaker D:And I mentioned it earlier, the avocado is kind of a template for us.
Speaker D:The avocado was funky to eat.
Speaker D:They went bad quickly.
Speaker D:You almost cut yourself open in the thing and it was maybe four bucks for a slice on a taco 20 years ago.
Speaker D:And now it's honeycomb toast world.
Speaker D:So getting chefs to think differently about the ingredient and like, hey, this isn't something you want to tuck into the meal cost.
Speaker D:It's something you want to offer your guest as a point of engagement, a point of theater and a premium positioning.
Speaker D:Some of the consumer research we did early, early on was mind boggling that it was 65 and older, Midwest rural was our primary customer.
Speaker D:I would have told you all day, every day up until that point.
Speaker D:It was going to be millennial moms on the coasts.
Speaker D:Wasn't the case.
Speaker D:There was a remembrance of their childhood, the memory of a nostalgia play.
Speaker D:We had a cost conscious mother that was coming up, like statistically relevant in the data that, well, cost conscious at 699 to 999 retail does not.
Speaker D:I wouldn't have thought those words would come up.
Speaker D:But what we found when we dug deeper was that they were using it to put on toast and breakfast was exciting.
Speaker D:They'd put the honeycomb on a toaster waffle and the kids would go crazy about it for breakfast.
Speaker D:That's the kind of thing that I think has applicability in the food service world is you can take a very low cost dish like the salad chef.
Speaker D:It wasn't a ton of pricey ingredients in that thing.
Speaker D:You add the honeycomb and all of a sudden you're not only getting the premium on the salad itself, but you're also getting this kind of extra level of this premium garnish, this elevated garnish that drives the price even further and the customer doesn't bat an eye at it.
Speaker D:And that's where we're trying to navigate with Chefs is like, look, think of it as a tool in your toolkit and not something that's going to break the bank.
Speaker A:I think there's going to be a process to get the average chef to understand or have a desire to understand about this.
Speaker A:It's going to take time to educate the culinary community because they're beaten over the head on food costs 100%.
Speaker A:That's the first part.
Speaker A:The second part is honeycomb.
Speaker A:Even I'm not a young guy and I'm not an old guy, but I'm pretty, you know, over middle aged at this point.
Speaker A:I don't know that I've ever had honeycomb before.
Speaker A:I can't remember.
Speaker A:I know what it is.
Speaker A:I've seen it.
Speaker A:I don't think I ever had it until now.
Speaker A:And what was funny for me, you know, because I, you know, you sent me samples, I tried.
Speaker A:I was like, wow, this is really good.
Speaker D:What do I do with this waxy part?
Speaker A:And I had this conversation with Mike and John where we shot the documentary.
Speaker A:And John says, you eat it, man.
Speaker A:He goes, you just eat it.
Speaker A:It comes out.
Speaker A:Don't worry.
Speaker A:Go ahead.
Speaker A:It was something different for me.
Speaker A:It was completely off the wall for me.
Speaker A:But now I understand, number one, it really is healthy.
Speaker A:And it isn't something processed and it's not something like, you know, some of these big, you know, candy companies where all of what they're doing in our sweets and in the things that we're consuming in our beverages and all that stuff where it's terrible for you.
Speaker A:This is something completely different.
Speaker A:And guess what?
Speaker A:I pay for extra avocado.
Speaker A:I pay for extra bacon.
Speaker A:I pay for extra sides.
Speaker A:Why the hell wouldn't I want to pay a little bit extra for honeycomb?
Speaker A:Yeah, that.
Speaker A:It's not like we can make honeycomb.
Speaker D:People pull out their phones, take pictures on a comb.
Speaker D:They don't pull out their phones, take pictures of avocados and raspberries.
Speaker A:Well, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Speaker D:We do that.
Speaker D:We do that.
Speaker A:But when you're.
Speaker D:But yes, an average consumer, the average.
Speaker A:Diner, honeycomb in and of itself is super cool.
Speaker A:So people who actually are into photography, right.
Speaker A:Pop a clutch here, switch a gear.
Speaker A:People who are into photography and they look at textures and they look at the colors and they look at how lighting affects all of that.
Speaker A:Honeycomb is where it's at.
Speaker A:Like, it's, it's such a cool thing.
Speaker A:You know, John, when you shoot, when you've been shooting a little bit, you know, this honeycomb recently, when the Light hits.
Speaker A:Makes for a beautiful photo.
Speaker A:It reminds me of the caviar we did a few weeks ago with Parker.
Speaker A:The light hits it and it has this like glow and you see the color spectrum.
Speaker A:But then you have to know that that came from a little bee.
Speaker A:I mean, thousands of bees.
Speaker D:Yeah, tens of thousands.
Speaker A:But it's a.
Speaker A:But it's a bee.
Speaker A:Made we a human.
Speaker A:We can't make that.
Speaker D:Can't.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker D:People try.
Speaker A:True story.
Speaker A:And then.
Speaker A:And that's what you end up with, you know, in some of these cutesy little bottled products.
Speaker D:I'm curious when you're creating a menu or a meal and you're considering all the things you got to do, meal costs, you know, head counts, things like that, how much do things like theater, engagement, and like novelty and newness come into the equation?
Speaker C:Every component of the dish, I'm in 100% on it.
Speaker C:I think about the rice that's going on the dish.
Speaker C:I think about the vegetable that's going on the dish.
Speaker C:I think about the protein that's going on the dish and how I'm going to garnish it.
Speaker C:What's the garnish going to be, you know, and depending on who my consumer is, depending on where I'm at, depicts whether or not, you know, I can use this high end product or this high end product or the environment that I'm in now I'm price conscious, you know, and so I got to.
Speaker C:I got to consider every component that goes on the dish.
Speaker D:No, and that's where it's like, I'm still learning the culinary world, right?
Speaker D:Like what goes into earning our spot on the menu?
Speaker D:Like, what does the chef care about?
Speaker D:Obviously cost is going to be high on that care list.
Speaker D:The next thing down might be the way it looks.
Speaker D:We score high on that.
Speaker D:The next might be a regenerative thing.
Speaker D:Depending on who they.
Speaker D:If it's sweet green, they may care more about than others.
Speaker D:That, like, first time is where I'm like, it's one that we can't measure.
Speaker D:Which is kind of where I'm curious is where did that fall in, like in the hopper of creativity.
Speaker A:Food service sales, food service applications, products, establishments, all of that, they play together in a very unique way.
Speaker A:And it all depends upon the chef, how long they've been in this game.
Speaker A:It depends on the type of establishment, whether it's a bodega versus some elevated Michelin restaurant and everything in between versus a cafeteria at a corporation.
Speaker A:There's so many different things.
Speaker A:A senior living facility where maybe they might be food forward, but they still have to have a boundary.
Speaker A:So at the end of the day, every chef who works in the different segments of the food industry have different challenges that they have to, you know, tackle or deal with.
Speaker A:Dollars are always the elephant in the room.
Speaker A:No matter where you are, unless you're charging $90 a plate or $80 a plate or something, everybody else has to be in a special sandbox.
Speaker A:So as creative as he wants to be or anybody else, it changes the whole fabric.
Speaker A:I can't tell you how many times I've gone into a kitchen and I have some really interesting product, whatever it is, and I say, what do you think about this?
Speaker A:And they look at it, and you can see.
Speaker A:You can see the disappointment in their face because they want it.
Speaker A:They can't even entertain it.
Speaker A:And it turns into.
Speaker A:That looks great, man.
Speaker A:Just don't even tell me about it, because I can't.
Speaker A:I can't even.
Speaker A:I can't.
Speaker A:How much is that XYZ price?
Speaker A:Yeah, I can't just.
Speaker A:I don't want to see that because they can't Their hands are tied.
Speaker A:So it matters on how it's presented to them.
Speaker A:If they're in a place that you can upcharge and you can upsell and you can say, hey, this isn't part of your food cost.
Speaker A:This is something.
Speaker D:It's like a gravy.
Speaker A:Everything is a la carte.
Speaker A:I'm paying extra for mashed potatoes if I want it on my plate.
Speaker A:Okay, well, you know what?
Speaker A:I want extra bacon.
Speaker A:I'm paying for that.
Speaker A:Well, you want Honey Club, I'm going to pay for that.
Speaker A:So it shouldn't be really attached to your food cost.
Speaker A:That should be.
Speaker A:That should be on the.
Speaker A:On the periphery there.
Speaker A:Light draw.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker D:Very well said.
Speaker D:And that goes back to your sandbox comment.
Speaker D:Like, that's the sandbox.
Speaker D:Every chef has to work with it.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker D:And that's the consumer.
Speaker C:It's a matter of where you're at.
Speaker C:I know you're in a fine dining restaurant.
Speaker C:You have a lot more to play with.
Speaker A:So what's a fish that's going to actually go well with this honeycomb?
Speaker A:I would go ahead and say wahoo.
Speaker C:And I would do a raw wahoo with, like, a sesame honey ginger dressing and go over it.
Speaker D:Nailed it.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:A raw wahoo.
Speaker D:I'd take that all day because of the raw honey.
Speaker C:You take the raw fish and the.
Speaker A:Raw honey, and you marry them together.
Speaker A:It's the bee's knees, brother.
Speaker A:Talk about Mic drop.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Listen, you guys are freaking amazing.
Speaker A:Appreciate you both coming out.
Speaker A:How do we find you?
Speaker A:Douglas LinkedIn.
Speaker C: s Raggio, chef, Life Forever,: Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:Gen X in the house.
Speaker A:Listen, everybody, keep your ears open.
Speaker A:Stay tuned for Pass the Honey podcast.
Speaker A:That is.
Speaker A:That is coming to a Be near you, beehive near you.
Speaker A:And check out Hospitality Bites with Colleen Silk.
Speaker A:She's awesome.
Speaker A:The show is awesome.
Speaker A:And that is, of course, now housed under the Walk and Talk media umbrella.
Speaker A:People, watch out, because we're coming.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker A:We are coming.
Speaker A:John, as always, you did great.
Speaker A:And, you know, well, you know, it's nice.
Speaker A:We.
