My Food Job Rocks! Ep. 025 - A Food Career Around the USA with Russ Nishikawa, VP Business Development at SPI Group
Today’s guest is the Vice President of Business Development for a distributor/ supplier, SPI Group, Russ Nishikawa.
What SPI Group does is brokers deals with lesser known ingredients and markets them to customers. A specialized ingredient producer will make deals with distributors for them to market or sell their product. For example, I would have never known about a pea protein from Belgium if it wasn’t for the SPI Group.
You don’t hear much about these types of businesses in school, but they are all the rage in industry, especially if you deal with highly functional and trendy ingredients.
Anyways, I’ve known Russ Nishikawa for a couple of years in Northern California. He reminds me of my uncle to be honest.
About Russ NishikawaRuss has been involed in the growth of SPI Group for 25 years. He is involved in new ingredient business development with key customers and targeted market segments, working with new ingredient from new and existing suppliers and determining how applicable the product benefits are to each end product and customer, and maintaining a very technical approach to understanding the value of each ingredient to our customer's needs.
About SPI GroupSPI Group is a distributor of specialty ingredients to food, nutritional, and nutraceutical manufacturers in the Western United States and Canada.
Quality Ingredients Personal Service Logistical Solutions Technical Personnel
Key Takeaways- How Russ got his first job in Hawaii
- Why learning about people is more important than process and equipment
- How tricky it is to substitute cleaner ingredients
Humble Pie NCIFT New Professionals SPI Group Colorado Utah Clean Label Sodium Benzoate Lactic Acid Social Media MSG UC Davis Food Science Hawaii- Maui Papayas Punaynay IslandCommerce Wisconsin Learning more about People Formosa Food Ingredients New Zealand Milk Products New York Most Important Skill in the Industry: Empathy How to improve empathy: it’s about character, you’re trying to do the best for yourself and others Why Does Your Food Job Rock: It’s Part of Commerce Food Trends and Technologies: Clean Label GMO, Non-GMO Phosphates Spices and Extracts The Biggest Challenge the Food Industry needs to Face: Trust in the consumer and transparency We’re on the same side What’s one thing in the food industry you want to know more about?: How food interacts with each other Understanding process Inspiration: My Sister got me to look at food science Pilot Plant Most important ingredient: The people. Quote: Be The Light –Buddha Don’t be a downer Favorite Food: Poco Loco (might actually be El pollo loco) Poke QSR Advice for the Food Industry: Match your personality to the career you like For the Future: I’d like to build process lines to Food Banks
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices