Essential Ingredients Podcast

“It's a big undertaking when you start thinking about data and how you want it to move. But that foundational layer of data and getting that right internally is the first step whether you're a small business, or whether you're a large business.” —Liz Sertl Supply chain visibility refers to the ability to access accurate and real-time data across all processes within the supply chain, from raw material sourcing to the final delivery to the consumer. This allows them to proactively address issues and inefficiencies, better manage risks and disruptions, and meet evolving customer demands. When implemented effectively, visibility can help reduce costs, improve on-time delivery rates, strengthen customer relationships, and boost overall supply chain resiliency. This week, we hear from Liz Sertl, a seasoned supply chain leader passionate about enabling efficient and sustainable commerce through global standards. As Senior Director of Supply Chain Visibility at GS1 US, she's helping businesses of all sizes streamline operations and future-proof for compliance using foundational data standards. Listen in as Liz pulls back the curtain on the real-world impact of clean, shared supply chain data. Justine and Liz also discuss how even the smallest operations can start reaping rewards today, tips for getting supply chain-savvy without breaking the bank, food safety regulations every business needs to address, the simplest path to competitive advantage, and much more.    Meet Liz: Liz Sertl is the Senior Director of Supply Chain Visibility at GS1 US. She has over 15 years of experience in supply chain management and data quality in the consumer packaged goods industry, having previously worked at Anheuser-Busch and Coca-Cola. Liz is passionate about enabling efficient and interoperable supply chains through the use of global standards. At GS1 US, she leads initiatives to promote supply chain visibility and data sharing across industries. Liz enjoys educating others on how foundational standards can drive impactful results for businesses of all sizes. In her role, she aims to increase awareness of key issues like food safety compliance and sustainability in the supply chain.   LinkedIn Connect with GS1 US: Website  Facebook X LinkedIn YouTube   Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube Episode Highlights: 01:42 Supply Chain Efficiency and Data Quality  06:22 The GS1 Standard for Small Businesses 10:43 Supply Chain Tech and Its Impact on Businesses 14:47 Food Safety and Visibility  

“Soil health can be complicated but it's also super simple and something that everybody can participate in.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher Soil health is the foundation of our food systems and ecosystems. Yet many are disconnected from the living soil that sustains us. The soil is a complex web of microbial and ecological activity below our feet, working constantly to cycle nutrients, sequester carbon, and support plant life above and below ground. When soil health declines, it impacts water quality, biodiversity, our ability to grow nutritious food, and ultimately all living beings. In this episode, Justine interviews Sarah Wentzel Fisher about the transformative potential of getting more people involved in agriculture and stewarding soil health.  Sarah is the Executive Director of the Quivira Coalition and a regenerative farmer. Through her work with the Carbon Ranch Initiative, she aims to improve soil health on rangelands and educate farmers and ranchers on the importance of soil stewardship. Listen in as Justine and Sarah discuss the importance of soil health for functioning ecosystems and its central role in mitigating climate change, the impact of research in providing practical solutions, ways to inspire conversation around soil health, and more.    Meet Sarah:   Sarah has worked in food and agriculture planning for over a decade with a focus on supporting young and beginning farmers and ranchers. She was the editor of Edible Santa Fe from 2011 to 2017. From 2013 to 2015 she worked for the National Young Farmers Coalition as an organizer and is currently on the board of the Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance and the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. She is a committed champion of the local food movement and of resilient and regenerative agriculture. In her free time, you can find her feeding pigs, turkeys, and cows, checking the compost pile, or possibly weeding a patch of beans at Polk’s Folly Farm where she lives.   Website  Facebook X Instagram LinkedIn     Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube Episode Highlights: 02:21 Creative Conveing and Food Systems  06:27 Soil Health and Its Impact on Ecosystems  10:40 The Importance of Understanding Soil Health 15:03 How Soil Health Impacts Climate  

“My goal and still is, is to be able to create a business that's ethical from the farm to the end.” —Daniel Korson The emerging category of ethical vegan chocolate appeals to health-conscious consumers who demand transparency and sustainability in their treats. As demand grows for plant-based options produced with care and compassion, vegan chocolate represents an opportunity for small businesses to delight taste buds while upholding values from bean to bar. On this special Valentine's Day episode, Justine sits down with chocolatier Daniel Korson. Daniel is the Founder and President of Coracao Chocolate, an organic and fair-trade chocolate company based in California. After developing digestive issues as a teenager, Daniel was inspired to create clean, allergen-free treats and has grown Coracao into an award-winning brand known for innovative flavors and sustainable practices. Listen in as Justine and Daniel walk us through the process of crafting decadent treats, scaling production and ingredients, employing innovative practices like employee ownership programs and sustainable packaging, tempering chocolate, and maintaining high standards for organic ingredients and sustainability in the business.   Meet Daniel: Daniel Korson is the founder and owner of Coracao Chocolate, an organic and fair-trade chocolate company based in Berkeley, California. With over 15 years of experience in the specialty food industry, Daniel pioneered the category of clean, allergen-free chocolate. Prior to launching Coracao, Daniel worked as a pastry chef where he began experimenting with raw cacao ingredients. This sparked the idea to recreate nostalgic childhood treats that he could enjoy despite developing digestive sensitivities. Under Daniel's leadership, Coracao has grown into an award-winning brand distributed nationwide, known for unique fillings and a commitment to ethical sourcing from farm to factory. When he isn't developing new chocolate recipes or running the day-to-day operations, Daniel enjoys educating consumers and the trade about bean-to-bar production techniques. He also advocates for sustainability initiatives in packaging and farming practices. Daniel continues advancing Coracao's mission to spread health and joy through thoughtfully crafted confections.   Website  Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube Episode Highlights: 03:15 Tempering Chocolate 08:17  How Employee Ownership Works 12:17 Sourcing Quality Ingredients 17:37 Ethical From Farm to End  

 “You have to give something away to get someone in.” —Kourtney Jason   For any small business, getting noticed isn't easy. Between all the noise online and in their communities, it's hard for owners to get their message heard. Hence, increasing visibility through smart PR and marketing can really help spread the word. When more potential customers learn about what the business has to offer, it leads to more opportunities for sales, growth, and success. This week, Justine chats with Kourtney Jason about getting publicity for small businesses and authors. Kourtney is the Co-Founder of Pacific & Court, a boutique book publicity and digital marketing firm based in Brooklyn. She helps small businesses and independent authors and publishers to expand their media outreach through various digital marketing services. Tune in as Justine and Kourtney discuss strategies for restaurants and startups to create buzz, the importance of following up, and tips for pitching media effectively. They also outline the PR process for hiring an agency and managing expectations as well as insights on digital advertising and maximizing publicity opportunities.   Meet Kourtney:  Kourtney Jason is the President and Co-Founder of Pacific & Court. With more than 13 years of experience as a publicist, she has worked with and represented celebrities, world-renowned chefs, and bestselling authors. She led the in-house publicity departments at Ulysses Press and Time Inc. Books, and further honed her strategic communications skills at Bread & Butter and Smith Publicity agencies.    Since its launch in 2021, P&C’s publisher clients have included Ulysses Press, KeyPress Publishing, Jesse B. Creative, The Collective Book Studio, Rocky Nook, Dzanc Books, and more. She’s secured coverage for clients in top-tier national media that includes the TODAY show, Associated Press, People magazine, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, Oprah Daily, Salon, Reader’s Digest, and much more.    Her past work includes high-profile authors such as country music icon Martina McBride, actress Valerie Bertinelli, chef Todd Richards, TODAY’s Siri Daly, New York Times bestselling authors Syd and Shea McGee (of Studio McGee) among others. She is the author of five non-fiction books, including Lights Camera Booze: Drinking Games for Your Favorite Movies, which was included in the Academy Awards swag bags. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.   Website  Facebook X Instagram LinkedIn Pinterest     Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube Episode Highlights: 02:41 People and Perspectives 06:39 PR Strategies for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs 11:17 The Importance of a Well-Written Pitch   16:03 The Importance of Building Long-Term Relationships with Professionals 20:08 How to Make Advertising Less Intimidating  

 “You don't start by showing them everything; you start with what's that one thing that matters most. But then through that journey at the end, you make available everything that may matter to them.” —Aditya Varanasi Digital advertising has become vital for businesses as consumers spend more time online. Advanced tools now allow advertisers to precisely target audiences across platforms based on detailed data. For startups and small businesses especially, digital provides an affordable and measurable way to efficiently build awareness, engage customers, and boost sales. In this episode, Justine Reichman interviews Aditya Varanasi to discuss effective yet affordable advertising strategies for startups and small businesses.  Aditya is the founder and CEO of Awarity, a digital advertising platform that helps small businesses efficiently build brand awareness. With over a decade of experience in marketing, he was able to make targeted and data-driven advertising affordable and accessible for all businesses. Listen in as they explore the challenges of building brand awareness with limited budgets, when digital advertising makes sense, how to determine the budget and target the right audience, how targeted digital ads can help businesses stretch their dollars further, actionable tips on crafting clear messaging, consistency, analyzing campaign performance, and allowing time for behaviors to change, grassroots marketing alternatives, and how to amplify their message in a way that makes sense for their goals and budget.   Meet Aditya:  Aditya Varanasi is the founder and CEO of Awarity, a digital advertising platform that helps small and mid-sized businesses maximize the impact of their marketing budgets. With over 15 years of experience in brand marketing and advertising, Varanasi previously led brands at Frito-Lay and worked as the CEO of a startup funded by private equity. He holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Varanasi founded Awarity to make world-class advertising accessible and effective for all businesses. Under his leadership, Awarity has grown to serve thousands of clients across industries and helped boost their sales and brand awareness through targeted digital campaigns. Website  Facebook LinkedIn     Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube Episode Highlights: 01:52 Advertizing Challenges and Strategies for Startups 08:32 How Advertizing Impacts ROI 12:03 Marketing Strategies and Agency Costs 18:26 Aligning Goals with Advertising Strategies 22:30 Simple and Consistent Advertising   

“What we needed was the diversity of what nature provides, we needed to get better nutrition to more people… not in the big corporate way, but doing something different than anything that we've done before.” —Todd Rands   With sugar consumption linked to health issues like obesity and diabetes, consumers are looking for healthier options that allow for moderation without compromise. Innovation in natural low-calorie sweeteners holds promise for addressing this need and empowering personal choices.  Led by CEO Todd Rands, ELO Life Systems is developing sustainable, natural ingredients by engineering plant biofactories. With decades of experience in molecular biology, agriculture, and venture capital, Todd's vision is for ELO to make healthier, plant-based products accessible to all through agricultural innovation. Join in as Justine and Todd explore ELO's research process, partnerships with major brands, goals of making plant-based ingredients widely accessible, and leveraging molecular farming to revolutionize global agriculture and food production.   Meet Todd: A seasoned life-sciences executive, Todd Rands has more than 25 years of scientific, legal, and business leadership at Fortune 500 companies, venture capital-backed startups, and top-tier law firms. With Elo’s advanced technology and a world-class team of innovators, Todd brings a singular focus to making everyday foods consumers love more nutritious and better for the planet.   Website  X LinkedIn     Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube   Episode Highlights: 02:10 Reimagining the Food System with Cutting-Edge Tech  06:58 A Natural Alternative to Sugar 13:13 Molecular Farming for a Healthier, More Sustainable, and More Affordable Food 19:22 Sugar Alternatives and Their Health Impacts   

“Food as your medicine is anything that's not processed. These are things that we should be eating [because they] prevent you from having to take drugs. So if you're interested in health, you should be eating holistically in that regard.” —Kevin Bressani Your best self starts on the plate! The food we put on our plates each day has a profound impact on our health and well-being. Yet in our fast-paced world, it's easy to lose sight of how the small daily choices around what we eat can nourish our minds and bodies. During his travels abroad, Healthy Roots Chef Kevin Bressani was exposed to permaculture and the connection between soil health, biodiversity, and nutrition. This experience brought him to an awareness of how this impacts the whole food production process, and ultimately the health of the consumers. In this conversation, Chef Kevin shares insights into how eating for optimal health starts on the plate by cooking in tune with the seasons from sustainable, organic sources. Justine and Chef Kevin also delve into how prioritizing whole, minimally processed foods and supporting local farms through our shopping decisions can help optimize wellness from the ground up. Tune in to learn practical strategies for making meals that not only taste delicious but also care for people and the planet. Meet Kevin:  Chef Kevin Bressani has always been passionate about food and nutrition. As a young kid, he became interested in cooking by watching great chefs such as Jacques Pepin and Julia Child on television. This interest sparked a desire to work in various restaurants and to travel around the world to places like Australia where he worked and learned on organic and biodynamic farms. Kevin also traveled to Belize to study the natural healing power of plants and herbs with traditional Mayan healers. Through these adventures, he became inspired to nourish his community by creating healthy meals.    In 2009, he enrolled in the Natural Chef program at Bauman College in Berkeley, California.  He polished his culinary skills and expanded his knowledge of therapeutic cooking at Bauman College and an internship at Three Stone Hearth, a community supported kitchen in Berkeley, CA.  Chef Kevin believes that food is a powerful medicine and a vital component in our own longevity.  As a personal chef, his cooking philosophy emphasizes the use of whole, local, and organic foods to provide every cell in the body with the vital nutrients and minerals needed to stay healthy and prevent disease.   Website  LinkedIn     Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube   Episode Highlights: 01:30 Food Choices and Seasonal Eating  05:59 Personalized Meal Planning and Holistic Health  11:13 Private Chef Services 15:59 Evolving a Food Business with a Focus on Healthy Products  

“We're doing some work, but not enough work. We need to move away from just talking about our impact, and we need to actually start making an impact.” —Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli Digital tools hold great potential to transform waste management strategies. By tracking waste data and providing actionable insights, new technologies can optimize diversion efforts and maximize recycling rates. This revolution in waste analytics promises to make resource recovery vastly more efficient and sustainable. Waste Administration and Tracking Software (WATS) is a waste management software company co-founded by Meredith Dannenberg. It provides tools to help businesses track, measure, and reduce their waste streams like trash, recycling, compost, and e-waste.  Listen in as Meredith shares insights about digitizing waste data and processes, understanding local composting guidelines, choosing a co-founder wisely, addressing the issue of food loss, and focusing on action over just measuring impact.    Meet Meredith:  Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli built services and operations as Exec Director of Common Ground Compost LLC from 2017-2022. She sits on the US Composting Council board of directors and was a founding member of the New York City Microhaulers and Processors Trade Association. She believes that materials literacy and upstream/downstream supply chain transparency are foundational building blocks of the circular economy. Meredith is a TRUE Zero Waste Advisor.   Website  Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube   Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube Episode Highlights: 03:48 Waste Reduction and Entrepreneurship  09:26 Recycling Best Practices  16:03 Streamlining Waste Management with Digital Tools  22:01 Co-Founding a Software Company  29:13 Addressing Food Loss Across the Supply Chain     

“We are more microbes than we are human cells. And it's the only alien thing that's in our body that we have to form a unity with in order to enjoy phenomenal health.” —Natasha Trenev   Probiotics are live microorganisms that can enhance digestive health when consumed in adequate amounts. Cutting-edge research continues to reveal exciting new ways specific probiotic strains can promote a healthy immune response and reduce inflammation throughout the entire body. As the gut microbiome plays a vital role in overall wellness, maintaining a diverse population of beneficial bacteria through probiotic intake is crucial, but only if done the right way.     Joining us for the premiere episode of Season 8 is probiotic pioneer Natasha Trenev, a pioneer in the fields of fermented foods and probiotics, introducing these concepts over 40 years ago. As founder and president of Natren Probiotics, she continues her mission to educate on gut health and choose probiotic strains that support the immune system.   Listen in as Natasha provides a historical perspective on how our understanding of gut health and functional foods has evolved. She details early studies on probiotics and women's health as well as controversial topics like soy milk, kombucha, and raw foods consumption based on her decades of research and experience.    Justine and Natasha also share important factors to consider when choosing a probiotic supplement and practical advice on reintroducing foods and incorporating fermented options like homemade yogurt into our diet.   Meet Natasha:  Probiotic pioneer, Natasha Trenev, has significantly contributed to the evolution of the probiotics industry. Prior to her work in the field, consumers had very limited knowledge of the supplement and its many benefits. Natasha's extensive experience and knowledge of the industry began with her family's 750-year history of producing the most beneficial yogurt prized by the royal family of Yugoslavia.    After graduating from UCLA in 1970, a decade of research led to Natasha's development of the first revolutionary method of producing an effective and scientifically validated single-strain probiotic bacteria product. Her efforts helped to establish the entire probiotics category in the world! Website  Facebook X Instagram LinkedIn YouTube     Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube Episode Highlights: 01:42 Gut Health and Holistic Approach to Health 06:28 Research Studies 12:26 Probiotics and Gut Health 17:55 A Focus on Safety and Effectiveness  24:06 The Impact of Diet on Overall Health   

 “It's a business, but more than anything, it's a community, and it's a movement.” —Marika Messager The level of consciousness profoundly shapes a leader’s effectiveness. Self-awareness of one's blindspots, biases, and triggers is key to leading with wisdom, empathy, and care for all people affected by decisions. This approach benefits every member of the company as it centers around long-term well-being over temporary gains. In this episode, Justine is joined by Marika Messager, a researcher and teacher of consciousness, and Founder of Conscious Leadership, an organization that helps develop conscious leaders capable of creating systemic change.  Tune in as Justine and Marika explore how unconscious biases, emotional triggers, and disconnect from one's emotions can negatively impact leadership, tools for cultivating presence, ways to create a more inclusive culture, and strategies for managing energy states.   Meet Marika:  Marika Messager is the founder of Conscious Leadership, an organization dedicated to researching unconscious behaviors and toxic patterns. Through her work, Marika helps individuals and organizations uncover the root causes of unhealthy behaviors and transform themselves. With years of experience, she guides her clients on their journey of self-awareness and emotional mastery to become conscious leaders. Marika is passionate about creating systemic change by developing healthy behaviors in individuals, families, and professional circles.   Website  Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube     Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube Episode Highlights: 00:56 The Connection Between Consciousness and Leadership 03:07 Leadership Core Values 09:18 Energy Management and Emotional Regulation in Business 16:19 The Importance of Cultural Competence 19:11 Conscious Leadership and Inclusion