November 25, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode, Furqan speaks with Dylan McDonnell — founder & CEO of Foodini, an AI-powered platform fixing one of the most overlooked problems in restaurants: ingredient transparency.
Diagnosed with celiac disease at age 10, Dylan spent years navigating a dining world that wasn’t built for people like him.
Instead of accepting it, he turned that frustration into a company now helping restaurants, stadiums, and foodservice groups protect diners, reduce mistakes, and unlock new revenue.
We talk about:
• Why allergens and intolerances are a massive market restaurants still ignore• The hidden operational costs of “I think it’s gluten-free”• How Foodini uses AI + dietitians to map every ingredient in every dish• What new regulations in the US and EU mean for the future of menus• Why diners are demanding personalization — and how restaurants can adapt• The truth about food allergies, tech fear, and the rising “food as medicine” movement• How chefs can turn personal struggles into actual food innovation
This is a conversation about lived experience → innovation, the future of personalized dining, and how technology can make the food system safer without replacing humans.
🎧 Fugitive Chefs is your window into alternative culinary careers and bold food innovation. New episodes every Tuesday.
👉 Follow, rate us on Spotify, subscribe & comment on YouTube, and share with someone who dreams of cooking differently.
🎙 Hosted by Furqan from the Fugitive Chefs Podcast
📸 Furqan’s Instagram: https://bit.ly/4dtiyTv🎧 Podcast Instagram: https://bit.ly/43ndATO🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3F6j25A🍏 Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/43vBtbT
🔗 Connect with DylanFoodini: https://foodini.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-mcdonnell/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of
Fugitive Chefs Podcast, the showwe where we talk to chefs and
food innovators who have steppedoutside the traditional kitchens
to build something more personal, more creative, more
impactful. Today's guest is Dylan.
Dylan McDonald, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks so much for having me, great to be here.
And Dylan, what I've heard aboutyou is you're a founder and CEO
(00:20):
of Foudini. From what I've read and, and
studied about it, it's a, it's aplatform tracking one of the
biggest challenges in the diningindustry today, the whole idea
of ingredient transparency. I think that's something we as
chefs somehow end up like missing out on it if if it's not
just for compliance. And from your story, you're
somebody who has been diagnosed with with the celiac disease as
a child. And what I've seen is, like
(00:42):
Dylan has spent years navigatinga dining world that wasn't
really built for people like him.
And that person frustration is what you have used as a full
fuel behind building Foudini. It's a company that helps diners
and restaurants bridge the gap between food safety, trust and
technology. And this episode, basically what
I want to focus with you, Dylan,is about how can somebody use
their lived experiences into food innovation?
(01:04):
So food innovation doesn't always have to start from a big
tech tool or a big expensive toythat chefs are playing with, but
something personal. How can you turn that into
innovation and how tech can alsobe a part which can save our
relationship between food and diners?
So before we deep dive into all of that, Dylan, tell us about
yourself. Like tell us in the beginning,
what was your earliest connection to food?
(01:26):
Has it been profession? Has it been home?
Has it been studies? What got you here?
Yeah, well, firstly, that was a great introduction.
You, you summed it up very succinctly, very impressive.
So yeah, my, my quick background, you can probably
hear a bit of an accent. I'm Irish, although I was born
in Philly, so sneaky American, but, but, but grew up in
(01:46):
Ireland. And so my, my early connection
with food was, was actually mainly negative, right.
And it stands back to what you mentioned about celiac.
So I was diagnosed celiac when Iwas 10 years old after a few
years being quite sick. So this is kind of a time when
now it's one of the first thingsdoctors think of if people have
(02:07):
certain health issues or gut health issues or anything
related to food. 20 odd years ago, 25 years ago, that wasn't
really the case. It was still, you know, it was a
lot more unknown at the time, let's put it that way.
And so, yeah, for from four or five years, I was quite sick all
the time. They didn't know what was wrong
with me. You know, my poor parents were
feeding me like the best of homemade brown bread.
(02:29):
But of course, ironically, that was making me sicker and sicker,
and they just didn't know. So, you know, when I finally got
diagnosed and just realized, well, the solution here is a
gluten free diet, there was a lot of relief in terms of, OK,
well, at least we know what's making me sick and that
shouldn't happen anymore. But I suppose the next step was,
OK, well, what is this and how do I navigate it?
(02:50):
And that was a huge challenge. And both in terms of, you know,
eating at home, in terms of eating out, in terms of
everything really. And my mom also just to answer
your question, my mom owned a restaurant in Ireland for 20
years. So, you know, I definitely, I
grew up in and around that spaceand obviously understanding the
(03:11):
challenges in in running a hospitality business of any
description and margins being sotight and, and you know, it's a
tough business. So I feel like and will come to
it. But I definitely had exposure to
to kind of both sides of the coin growing up in terms of, you
know, food struggles, but also restaurant and and what a tough
business that is. But to kind of finish off the
(03:34):
journey, I was a corporate lawyer by trade, so not in the
food world whatsoever. Yeah, no, didn't study food in
university. Didn't you know other than
working in the family restaurant, you know, wasn't
really exposed to to food in a massive way and was in law,
corporate law and that journey, you know, I was kind of worked
(03:56):
with a lot of the global tech companies, the Apples,
Facebooks, Googles of the world.That journey took me to
Australia. I lived in Sydney for a few
years kind of still moved in my capacity as a lawyer.
But while there I started Foudini.
And again, the angle was to solve for the problem I had
myself, which was dining out with a dietary restriction and,
and trying to under. I just couldn't understand why
(04:18):
it was still so difficult. Like, why was I still going to
restaurants? They didn't have the information
I needed, or they were giving methe wrong information, or they'd
serve me the wrong food and I'd be sick for a week afterwards.
Like I was like in, you know, and, and in this era, they
should no longer be the case. Why is it still the case?
And what can I do to solve it? And that's kind of where Houdini
was born from. Crazy.
And, and how did you like, I mean, I would like to know,
(04:39):
like, from your mother's point of view for people working in
that family restaurant point of view, was this at that point,
was this something new to them? Did they know about celiac
disease as such? And how did they see you as
somebody who works in this environment where you can't
really? I don't think food professionals
are very big fans of having allergens or intolerances.
How was that exchange? Yeah.
(05:00):
Well, like my. I mean, how do I answer that
question? It was new to all of us in the
family 100%. Like this was not something that
my parents or you know, most people honest had come across at
the time. Now today everyone knows someone
who's gluten free. Like literally it's so
prevalent. But back then it really wasn't.
And so there was a lot of education, a lot of learning
(05:24):
that was done. And mom opened a restaurant good
few years after I was diagnosed as well.
And so it wasn't, you know, it wasn't like we had a family
restaurant business prior to that, that this impacted.
But what it did impact is that we were one of the, you know,
rural Ireland, but we were one of the first restaurants to have
like gluten free bread offeringsand like to be aware of it as a,
(05:45):
as a facility when, you know, guests were coming in.
So it definitely helps the othergluten free people in the area,
that's for sure. Yeah, and, and what's what's at
that point your approach to because I've, I've heard a lot
of theories about I don't know how much of it is true.
I think you're the person who would know more about as
somebody who lived with it. I saw this documentary.
It's it's a book actually by Michael Pollan called Cooked
(06:07):
Long, Long Time Ago. And then he explains how, I
mean, his theory is how I do notknow if it's theory of fact.
First of all, let me clear that that gluten intolerance was born
because many countries, I mean, America especially introduced
super bread. And then super bread came with a
lot of things which are not wheat, and that's how our body
started kind of building this. Yeah, annoyance for things which
(06:28):
are not V They're just like emulsifier stabilizers.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, it's a great, it's a great
actually point. It's interesting.
There's a lot of data about different food allergies around
the world. So obviously gluten free and
Celiac's the one that's prevalent to me.
Funnily enough, Italy has the highest head of highest rate of
celiac disease per head of capital in the world.
Ireland is number 2 and, and theone of the reasons our
(06:51):
hypothesis around that I've heard actually stems back to the
potato famine. So they reckon that when a few,
100 years ago the potato famine came and wiped out the potato
crop and, and you know, you know, a lot of Irish people died
at that time as part of that. And then we started importing
wheat to make up for it and to start, you know, eating that we
genetically developed a higher intolerance to wheat and gluten
(07:16):
than, you know, a lot of other countries around the world.
So that's one theory I've heard.But I've absolutely heard
similar that the US, you know, food quality and ingredients in
US definitely contribute to a lot of it in the United States.
And just to come back to question you, you mentioned
earlier and you mentioned about,you know, a lot of restaurants,
you know, seeing people with food allergies as as an
(07:37):
annoyance. And there is definitely I've
come across that many times. I think there's sometimes
certain restauranteurs who thinkthat these are just people who
are trying to be difficult or who are, you know, one in 1000
and, you know, we don't really need to cater for them.
But that was one of the other, Isuppose, big aha moments for me
was when I dug into just how many people are impacted by this
(07:58):
problem because you kind of think it's you and your own
little bubble and a few other people.
But in the United States, 33 million Americans have a
diagnosed food allergy. So that's about one in 10
diagnosed food allergy. Then you have another 50 million
Americans who have a food intolerance.
That means they have a negative reaction to the food, but it's
not technically an allergy, a medical allergy.
(08:18):
And then you have another 70 million Americans who fall into
the bracket of a preference, vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo,
low FODMAP, low carb, etcetera. So it's actually a huge, huge,
huge market in terms of the amount of people who need to or
want to understand what is in their food to ascertain if it is
suitable for them based on theirpersonal medical or lifestyle
(08:41):
requirements. And so for restaurants, you
know, and I think this has become clear over the last
decade, but they no longer really are in a position to
ignore this market segment or treat them as an annoyance
because you're losing so much revenue in such a huge market
segment if you do. Definitely.
And what was your first reactionto when you said, you know, with
(09:02):
the experience that you ordered stuff that you did not get or
people didn't really get the intensity or grasp the
understanding of what a celiac disease is?
Was was your thinking that thesepeople who are serving me
something are ignorant or are they not educated enough?
Like, what was your first? Yeah.
Why was it happening to you, youthink?
No. And I think it's a, it's a very
good question because to answer it, I have to say that I have,
(09:25):
we've a ton of empathy for the restaurant industry in trying to
deal with this situation. It's not like restaurants are
the bad guys and consumers are the good guys.
Like this is, it's a really hardthing to do, especially for
smaller businesses. You know, it's, it's, it's not
like there's this data layer that you can just tap into to
pull this data. It hasn't really existed to
(09:47):
date. And so it's actually quite a
tough exercise for a restaurant manually themselves to do this.
But the reality is when you don't do the exercise and you
don't give the staff a resource to answer the questions that
consumers ask, they're powerless.
Like how if I'm a waiter and I haven't been trained on whether
there's peanuts in all of the menu items, how am I going to
(10:08):
answer the question when a concern, when a customer asked
me, I can't either say I don't know or, you know, I, you know,
obviously go into the kitchen and try and speak with the chef
and figure it out that way and start looking at the back of
packets and blah, blah, blah. And, or which is what happens.
Unfortunately, a lot of the timeon due to a lack of training,
staff don't realize the seriousness of getting this
(10:29):
wrong. And so you get the dreaded, I
think, I think it's gluten free.I don't think it contains nuts.
And that's when you know they don't know.
And that's when you have to decide, OK, do I risk it or or
do I insist on no, no, you either I have to leave now or I
need you to go and confirm this for 100%.
(10:49):
And the difference for me as a celiac, you know, I'll get sick
if I eat the wrong thing. But someone who's anaphylactic
or has like another peanut or egg or or dairy allergy, when
it's anaphylactic, like, that's life and death.
Literally, Yeah. And so the margin for error just
isn't there for the most part. I don't think it's out of
Vadnais. I just think it's out of a lack
of a process internally in the restaurant, a lack of training
(11:12):
and a lack of documentation. And didn't was there something
specific that happened, a specific experience that
happened for you where you felt like not just observing the
problem or like thinking the work around it, but where you
felt that, OK, I have to contribute to to this change or
there is something specific I need to that happened?
And then you said OK you need I need to step into this to solve.
It, I think it was a build up. It was it, it wasn't like there
(11:32):
was one major incident. It was a culmination of a lot of
small incidents over a long time.
It's culminating in me being like, how is this still the way?
This is resulting in me doing research into why is it this
way? And I think it was when I went
and, and looked at the data in terms of the numbers of, of
consumers who have the problem and then spoke to a lot of them.
(11:53):
I like while I was still practicing as a lawyer and, and
doing my market research and just speaking to mothers of kids
with food allergies and people with these problems and being
like, how do you deal with this?Is this a real problem for you?
Like how big of a problem and continuing to get back.
This is a huge problem. There is no solution.
It's a nightmare. It impacts me every day, every
meal. Like sometimes we don't dine out
(12:13):
anymore because we don't feel safe.
Like I'm terrified for my teenager who's going out in the
world, whether they, you know, are able to fend for themselves.
It's, it's life and death for, you know, it was just this
constant onslaught of feedback from, from such a huge segment
of, of the population that I waslike, OK, well, whether I'm the
right person to solve this or not, I don't know.
(12:34):
But it, it feels like a worthwhile cause.
And I'm going to dedicate as much time as I can to see if I
can figure it out. Yeah.
And, and what is this that you have like found as a gap where
you fit in? Because of course, as you said,
I mean, it's also a, it's also commercially smart idea for
restaurants to be, to be, to be inclusive of all kinds of
(12:54):
allergies and tolerances. And then there is the food
companies producing the gluten free range of things.
There's government making regulations for these kind of
things. Which gap did you see that you
said after your market research this is the one I can fill And
what are you contributing over there?
Yeah. So just to explain how we work.
So we work with restaurants and food service companies.
So we work with restaurants, hotels, stadiums, schools,
(13:17):
universities and any facility that serves food we can work
with. And essentially what we do is we
take all of their existing menu data and we tag it accurately
with the correct ingredients, allergens and dietaries.
So typically, and I know you have a lot of restaurant or you
know, folk listening so that they'll, they'll resonate with
this. We'll take your menu data from
(13:37):
typically your POS, We'll take your recipe data typically from
an inventory or a recipe management system.
But again, we work with a lot ofsmall businesses where it's on
an Excel sheet or handwritten orwhat have you.
And then we also take your product data, we plug in with
all the kind of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, So
we can, you know, get the exact SKU number as well.
And we aggregate all of that data using our kind of AI
(14:00):
solution. We also have a team of
dietitians who who kind of work as part of this process as well.
But essentially what we end up with is a complete insight into
every ingredient in every menu item and every corresponding
allergen and dietary for that menu item.
And what that back end data set allows us to do is power a
(14:24):
personalized menu experience forthe consumer.
So typically consumers will walkinto a restaurant we work with,
there'll be a QR code on the menu saying food allergies,
dietary needs, scan here. There'll be a button on the
website in the menu section, allergy dietary menu.
When they scan or click, it brings up a web app experience.
So don't need to download an app, it's a URL experience.
(14:45):
They create straight away a dietary profile, choosing from
150 different diets and allergens.
So gluten, nuts, keto, vegan, save and instantly the menu auto
customizes to them. Here's what you can eat, here's
what, here's what you can eat with a modifier and what that
modifier is. And here's what you can't eat
and why because it contains X&Y ingredients that are baked in
(15:06):
and can't be removed. So it's a completely
personalized menu product based on the dietary profile of the
consumer. And what we've seen is kind of
answered. That's the cut product, right?
And what we've seen as a result of that, to answer the second
part of your question is, and the first I've already alluded
to, you've 173,000,000 Americans, for example, who make
(15:29):
dining decisions based on their dietary preferences.
If the consumer doesn't understand or trust that there
is an item for them at your restaurant, they will not come.
So not only are you losing that consumer, you also lose their
friends, their family, their coworkers, all of the people
that they normally die dine with.
And we call that the veto vote. We can't organize the group
(15:52):
lunch at somewhere where Dylan the Celia can't eat up.
So not only is it a big revenue loss, but it's also a massive
revenue opportunity for those restaurants that do do this
correctly and publish this this information talk consumers and
put in their hands. That's number one.
And the second, I'm sorry, the second-half of that is there is
no one more loyal than a food allergy customer.
(16:13):
They find it so hard to find places that they like and that
they trust that once they do, they just keep going back again
and again and again and again and again.
So again, big revenue opportunity.
Number 12 is operational efficiencies.
We see a about a 60% reduction in the number of questions being
asked to staff who use our technology.
And not only is that obviously saving on labor costs, you know,
(16:34):
line management, blah, blah, blah, but what that also results
in is a massive reduction in mistakes. 54% of all mistakes
that happen in restaurants around food allergies happen
after the staff get notified of the allergy.
And So what that tells you is the system is broken.
It tells you human error is whatgets it wrong almost all the
time. Back to what we're talking about
(16:55):
the dreaded, I think take that out of play.
Put a documented single source of truth in front of the
consumer that they can access themselves and, and, and take
that pressure off your wait staff who might have started
yesterday and be casual part time for being an expert on
every ingredient in every allergen and every menu item,
which is virtually impossible outside of maybe super high and
(17:17):
fine dining where there's, you know, extremely well trained.
Yeah. And then the Third Point is
data. We can tell our restaurants that
last month in X location you had1000 dietary profiles created,
40% were gluten free, 25% were vegan, 10% with keto.
You only have one keto option onyour menu.
If you swap out this ingredient and these four items, they would
(17:38):
all become keto. That could drive your bottom
line by XY. So from menu optimization
standpoint and just understanding your consumers and
marketing efforts as well that that consumer dietary profile
is, is extremely valuable to ourpartners.
No, definitely. I mean, it's brilliant, all that
you're saying. And I feel like it's, it's, it's
like all brilliant ideas. I think it's like something so
obvious because what you've doneis basically put the put the
(18:00):
power in both sides of the of the table of the diner.
Also the the person managing therestaurant and the chef behind
the behind the screen who's building it.
So you there's no chance for a mistake because you have not
left room for assuming that somebody who's catering to you
will know exactly all these diets, what they mean and what
these complex words entail at the end of the day.
And I feel, I mean, what you explained today is a very
(18:21):
multifaceted operation. I think there's a lot of back
end behind it. As you said, you have you, you
have the dietitians, you have the whole data experts behind
it. But what were the early days
like? What are the first few
challenges you had when buildingthis?
Was it more like convincing the possibility of a tool like this?
Was it more like finding people resourceful to say, help you the
tech side of things? Oh, man, yeah.
It was very manual. If we, if we were still doing
(18:43):
now what we were doing at the start, we would not have a
company that that could grow because you know, it's, it's
until you kind of roll up your sleeves and like, you know,
really work with restaurants to understand why is this so
difficult? You can't understand, you know,
it becomes clear quickly why this isn't already wide stream
and it's because it's hard. And as I kind of alluded to
(19:05):
earlier, there's not this magic data set that exists that
enables this. And we have to we essentially
are this aggregator that sits inthe middle of all of these
different players. And we need all of them and all
of their data and the restaurantbuy in to be able to do what we
do. And like again, we, we're here
to make this super easy and simple for restaurants.
(19:27):
So for restaurants do by themselves.
And let me let me preface this by saying what I say to all
restaurants when it comes to this space #1 make sure you
invest in food allergy training.So put food in into one side.
Get it's not that expensive. Get your staff trained on food
allergy. Food allergy matters.
It could literally be the difference between one of your
staff accidentally sending someone into anaphylactic shock
(19:48):
and not. Which not only legal risk for PR
and brand risk, it's just not that expensive to invest in.
In food allergy training number 1 #2 document your your
ingredients and allergens. If you don't want to use a
solution like Foudini, and you'drather, you know, do it in a
binder, on a piece of paper, on a spreadsheet, or whatever it is
that you know. You make sense for you, that's
(20:09):
fine, but if you do not have that source of truth for your
staff to find a way to rely on answer questions, you are
opening yourself up for so many problems and issues.
Again, think about it logically.If it's not documented, how are
they going to answer the question?
And if they do try to then figure it out by, you know,
looking at the back of the pack and Bubba, that's where they
(20:30):
miss things like, but was it cooked in butter?
Maybe the maybe the the product itself doesn't have dairy on the
label, but it could have been cooked in butter, which now puts
dairy in it, which now makes it an allergic dish for that
customer. And those are the things that
staff often don't think of on the fly in a busy restaurant
environment when there is, you know, tables shouting at them
and waiting for food and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
(20:51):
Like, again, these are the high stress and high pressure moments
that result in mistakes being made by staff because they, you
know, they're not thinking clearly and true at all.
Again, have something they can refer to as a document.
And of course we then as Houdinido believe that you should also
put this in the customers hands to allow them to make that
informed decision whether again you want to use a PDF type
(21:13):
solution that's static and stillhas the information.
I would I still would highly recommend that.
Obviously we believe a tech dynamic more personalized
solution is better, but at leastAPDF document is, is 100% better
than nothing as well. So those are the kind of three
things we say to to all restaurants we work with that I
just believe are no brainer steps to protect you and to
(21:35):
protect the customers. Yeah, I mean, makes complete
sense. I mean, I already said about the
tech solution. The benefit is that of course,
it removes friction in a, in a business like ours where there
is high competition, there's like all restaurants struggling
with all kinds of problems from staffing to prices.
And I feel if one thing can giveyou that edge over other
restaurants, I think it's a great solution.
Also, I love what you said aboutstaff training.
I think that's one place. I think it's also, again, what I
(21:57):
said, the rotation rate doesn't.There are places which I've seen
in my experience working, they have built A-Team where they
feel they do these trainings andthey put the effort in it.
But most restaurants I know movestuff so fast that they feel
that it's not worth worth givingthat training.
But again, what goes around comes around.
So in the end, if you educate your team, it might end up going
somewhere where you know it, it'll add to that.
(22:19):
But in that sense, what you saidin the end about it being a no
brainer and that that's what I wanted to bug you a little bit.
Like you said, 170 million Americans are affected by food
allergies and and or sensitivities, as you call them.
But, and that's massive. I mean, it's not a small, small
bunch of people. It's a massive chunk, but most
of us barely think about it. Like most of us running
restaurants. It's not the first thought on
our mind. It's not the, it's not on mine.
(22:41):
When you're making like new menus in spring, in autumn, it's
not the first thing on your head.
And why do you think the industry has struggled to
address this? Is is there like too many
problems and this is not on the priority list?
Or why is it that it has been ignored so?
Much it's a it's a great question.
And I think in the first sense, yes, restaurants have bigger
burning fires in the first instance to think about be the
(23:03):
first to acknowledge that there is labor, there is margin,
there's the cost of food going up.
There is, you know, building a brand that actually draws
customers in. There are 101 different things
that restauranteurs are trying to deal with every single day.
And often food allergies feels and seems like, you know, nice
(23:23):
to have thing to solve versus a must have.
And I get that. Um, you know, I would have been
the same before I started this journey.
And I think for us, a lot of it is education and awareness to
restauranteurs to kind of help them understand that not only is
this something that protects youand makes your operation far
more efficient, but it is a big revenue opportunity if you can,
(23:46):
if you can, you know, publish this information in the right
way. And the other thing is it's
going to become, right. It's going to become mandatory
in the near future, anywhere in your future anyway.
And I think that's kind of whereyour question was going as well.
Look at Europe, right? Yeah, The EU introduced
regulations what nearly 15 yearsago around tagging for the major
(24:07):
your food allergens. 14 as it isin the in the in Europe, it's
only 9 in the US on every menu right now.
Different states have introducedthat in different ways.
But take Ireland as an example. You cannot open a restaurant or
any kind of food service in Ireland without tagging for the
major 14 allergens on every menu, full stop.
Mom and pop shop chain doesn't matter, cannot do it by law,
(24:29):
full stop. In the US, traditionally there
has been no law whatsoever aboutfood allergies in restaurants.
They don't have to. They don't even have to document
it if they don't want to. Nothing.
Zilch. Until three weeks ago on the
13th of October, Gavin Newsom inCalifornia for the first time
signed a bill called SB68, whichmandates that restaurant groups
(24:52):
with 20 plus locations where anyone of those locations is in
California must label their menus for the major 9 food
allergens, effective one July 26.
And so for the first time in theUS, pretty much every national
and mid market chain is going tohave to document this
information on both their physical and digital menus.
(25:13):
And we believe, and this is justthe first domino to fall towards
echoing Europe and having this applied to all restaurants
across the board. And you know, it's, it's a major
step forward. It's a massive positive and it's
going to protect the consumer who currently is, is relying
again on, on, on waitstaff to, to potentially be the difference
(25:39):
between life and death for them because they're the only person
who gate keeps whether there's any allergies in food or not.
And because there's no like layer of documentation that sits
behind it. So it's a, it's a huge step
forward here. And we're really excited to see
the impact that that has on justthe restaurant industry
holistically. Yeah, definitely.
And I mean, I love you. I love that you took that plunge
(26:00):
to get into the regulations because that was my next
question. But I think you have answered
the major chunk of it. And I was also like aware about
this. I wasn't about what he said
about California imposing this now, but I know that they had
started new law about, I think it was Gavin Newson as well who
said about ultra processed foodsbeing out of public school menus
now in California, which is I think a great, great move.
I think something very importantas well.
(26:21):
But also, I love the part that you said about how it's a money,
money saving move, because I feel the same thing happens with
sustainability, right? Sustainability.
There's now it's there's now a food waste law in Europe, which
is, yeah, slowly coming into practice.
There's like a one year gap, oneyear leverage period for
restaurants to to enact upon it.Or grocery stores cannot throw
anything. Restaurants cannot throw
anything at all. And I feel all that's good.
(26:41):
I mean, regulation does it's job.
But I feel more than a moral question or more than just being
right sometimes is not enough. As you said, restaurants have
more burning fires. But once you attach it to to
money or once you're attached toit, you can either capture more
audience or save more money. Somehow you get get these yours
pointed towards you and they aremore interested to listen.
(27:02):
And, and on that sense, I would like to ask you, like when you
approach now as somebody who represents Foudini and wants
people to adopt this as a, as a solution, what are the few
things that you think stick out for a restaurant?
Like when you when you pitch your solution, what are the
things they sympathize the more with or connect with you the
most with when it comes to the solution?
Yeah, I think it depends on the organization.
(27:23):
So like I outlined kind of the four major benefits earlier in
terms of like revenue, loyalty, operational efficiency, you
know, less mistakes and legal risk.
And then also the data. I think it depends on the org.
Like for example, we on board ata major stadium recently and for
them the big thing was line management.
So they have these, you know, minutes of time during a, you
(27:46):
know, 2 1/2 hour game at half time or between quarters where
there's a rush at the concessionstand.
And if Dylan the celiac gets to the top of the queue and spends
3 minutes quizzing on a member of staff about whether what's
gluten free or not, that's a disaster because that's
literally the one segment of time you have to make all your
concession money. And the line is building up
behind Dylan and you're not keeping it moving and, and
(28:08):
making as much revenue as you can in that time.
So for them, it was that for therevenue opportunity and the, and
the loyalty piece is huge because they understand and they
know and they've seen that by, you know, adding the vegan
option to the menu or the glutenfree option to the menu has
attracted a loyal consumer base in that space.
And they understand that by doubling down and continuing to
(28:29):
invest in these segments that they can attract, continue to
attract new customers and then retain them critically, which
is, which is a huge part, you know, get them into their
loyalty programs, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So it really does depend on the ORC for I've seen, I've seen,
I've seen different decision makers resonate with all of
those things. But I think the other thing that
(28:49):
is is appreciated now by industry is the kind of momentum
in this space like they've seen,they're beginning to see now,
not just the regulation in California.
There's another bill coming in New York, which applies to all
restaurants. Illinois and and Oregon are
about to go next. Federally, there's a lot of
stuff happening. You mentioned what's happening
(29:09):
in California with, with pro ultra processed foods in
schools. There's a lot of stuff with Maha
happening right now with food dyes.
And there is umm, you know, federally there, there's some
other things that Maha are doingaround ingredient transparency
and whatnot. So there's a lot of movement in
this space. And I think there's a
recognition now an industry that, you know, transparency is
(29:31):
becoming and expectation of consumers as opposed to a nice
to have. And that, you know, the the way
the modern day consumer makes decisions is different and that
they need to kind of fall in step with that.
And and transparency. The biggest piece of
transparency that matters is theingredients in the food.
Yeah, now it's super cool to hear that.
I mean, again, we're both, I think sitting in, in, in, in
(29:54):
privileged places where these things are happening.
But it's again, good to see thatthese changes are happening
because, I mean, it's all a ripple effect.
It's all a matter of time beforethese, yeah, translate to bigger
populations. Because I feel like back back in
India, for example, I feel there's so much of undetected
problems. I mean, all of in most of India
is lactose intolerant, but nobody basically knows about it.
There's gluten tolerance is veryhigh.
But yeah, our carb consumption is massive and normal Indian
(30:16):
meal is full of carbs and peopleare just not aware about it.
But I wanted to flip, wanted to ask you the flip side of this
question, Dylan, because what you said about all these
benefits of, of, of this technology or just maintaining
education around allergens. But what about the side of
there's a whole generation of people who will see that as
something which replaces humans,which now needs less human.
(30:37):
And I mean, over here, I'm beinga, a devil's advocate, even
though I believe you're bringingsomething very innovative to
the, to the restaurant industry.How do you see like tech like
yours, which helps restaurants get efficient, be it with the
stadium that you mentioned? How does it like what part of
tech of that is useful and what part of it still needs the human
side of, I don't know, creativity or intuition these
(30:59):
this balance between tech and human?
How do you see that? Yeah, No, I think it's a good
question. We're definitely not on the
point where it's tech only, let's put it that way.
Like we have a team of dietitians and we, we, we call
it like human in the in the loop.
Like we've trained large language models and used AI to
completely streamlined the process, right?
So the tech does the heavy lifting, but there's no doubt
(31:20):
about it. We still need our dietitian
team. Like our tech now has got
extremely good at flagging anything it's not sure about
because there's often a missing ingredient, a missing product, a
missing spec sheet. So, you know, the tech detects
that something looks funny in this menu item, It's not what we
would expect to see. And it raises a flag.
And that is the flag that our dietitian team will then, you
(31:41):
know, through a human eyes look at and, you know, decide whether
it's something that is, is there's an easy answer to or
whether it's something we need to clarify with the restaurant.
And when it comes to something like food allergies, there is no
margin for error, right? So, you know, we're, we're
certainly not in a position yet where I would say we'd let our
tech run riot without having thehuman in the loop.
(32:01):
Do I think in the future we'll get there?
Probably. But we're not there yet.
And I think that's the same for most companies, to be honest.
I think, you know, if you want to scale your business, it's
going to be very hard to do it without using AI and and large
language models and whatnot, or your competitors are going to
kill you. But, you know, I don't think the
tech is in a place that the humans are out of the picture as
(32:24):
yet. But like the reality of if we,
you know, if you ask me this question again in five years
time, you know, you might have adifferent answer.
And it is scary how quickly a lot of this technology is
developing in every industry, frankly.
Yeah, talking about talking about the future, right, Five
years from now, as you said, another question I had from you,
which is maybe not completely related with allergens, but I
(32:46):
feel it's more about personalizing meals because the
company I work at, I work in Rd.Center, we do a lot of
personalized, yeah, meal plans, experiences or working around
personalized dinings. We worked with this city
building in Saudi Arabia, which is going to be just about
personalized dining. I've seen like innovations in
Japan where they're like, they're like toilets which
detect your urine every day and it will tell you basically what
(33:07):
sort of food you need to eat, what nutrition you're missing.
There are a lot of people which have these personal trackers on
them. So the, the, the, the diner of
the future is very aware, I think to some extent.
I do not know how much of that awareness is correct information
or if the information is corrector not.
But how do you see the category of personalized dining?
What are the some things that you're looking forward to or
(33:27):
you're hoping the future would look like in terms of Yeah,
personalizing dining experiences?
Personalization is the name of the game.
Like you, you're kind of hittingthe nail on the head like I, I,
I talked about the modern day consumer and their expectation
from a transparency perspective.Their bigger expectation is
personalization. Like everywhere they go, whether
it's their TikTok feed or Netflix or wherever it is, they
(33:50):
expect that the experience is personalized to them and their
needs and their wants and their likes.
And I think if we if we dive into like you know, above and
beyond the algorithm, understanding that they love
Indian food from this restaurant, I think that the
next layer deeper and and more and every bit as important is
understand that consumers now are getting a lot more health
(34:11):
focused. And you look at the food as
medicine movement. You look at all of the, you
know, the, the microbiome and gut health and biomarker testing
kits that are blowing up right now function, health superpower,
all these companies that are enabling this cheaply for the
first time and where people are finally understanding, you know,
that these are the foods that are disagreeing with them or
(34:31):
that they need to eat more of umm.
You have people like Mark Laurieat wonder who has a vision to
send out these testing kits to customers, have them do the
tests and then off the back of that develop a personalized meal
kit for them that then gets shipped to their home.
Like that's the level of personalization that some of the
biggest visionaries in this space are envisioning, and I
(34:52):
completely agree with that. I think the the consumer, modern
day consumer is going to get more and more insistent on what
it does and does not want to putin its body, both in terms of
what it wants to put in and thendemanding visibility as to
whether what they're about to consume has that or does not
have that. And I honestly think we're still
at Ground Zero here in terms of where this is going to go.
(35:16):
And I think if I was, you know, as I think about the restaurant
industry and the food service industry, I just think they need
to, you know, there needs to be an awareness that this is
coming. If it's not there already, it is
coming. Consumers are not going to start
getting less picky and stop asking about ingredients and
allergens, whatever it the data shows it is growing rapidly year
(35:36):
on, year on, year on year. We have one of our investors, I
think there's 20 there in New York.
There's 21 children in the class, 19 of the kids have food
allergies. No two kids have the same, to,
to have the same set of allergies.
Like that is the prevalence thatis happening, you know, at the
like child level. Give them another few years to
come up the ranks with those allergies.
(35:57):
And then with this continued focus on health and, and
preferences, it's, it's only going one way.
And it's, it's again, it's a challenge for restauranteurs in
the food service industry to deal with these consumers, but
it's also an opportunity. Do it right, do it well, and
you're going to have a major edge on your competition and the
restaurants right down the street.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, then you said it.
I mean data is king over here, the big data, machine learning,
(36:19):
all the technology behind that. I feel and I feel Furini right
now the app you've built, the technology you've built is
around your core problem of growing up.
And I feel it's, it's a very good vertical niche to to prove
that product market fit. But again, once you have the
data of these diners, the, it's endless the possibilities that
you can do with that data, not just getting into, I don't know,
there's, I have students in my, in the university I work working
(36:41):
with, adopt adaptogens. I don't know, energy bars to get
you to sleep. There's so much happening around
it that I feel the more aware itis.
I mean, a restaurant can of course be scared listening to
this podcast, you know, it's going to get crazy for me and
I'll run out of business if I don't contract this technology.
But again, I mean, it's, it's only scary if you don't prepare
for it and if you know about it.And if there's people like you
(37:01):
out there who have lived it first hand, preparing something
which is tested within. I think that's the best way to
catch up and and stay stay in the game for a little longer.
Yeah. And I think the, the, the, the
the last thing I'll just say on that as well as I think the
difference now with technology is the cost of also doing this
has has plummeted. Like traditionally, if you
wanted to get as someone to comein and do your allergen matrix,
(37:23):
for example, even just the basic9 could cost you $20,000 and you
and then just static PDF that has to keep being updated over
time. Like, you know, that's when it
was manual. Like we can do the same thing
with a better customer experience that's kept up to
date, that's plugged into all the rest of your tech stack for
a fraction of that amount now. And so the barrier that the
(37:44):
beauty of the technology is thatit is now enabling restaurants
to do what before was both hard and expensive and manual.
And so I think that's the other piece here and that's across the
board. That's not just in our world,
that's does the AI tools that are out there now from
bookkeeping to legal to marketing to sales to every part
of your business are incredible.And there's so many focused,
(38:05):
focused restaurant vertical onesas well.
You know, I think investing in, in, in a, in a, in the best in
class tech stack is going to, isgoing to give restaurants an
edge. Yeah, I know for sure.
I mean, and, and speaking about how you've spoken about the, the
technology yourself and how passionate you are.
You spoke about investors and how this, this is a business
like the business side of things.
How do you see when, I guess when you go approaching
(38:28):
investors or talking about, I don't know, pitching this idea
to people who would invest in it, How is the atmosphere around
food startups? Because I know, for example,
from my personal experience in Europe, when we see the whole
scale of how VCs are funding or how private equity is funding
startups, Food and Agriculture or food and Agitech is a very
small compared to one of the bigstartups.
And I heard about the states a lot.
(38:49):
I'm currently reading a book from Andrew Chen about the cold
start problem, which goes aroundall the big tech startups,
Netflix, Tinder. Yeah, beautiful book and like
reading that. And then everything around how
Airbnb was built with the Brian Chesky stories, Y Combinator,
the whole culture of like startups and and tech funding.
Does your product, like, does your product appeal as a tech
product or is it something to, Imean, they don't feel
(39:13):
knowledgeable enough for that. How?
How is the approach to your product?
Yeah, I know we're an AI companyultimately, right at our, at our
core, like we are, you know, arethe core of our tech AI and data
is what is what powers our entire ecosystem, our entire
product, our entire everything. And so food, like we're not a
(39:33):
food company, we're a food tech company, a restaurant tech
company as well. But like, ultimately what we're
trying to do at like from a company standpoint is build the
data layer that powers ingredient transparency across
the whole food ecosystem. We want to be that middle layer
that works not just with all therestaurants and hotels and food
(39:54):
service providers, but with all of online ordering, with your
door dashes, your Uber Eats, your grub hubs, with your first
party ordering as well, with alllike just being that layer that
manages this. Entire problem and not just in
the US, this is a global problemas we've kind of alluded to as
well. So the vision and the
opportunity for us as a company,I believe is absolutely massive.
(40:15):
And for investors, as you said, who aren't necessarily experts
in the space, which most are not, it's just an edge.
It's like anything, you just have to educate them, you know,
give them the data, give them the, the, the information they
need to, to learn and about whatwe do and how we do it and what
the opportunity is, and then allow them to make an informed
decision. And anyone who's raised venture
(40:36):
before will know that, you know,there is plenty of no's for
every yes and you're not a fit for everyone.
But it's just a matter of grinding until you find the
people who resonate, understand the mission, understand the
opportunity and who who back youto be the right team to to
execute. Yeah, I mean, and no better way
to do it once you've you live the problem yourself and grown
up in a family where you had a restaurant yourself.
So Dylan, before before we leavethis podcast, I want to ask you
(41:01):
like, what keeps you going? What is like, I don't know if
there's one rewarding moment from from since launching
Foudini. What is?
What has it been for you? The customer feedback on, on how
important this what is to them and what a difference it would
make in their lives, I think that's what it keeps coming back
to. It's like this.
This is not a problem where we're saving $0.10 for someone
on every transaction. This is solving a problem for
(41:22):
people which can save their lives and can make them enable
them to act like a lot of peoplewho don't have food allergies,
which is just being able to go to a restaurant and enjoy the
experience like everyone else and food and dining out.
And, and that whole experience is such, I think a huge fabric
of, of society and community andlife generally.
(41:43):
And so many people are, are feelexcluded from that or feel
unable to enjoy that because of this lack of transparency that
that has existed for a long, long time.
And so the genuine knowledge that we are making a tangible
difference for such a huge segment for a real problem that
truly does exist. Umm, nothing has changed for me
(42:04):
since that first aha moment and I've just been bullish on on on
making sure that we can scale the solution to help all those
people and the restaurant industry at the same time ever
since. I mean, it's amazing to hear
experience Dylan. Lastly, before we close this, as
I told you in the beginning, thelisteners over here are people
who are, I would say most of thelisteners are still in
restaurants or, or people starting country education or
(42:26):
people getting into the trade. And some major chunk of them
also people who are sort of donewith the restaurant model and
they're looking for like, what else can they contribute to?
And I feel like chefs, yeah, have a lot of knowledge, apart
from like, they have knowledge about daily operations they can
contribute to, I don't know, jobs and careers outside the
restaurant system, be it in foodpolicy making.
I think people in food policy need advisors who have been
(42:48):
chefs before or, I don't know, education.
You need people who have been chefs before.
What advice would you give to them, especially to people who
want to head of business, like be be an entrepreneur?
Because like the things that yousaid for me, the biggest
takeaways, like how you said before this became a tech
company, it was very much about paper and pen.
Walking into restaurants, doing this in a small scale and like
using the lean startup model to test your product market fit and
(43:11):
then taking the whole tech side of things.
What else could you say to people who are who have these
entrepreneurial ideas as a chef?Well, a great example for anyone
who's a chef out there. We partner with a company called
Meez Meez and their CEO and founder Josh as a chef and he
essentially built a recipe management tool, which is
probably the best recipe management tool that exists in
(43:32):
the US from from that functionality standpoint.
And again, he was like myself, anon-technical background.
He was a chef and he built a tool to help chefs because
again, he who could have better subject matter expertise than
himself. And So what I would say is 1.
If you have a vision for, you know, solving a problem that you
(43:52):
experience yourself in your everyday work, you know, you are
very likely to most, the most likely and the best candidate to
solve for that. But secondly, to your point,
it's not like you have an idea and then the next day you have a
company, right? Like I would advise anyone who
has that idea, spend plenty of time doing a lot of market
research. Like how big of a problem is
(44:13):
this really? If it's like, is it, is it a big
enough market for an investor toback, uh, is, you know, speak to
as many other people that you think experience that problem
and validate truly. Then don't just ask for a, you
know, I'll just tell me this is a great idea.
Like challenge them to truly answer the question honestly and
validate. No, this is something that is a
problem and this is something I would pay for if you could solve
(44:33):
for it as well. And I do as much of that
diligence and homework as you can before or, you know, taking
a more significant plunge. But again, we talked about AI
and tech. The beauty now is there are
tools like lovable and other like vibe coding tools out there
that anybody with no technical experience whatsoever can, can
spin up a prototype, you know, in a matter of days now and to
(44:54):
test and, and, and to, and to see if there, there's something
there. So the barrier to entry has
dropped drastically from what itwould have been five years ago.
And so again, if you, if you, ifyou truly believe in the idea
and you've kind of got the validation and data you believe
you need to, to, to give it a go, absolutely back yourself and
give it a go. But I would always just say take
(45:15):
the bit of time to get that validation first before you quit
your job hand in your notice. That's certainly what I did.
I took several months before I built up the conviction that
this was the right thing to do. Now beautiful Dylan, I mean, I
couldn't I couldn't sum it up better.
And, and thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing
your story and for showing how apersonal struggle that you
started off with in the beginning of the podcast can
(45:36):
lead to like a whole system exchange.
I see it as a system exchange because I feel this is the last
piece of the puzzle which is missing for a restaurant who
really wants to comply with these these with these allergens
and intolerance. They have an easy tool now.
And there is there is no room for complaining anymore.
And you have showed us how food and tech can together make the
world a little safer for for millions of people.
It's not, it's not a handful. So, yeah, thank you so much.
(45:57):
We will link to you and to Foudini in in the show notes.
And it's been a pleasure. Appreciate it a lot, thank you
so much for having me on, I really enjoyed the chat.
So hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of
Fugitive Chefs Podcast, the showwe where we talk to chefs and
food innovators who have steppedoutside the traditional kitchens
to build something more personal, more creative, more
impactful. Today's guest is Dylan.
Dylan McDonald, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks so much for having me, great to be here.
And Dylan, what I've heard aboutyou is you're a founder and CEO
(00:20):
of Foudini. From what I've read and, and
studied about it, it's a, it's aplatform tracking one of the
biggest challenges in the diningindustry today, the whole idea
of ingredient transparency. I think that's something we as
chefs somehow end up like missing out on it if if it's not
just for compliance. And from your story, you're
somebody who has been diagnosed with with the celiac disease as
a child. And what I've seen is, like
(00:42):
Dylan has spent years navigatinga dining world that wasn't
really built for people like him.
And that person frustration is what you have used as a full
fuel behind building Foudini. It's a company that helps diners
and restaurants bridge the gap between food safety, trust and
technology. And this episode, basically what
I want to focus with you, Dylan,is about how can somebody use
their lived experiences into food innovation?
(01:04):
So food innovation doesn't always have to start from a big
tech tool or a big expensive toythat chefs are playing with, but
something personal. How can you turn that into
innovation and how tech can alsobe a part which can save our
relationship between food and diners?
So before we deep dive into all of that, Dylan, tell us about
yourself. Like tell us in the beginning,
what was your earliest connection to food?
(01:26):
Has it been profession? Has it been home?
Has it been studies? What got you here?
Yeah, well, firstly, that was a great introduction.
You, you summed it up very succinctly, very impressive.
So yeah, my, my quick background, you can probably
hear a bit of an accent. I'm Irish, although I was born
in Philly, so sneaky American, but, but, but grew up in
(01:46):
Ireland. And so my, my early connection
with food was, was actually mainly negative, right.
And it stands back to what you mentioned about celiac.
So I was diagnosed celiac when Iwas 10 years old after a few
years being quite sick. So this is kind of a time when
now it's one of the first thingsdoctors think of if people have
(02:07):
certain health issues or gut health issues or anything
related to food. 20 odd years ago, 25 years ago, that wasn't
really the case. It was still, you know, it was a
lot more unknown at the time, let's put it that way.
And so, yeah, for from four or five years, I was quite sick all
the time. They didn't know what was wrong
with me. You know, my poor parents were
feeding me like the best of homemade brown bread.
(02:29):
But of course, ironically, that was making me sicker and sicker,
and they just didn't know. So, you know, when I finally got
diagnosed and just realized, well, the solution here is a
gluten free diet, there was a lot of relief in terms of, OK,
well, at least we know what's making me sick and that
shouldn't happen anymore. But I suppose the next step was,
OK, well, what is this and how do I navigate it?
(02:50):
And that was a huge challenge. And both in terms of, you know,
eating at home, in terms of eating out, in terms of
everything really. And my mom also just to answer
your question, my mom owned a restaurant in Ireland for 20
years. So, you know, I definitely, I
grew up in and around that spaceand obviously understanding the
(03:11):
challenges in in running a hospitality business of any
description and margins being sotight and, and you know, it's a
tough business. So I feel like and will come to
it. But I definitely had exposure to
to kind of both sides of the coin growing up in terms of, you
know, food struggles, but also restaurant and and what a tough
business that is. But to kind of finish off the
(03:34):
journey, I was a corporate lawyer by trade, so not in the
food world whatsoever. Yeah, no, didn't study food in
university. Didn't you know other than
working in the family restaurant, you know, wasn't
really exposed to to food in a massive way and was in law,
corporate law and that journey, you know, I was kind of worked
(03:56):
with a lot of the global tech companies, the Apples,
Facebooks, Googles of the world.That journey took me to
Australia. I lived in Sydney for a few
years kind of still moved in my capacity as a lawyer.
But while there I started Foudini.
And again, the angle was to solve for the problem I had
myself, which was dining out with a dietary restriction and,
and trying to under. I just couldn't understand why
(04:18):
it was still so difficult. Like, why was I still going to
restaurants? They didn't have the information
I needed, or they were giving methe wrong information, or they'd
serve me the wrong food and I'd be sick for a week afterwards.
Like I was like in, you know, and, and in this era, they
should no longer be the case. Why is it still the case?
And what can I do to solve it? And that's kind of where Houdini
was born from. Crazy.
And, and how did you like, I mean, I would like to know,
(04:39):
like, from your mother's point of view for people working in
that family restaurant point of view, was this at that point,
was this something new to them? Did they know about celiac
disease as such? And how did they see you as
somebody who works in this environment where you can't
really? I don't think food professionals
are very big fans of having allergens or intolerances.
How was that exchange? Yeah.
(05:00):
Well, like my. I mean, how do I answer that
question? It was new to all of us in the
family 100%. Like this was not something that
my parents or you know, most people honest had come across at
the time. Now today everyone knows someone
who's gluten free. Like literally it's so
prevalent. But back then it really wasn't.
And so there was a lot of education, a lot of learning
(05:24):
that was done. And mom opened a restaurant good
few years after I was diagnosed as well.
And so it wasn't, you know, it wasn't like we had a family
restaurant business prior to that, that this impacted.
But what it did impact is that we were one of the, you know,
rural Ireland, but we were one of the first restaurants to have
like gluten free bread offeringsand like to be aware of it as a,
(05:45):
as a facility when, you know, guests were coming in.
So it definitely helps the othergluten free people in the area,
that's for sure. Yeah, and, and what's what's at
that point your approach to because I've, I've heard a lot
of theories about I don't know how much of it is true.
I think you're the person who would know more about as
somebody who lived with it. I saw this documentary.
It's it's a book actually by Michael Pollan called Cooked
(06:07):
Long, Long Time Ago. And then he explains how, I
mean, his theory is how I do notknow if it's theory of fact.
First of all, let me clear that that gluten intolerance was born
because many countries, I mean, America especially introduced
super bread. And then super bread came with a
lot of things which are not wheat, and that's how our body
started kind of building this. Yeah, annoyance for things which
(06:28):
are not V They're just like emulsifier stabilizers.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, it's a great, it's a great
actually point. It's interesting.
There's a lot of data about different food allergies around
the world. So obviously gluten free and
Celiac's the one that's prevalent to me.
Funnily enough, Italy has the highest head of highest rate of
celiac disease per head of capital in the world.
Ireland is number 2 and, and theone of the reasons our
(06:51):
hypothesis around that I've heard actually stems back to the
potato famine. So they reckon that when a few,
100 years ago the potato famine came and wiped out the potato
crop and, and you know, you know, a lot of Irish people died
at that time as part of that. And then we started importing
wheat to make up for it and to start, you know, eating that we
genetically developed a higher intolerance to wheat and gluten
(07:16):
than, you know, a lot of other countries around the world.
So that's one theory I've heard.But I've absolutely heard
similar that the US, you know, food quality and ingredients in
US definitely contribute to a lot of it in the United States.
And just to come back to question you, you mentioned
earlier and you mentioned about,you know, a lot of restaurants,
you know, seeing people with food allergies as as an
(07:37):
annoyance. And there is definitely I've
come across that many times. I think there's sometimes
certain restauranteurs who thinkthat these are just people who
are trying to be difficult or who are, you know, one in 1000
and, you know, we don't really need to cater for them.
But that was one of the other, Isuppose, big aha moments for me
was when I dug into just how many people are impacted by this
(07:58):
problem because you kind of think it's you and your own
little bubble and a few other people.
But in the United States, 33 million Americans have a
diagnosed food allergy. So that's about one in 10
diagnosed food allergy. Then you have another 50 million
Americans who have a food intolerance.
That means they have a negative reaction to the food, but it's
not technically an allergy, a medical allergy.
(08:18):
And then you have another 70 million Americans who fall into
the bracket of a preference, vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo,
low FODMAP, low carb, etcetera. So it's actually a huge, huge,
huge market in terms of the amount of people who need to or
want to understand what is in their food to ascertain if it is
suitable for them based on theirpersonal medical or lifestyle
(08:41):
requirements. And so for restaurants, you
know, and I think this has become clear over the last
decade, but they no longer really are in a position to
ignore this market segment or treat them as an annoyance
because you're losing so much revenue in such a huge market
segment if you do. Definitely.
And what was your first reactionto when you said, you know, with
(09:02):
the experience that you ordered stuff that you did not get or
people didn't really get the intensity or grasp the
understanding of what a celiac disease is?
Was was your thinking that thesepeople who are serving me
something are ignorant or are they not educated enough?
Like, what was your first? Yeah.
Why was it happening to you, youthink?
No. And I think it's a, it's a very
good question because to answer it, I have to say that I have,
(09:25):
we've a ton of empathy for the restaurant industry in trying to
deal with this situation. It's not like restaurants are
the bad guys and consumers are the good guys.
Like this is, it's a really hardthing to do, especially for
smaller businesses. You know, it's, it's, it's not
like there's this data layer that you can just tap into to
pull this data. It hasn't really existed to
(09:47):
date. And so it's actually quite a
tough exercise for a restaurant manually themselves to do this.
But the reality is when you don't do the exercise and you
don't give the staff a resource to answer the questions that
consumers ask, they're powerless.
Like how if I'm a waiter and I haven't been trained on whether
there's peanuts in all of the menu items, how am I going to
(10:08):
answer the question when a concern, when a customer asked
me, I can't either say I don't know or, you know, I, you know,
obviously go into the kitchen and try and speak with the chef
and figure it out that way and start looking at the back of
packets and blah, blah, blah. And, or which is what happens.
Unfortunately, a lot of the timeon due to a lack of training,
staff don't realize the seriousness of getting this
(10:29):
wrong. And so you get the dreaded, I
think, I think it's gluten free.I don't think it contains nuts.
And that's when you know they don't know.
And that's when you have to decide, OK, do I risk it or or
do I insist on no, no, you either I have to leave now or I
need you to go and confirm this for 100%.
(10:49):
And the difference for me as a celiac, you know, I'll get sick
if I eat the wrong thing. But someone who's anaphylactic
or has like another peanut or egg or or dairy allergy, when
it's anaphylactic, like, that's life and death.
Literally, Yeah. And so the margin for error just
isn't there for the most part. I don't think it's out of
Vadnais. I just think it's out of a lack
of a process internally in the restaurant, a lack of training
(11:12):
and a lack of documentation. And didn't was there something
specific that happened, a specific experience that
happened for you where you felt like not just observing the
problem or like thinking the work around it, but where you
felt that, OK, I have to contribute to to this change or
there is something specific I need to that happened?
And then you said OK you need I need to step into this to solve.
It, I think it was a build up. It was it, it wasn't like there
(11:32):
was one major incident. It was a culmination of a lot of
small incidents over a long time.
It's culminating in me being like, how is this still the way?
This is resulting in me doing research into why is it this
way? And I think it was when I went
and, and looked at the data in terms of the numbers of, of
consumers who have the problem and then spoke to a lot of them.
(11:53):
I like while I was still practicing as a lawyer and, and
doing my market research and just speaking to mothers of kids
with food allergies and people with these problems and being
like, how do you deal with this?Is this a real problem for you?
Like how big of a problem and continuing to get back.
This is a huge problem. There is no solution.
It's a nightmare. It impacts me every day, every
meal. Like sometimes we don't dine out
(12:13):
anymore because we don't feel safe.
Like I'm terrified for my teenager who's going out in the
world, whether they, you know, are able to fend for themselves.
It's, it's life and death for, you know, it was just this
constant onslaught of feedback from, from such a huge segment
of, of the population that I waslike, OK, well, whether I'm the
right person to solve this or not, I don't know.
(12:34):
But it, it feels like a worthwhile cause.
And I'm going to dedicate as much time as I can to see if I
can figure it out. Yeah.
And, and what is this that you have like found as a gap where
you fit in? Because of course, as you said,
I mean, it's also a, it's also commercially smart idea for
restaurants to be, to be, to be inclusive of all kinds of
(12:54):
allergies and tolerances. And then there is the food
companies producing the gluten free range of things.
There's government making regulations for these kind of
things. Which gap did you see that you
said after your market research this is the one I can fill And
what are you contributing over there?
Yeah. So just to explain how we work.
So we work with restaurants and food service companies.
So we work with restaurants, hotels, stadiums, schools,
(13:17):
universities and any facility that serves food we can work
with. And essentially what we do is we
take all of their existing menu data and we tag it accurately
with the correct ingredients, allergens and dietaries.
So typically, and I know you have a lot of restaurant or you
know, folk listening so that they'll, they'll resonate with
this. We'll take your menu data from
(13:37):
typically your POS, We'll take your recipe data typically from
an inventory or a recipe management system.
But again, we work with a lot ofsmall businesses where it's on
an Excel sheet or handwritten orwhat have you.
And then we also take your product data, we plug in with
all the kind of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, So
we can, you know, get the exact SKU number as well.
And we aggregate all of that data using our kind of AI
(14:00):
solution. We also have a team of
dietitians who who kind of work as part of this process as well.
But essentially what we end up with is a complete insight into
every ingredient in every menu item and every corresponding
allergen and dietary for that menu item.
And what that back end data set allows us to do is power a
(14:24):
personalized menu experience forthe consumer.
So typically consumers will walkinto a restaurant we work with,
there'll be a QR code on the menu saying food allergies,
dietary needs, scan here. There'll be a button on the
website in the menu section, allergy dietary menu.
When they scan or click, it brings up a web app experience.
So don't need to download an app, it's a URL experience.
(14:45):
They create straight away a dietary profile, choosing from
150 different diets and allergens.
So gluten, nuts, keto, vegan, save and instantly the menu auto
customizes to them. Here's what you can eat, here's
what, here's what you can eat with a modifier and what that
modifier is. And here's what you can't eat
and why because it contains X&Y ingredients that are baked in
(15:06):
and can't be removed. So it's a completely
personalized menu product based on the dietary profile of the
consumer. And what we've seen is kind of
answered. That's the cut product, right?
And what we've seen as a result of that, to answer the second
part of your question is, and the first I've already alluded
to, you've 173,000,000 Americans, for example, who make
(15:29):
dining decisions based on their dietary preferences.
If the consumer doesn't understand or trust that there
is an item for them at your restaurant, they will not come.
So not only are you losing that consumer, you also lose their
friends, their family, their coworkers, all of the people
that they normally die dine with.
And we call that the veto vote. We can't organize the group
(15:52):
lunch at somewhere where Dylan the Celia can't eat up.
So not only is it a big revenue loss, but it's also a massive
revenue opportunity for those restaurants that do do this
correctly and publish this this information talk consumers and
put in their hands. That's number one.
And the second, I'm sorry, the second-half of that is there is
no one more loyal than a food allergy customer.
(16:13):
They find it so hard to find places that they like and that
they trust that once they do, they just keep going back again
and again and again and again and again.
So again, big revenue opportunity.
Number 12 is operational efficiencies.
We see a about a 60% reduction in the number of questions being
asked to staff who use our technology.
And not only is that obviously saving on labor costs, you know,
(16:34):
line management, blah, blah, blah, but what that also results
in is a massive reduction in mistakes. 54% of all mistakes
that happen in restaurants around food allergies happen
after the staff get notified of the allergy.
And So what that tells you is the system is broken.
It tells you human error is whatgets it wrong almost all the
time. Back to what we're talking about
(16:55):
the dreaded, I think take that out of play.
Put a documented single source of truth in front of the
consumer that they can access themselves and, and, and take
that pressure off your wait staff who might have started
yesterday and be casual part time for being an expert on
every ingredient in every allergen and every menu item,
which is virtually impossible outside of maybe super high and
(17:17):
fine dining where there's, you know, extremely well trained.
Yeah. And then the Third Point is
data. We can tell our restaurants that
last month in X location you had1000 dietary profiles created,
40% were gluten free, 25% were vegan, 10% with keto.
You only have one keto option onyour menu.
If you swap out this ingredient and these four items, they would
(17:38):
all become keto. That could drive your bottom
line by XY. So from menu optimization
standpoint and just understanding your consumers and
marketing efforts as well that that consumer dietary profile
is, is extremely valuable to ourpartners.
No, definitely. I mean, it's brilliant, all that
you're saying. And I feel like it's, it's, it's
like all brilliant ideas. I think it's like something so
obvious because what you've doneis basically put the put the
(18:00):
power in both sides of the of the table of the diner.
Also the the person managing therestaurant and the chef behind
the behind the screen who's building it.
So you there's no chance for a mistake because you have not
left room for assuming that somebody who's catering to you
will know exactly all these diets, what they mean and what
these complex words entail at the end of the day.
And I feel, I mean, what you explained today is a very
(18:21):
multifaceted operation. I think there's a lot of back
end behind it. As you said, you have you, you
have the dietitians, you have the whole data experts behind
it. But what were the early days
like? What are the first few
challenges you had when buildingthis?
Was it more like convincing the possibility of a tool like this?
Was it more like finding people resourceful to say, help you the
tech side of things? Oh, man, yeah.
It was very manual. If we, if we were still doing
(18:43):
now what we were doing at the start, we would not have a
company that that could grow because you know, it's, it's
until you kind of roll up your sleeves and like, you know,
really work with restaurants to understand why is this so
difficult? You can't understand, you know,
it becomes clear quickly why this isn't already wide stream
and it's because it's hard. And as I kind of alluded to
(19:05):
earlier, there's not this magic data set that exists that
enables this. And we have to we essentially
are this aggregator that sits inthe middle of all of these
different players. And we need all of them and all
of their data and the restaurantbuy in to be able to do what we
do. And like again, we, we're here
to make this super easy and simple for restaurants.
(19:27):
So for restaurants do by themselves.
And let me let me preface this by saying what I say to all
restaurants when it comes to this space #1 make sure you
invest in food allergy training.So put food in into one side.
Get it's not that expensive. Get your staff trained on food
allergy. Food allergy matters.
It could literally be the difference between one of your
staff accidentally sending someone into anaphylactic shock
(19:48):
and not. Which not only legal risk for PR
and brand risk, it's just not that expensive to invest in.
In food allergy training number 1 #2 document your your
ingredients and allergens. If you don't want to use a
solution like Foudini, and you'drather, you know, do it in a
binder, on a piece of paper, on a spreadsheet, or whatever it is
that you know. You make sense for you, that's
(20:09):
fine, but if you do not have that source of truth for your
staff to find a way to rely on answer questions, you are
opening yourself up for so many problems and issues.
Again, think about it logically.If it's not documented, how are
they going to answer the question?
And if they do try to then figure it out by, you know,
looking at the back of the pack and Bubba, that's where they
(20:30):
miss things like, but was it cooked in butter?
Maybe the maybe the the product itself doesn't have dairy on the
label, but it could have been cooked in butter, which now puts
dairy in it, which now makes it an allergic dish for that
customer. And those are the things that
staff often don't think of on the fly in a busy restaurant
environment when there is, you know, tables shouting at them
and waiting for food and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
(20:51):
Like, again, these are the high stress and high pressure moments
that result in mistakes being made by staff because they, you
know, they're not thinking clearly and true at all.
Again, have something they can refer to as a document.
And of course we then as Houdinido believe that you should also
put this in the customers hands to allow them to make that
informed decision whether again you want to use a PDF type
(21:13):
solution that's static and stillhas the information.
I would I still would highly recommend that.
Obviously we believe a tech dynamic more personalized
solution is better, but at leastAPDF document is, is 100% better
than nothing as well. So those are the kind of three
things we say to to all restaurants we work with that I
just believe are no brainer steps to protect you and to
(21:35):
protect the customers. Yeah, I mean, makes complete
sense. I mean, I already said about the
tech solution. The benefit is that of course,
it removes friction in a, in a business like ours where there
is high competition, there's like all restaurants struggling
with all kinds of problems from staffing to prices.
And I feel if one thing can giveyou that edge over other
restaurants, I think it's a great solution.
Also, I love what you said aboutstaff training.
I think that's one place. I think it's also, again, what I
(21:57):
said, the rotation rate doesn't.There are places which I've seen
in my experience working, they have built A-Team where they
feel they do these trainings andthey put the effort in it.
But most restaurants I know movestuff so fast that they feel
that it's not worth worth givingthat training.
But again, what goes around comes around.
So in the end, if you educate your team, it might end up going
somewhere where you know it, it'll add to that.
(22:19):
But in that sense, what you saidin the end about it being a no
brainer and that that's what I wanted to bug you a little bit.
Like you said, 170 million Americans are affected by food
allergies and and or sensitivities, as you call them.
But, and that's massive. I mean, it's not a small, small
bunch of people. It's a massive chunk, but most
of us barely think about it. Like most of us running
restaurants. It's not the first thought on
our mind. It's not the, it's not on mine.
(22:41):
When you're making like new menus in spring, in autumn, it's
not the first thing on your head.
And why do you think the industry has struggled to
address this? Is is there like too many
problems and this is not on the priority list?
Or why is it that it has been ignored so?
Much it's a it's a great question.
And I think in the first sense, yes, restaurants have bigger
burning fires in the first instance to think about be the
(23:03):
first to acknowledge that there is labor, there is margin,
there's the cost of food going up.
There is, you know, building a brand that actually draws
customers in. There are 101 different things
that restauranteurs are trying to deal with every single day.
And often food allergies feels and seems like, you know, nice
(23:23):
to have thing to solve versus a must have.
And I get that. Um, you know, I would have been
the same before I started this journey.
And I think for us, a lot of it is education and awareness to
restauranteurs to kind of help them understand that not only is
this something that protects youand makes your operation far
more efficient, but it is a big revenue opportunity if you can,
(23:46):
if you can, you know, publish this information in the right
way. And the other thing is it's
going to become, right. It's going to become mandatory
in the near future, anywhere in your future anyway.
And I think that's kind of whereyour question was going as well.
Look at Europe, right? Yeah, The EU introduced
regulations what nearly 15 yearsago around tagging for the major
(24:07):
your food allergens. 14 as it isin the in the in Europe, it's
only 9 in the US on every menu right now.
Different states have introducedthat in different ways.
But take Ireland as an example. You cannot open a restaurant or
any kind of food service in Ireland without tagging for the
major 14 allergens on every menu, full stop.
Mom and pop shop chain doesn't matter, cannot do it by law,
(24:29):
full stop. In the US, traditionally there
has been no law whatsoever aboutfood allergies in restaurants.
They don't have to. They don't even have to document
it if they don't want to. Nothing.
Zilch. Until three weeks ago on the
13th of October, Gavin Newsom inCalifornia for the first time
signed a bill called SB68, whichmandates that restaurant groups
(24:52):
with 20 plus locations where anyone of those locations is in
California must label their menus for the major 9 food
allergens, effective one July 26.
And so for the first time in theUS, pretty much every national
and mid market chain is going tohave to document this
information on both their physical and digital menus.
(25:13):
And we believe, and this is justthe first domino to fall towards
echoing Europe and having this applied to all restaurants
across the board. And you know, it's, it's a major
step forward. It's a massive positive and it's
going to protect the consumer who currently is, is relying
again on, on, on waitstaff to, to potentially be the difference
(25:39):
between life and death for them because they're the only person
who gate keeps whether there's any allergies in food or not.
And because there's no like layer of documentation that sits
behind it. So it's a, it's a huge step
forward here. And we're really excited to see
the impact that that has on justthe restaurant industry
holistically. Yeah, definitely.
And I mean, I love you. I love that you took that plunge
(26:00):
to get into the regulations because that was my next
question. But I think you have answered
the major chunk of it. And I was also like aware about
this. I wasn't about what he said
about California imposing this now, but I know that they had
started new law about, I think it was Gavin Newson as well who
said about ultra processed foodsbeing out of public school menus
now in California, which is I think a great, great move.
I think something very importantas well.
(26:21):
But also, I love the part that you said about how it's a money,
money saving move, because I feel the same thing happens with
sustainability, right? Sustainability.
There's now it's there's now a food waste law in Europe, which
is, yeah, slowly coming into practice.
There's like a one year gap, oneyear leverage period for
restaurants to to enact upon it.Or grocery stores cannot throw
anything. Restaurants cannot throw
anything at all. And I feel all that's good.
(26:41):
I mean, regulation does it's job.
But I feel more than a moral question or more than just being
right sometimes is not enough. As you said, restaurants have
more burning fires. But once you attach it to to
money or once you're attached toit, you can either capture more
audience or save more money. Somehow you get get these yours
pointed towards you and they aremore interested to listen.
(27:02):
And, and on that sense, I would like to ask you, like when you
approach now as somebody who represents Foudini and wants
people to adopt this as a, as a solution, what are the few
things that you think stick out for a restaurant?
Like when you when you pitch your solution, what are the
things they sympathize the more with or connect with you the
most with when it comes to the solution?
Yeah, I think it depends on the organization.
(27:23):
So like I outlined kind of the four major benefits earlier in
terms of like revenue, loyalty, operational efficiency, you
know, less mistakes and legal risk.
And then also the data. I think it depends on the org.
Like for example, we on board ata major stadium recently and for
them the big thing was line management.
So they have these, you know, minutes of time during a, you
(27:46):
know, 2 1/2 hour game at half time or between quarters where
there's a rush at the concessionstand.
And if Dylan the celiac gets to the top of the queue and spends
3 minutes quizzing on a member of staff about whether what's
gluten free or not, that's a disaster because that's
literally the one segment of time you have to make all your
concession money. And the line is building up
behind Dylan and you're not keeping it moving and, and
(28:08):
making as much revenue as you can in that time.
So for them, it was that for therevenue opportunity and the, and
the loyalty piece is huge because they understand and they
know and they've seen that by, you know, adding the vegan
option to the menu or the glutenfree option to the menu has
attracted a loyal consumer base in that space.
And they understand that by doubling down and continuing to
(28:29):
invest in these segments that they can attract, continue to
attract new customers and then retain them critically, which
is, which is a huge part, you know, get them into their
loyalty programs, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So it really does depend on the ORC for I've seen, I've seen,
I've seen different decision makers resonate with all of
those things. But I think the other thing that
(28:49):
is is appreciated now by industry is the kind of momentum
in this space like they've seen,they're beginning to see now,
not just the regulation in California.
There's another bill coming in New York, which applies to all
restaurants. Illinois and and Oregon are
about to go next. Federally, there's a lot of
stuff happening. You mentioned what's happening
(29:09):
in California with, with pro ultra processed foods in
schools. There's a lot of stuff with Maha
happening right now with food dyes.
And there is umm, you know, federally there, there's some
other things that Maha are doingaround ingredient transparency
and whatnot. So there's a lot of movement in
this space. And I think there's a
recognition now an industry that, you know, transparency is
(29:31):
becoming and expectation of consumers as opposed to a nice
to have. And that, you know, the the way
the modern day consumer makes decisions is different and that
they need to kind of fall in step with that.
And and transparency. The biggest piece of
transparency that matters is theingredients in the food.
Yeah, now it's super cool to hear that.
I mean, again, we're both, I think sitting in, in, in, in
(29:54):
privileged places where these things are happening.
But it's again, good to see thatthese changes are happening
because, I mean, it's all a ripple effect.
It's all a matter of time beforethese, yeah, translate to bigger
populations. Because I feel like back back in
India, for example, I feel there's so much of undetected
problems. I mean, all of in most of India
is lactose intolerant, but nobody basically knows about it.
There's gluten tolerance is veryhigh.
But yeah, our carb consumption is massive and normal Indian
(30:16):
meal is full of carbs and peopleare just not aware about it.
But I wanted to flip, wanted to ask you the flip side of this
question, Dylan, because what you said about all these
benefits of, of, of this technology or just maintaining
education around allergens. But what about the side of
there's a whole generation of people who will see that as
something which replaces humans,which now needs less human.
(30:37):
And I mean, over here, I'm beinga, a devil's advocate, even
though I believe you're bringingsomething very innovative to
the, to the restaurant industry.How do you see like tech like
yours, which helps restaurants get efficient, be it with the
stadium that you mentioned? How does it like what part of
tech of that is useful and what part of it still needs the human
side of, I don't know, creativity or intuition these
(30:59):
this balance between tech and human?
How do you see that? Yeah, No, I think it's a good
question. We're definitely not on the
point where it's tech only, let's put it that way.
Like we have a team of dietitians and we, we, we call
it like human in the in the loop.
Like we've trained large language models and used AI to
completely streamlined the process, right?
So the tech does the heavy lifting, but there's no doubt
(31:20):
about it. We still need our dietitian
team. Like our tech now has got
extremely good at flagging anything it's not sure about
because there's often a missing ingredient, a missing product, a
missing spec sheet. So, you know, the tech detects
that something looks funny in this menu item, It's not what we
would expect to see. And it raises a flag.
And that is the flag that our dietitian team will then, you
(31:41):
know, through a human eyes look at and, you know, decide whether
it's something that is, is there's an easy answer to or
whether it's something we need to clarify with the restaurant.
And when it comes to something like food allergies, there is no
margin for error, right? So, you know, we're, we're
certainly not in a position yet where I would say we'd let our
tech run riot without having thehuman in the loop.
(32:01):
Do I think in the future we'll get there?
Probably. But we're not there yet.
And I think that's the same for most companies, to be honest.
I think, you know, if you want to scale your business, it's
going to be very hard to do it without using AI and and large
language models and whatnot, or your competitors are going to
kill you. But, you know, I don't think the
tech is in a place that the humans are out of the picture as
(32:24):
yet. But like the reality of if we,
you know, if you ask me this question again in five years
time, you know, you might have adifferent answer.
And it is scary how quickly a lot of this technology is
developing in every industry, frankly.
Yeah, talking about talking about the future, right, Five
years from now, as you said, another question I had from you,
which is maybe not completely related with allergens, but I
(32:46):
feel it's more about personalizing meals because the
company I work at, I work in Rd.Center, we do a lot of
personalized, yeah, meal plans, experiences or working around
personalized dinings. We worked with this city
building in Saudi Arabia, which is going to be just about
personalized dining. I've seen like innovations in
Japan where they're like, they're like toilets which
detect your urine every day and it will tell you basically what
(33:07):
sort of food you need to eat, what nutrition you're missing.
There are a lot of people which have these personal trackers on
them. So the, the, the, the diner of
the future is very aware, I think to some extent.
I do not know how much of that awareness is correct information
or if the information is corrector not.
But how do you see the category of personalized dining?
What are the some things that you're looking forward to or
(33:27):
you're hoping the future would look like in terms of Yeah,
personalizing dining experiences?
Personalization is the name of the game.
Like you, you're kind of hittingthe nail on the head like I, I,
I talked about the modern day consumer and their expectation
from a transparency perspective.Their bigger expectation is
personalization. Like everywhere they go, whether
it's their TikTok feed or Netflix or wherever it is, they
(33:50):
expect that the experience is personalized to them and their
needs and their wants and their likes.
And I think if we if we dive into like you know, above and
beyond the algorithm, understanding that they love
Indian food from this restaurant, I think that the
next layer deeper and and more and every bit as important is
understand that consumers now are getting a lot more health
(34:11):
focused. And you look at the food as
medicine movement. You look at all of the, you
know, the, the microbiome and gut health and biomarker testing
kits that are blowing up right now function, health superpower,
all these companies that are enabling this cheaply for the
first time and where people are finally understanding, you know,
that these are the foods that are disagreeing with them or
(34:31):
that they need to eat more of umm.
You have people like Mark Laurieat wonder who has a vision to
send out these testing kits to customers, have them do the
tests and then off the back of that develop a personalized meal
kit for them that then gets shipped to their home.
Like that's the level of personalization that some of the
biggest visionaries in this space are envisioning, and I
(34:52):
completely agree with that. I think the the consumer, modern
day consumer is going to get more and more insistent on what
it does and does not want to putin its body, both in terms of
what it wants to put in and thendemanding visibility as to
whether what they're about to consume has that or does not
have that. And I honestly think we're still
at Ground Zero here in terms of where this is going to go.
(35:16):
And I think if I was, you know, as I think about the restaurant
industry and the food service industry, I just think they need
to, you know, there needs to be an awareness that this is
coming. If it's not there already, it is
coming. Consumers are not going to start
getting less picky and stop asking about ingredients and
allergens, whatever it the data shows it is growing rapidly year
(35:36):
on, year on, year on year. We have one of our investors, I
think there's 20 there in New York.
There's 21 children in the class, 19 of the kids have food
allergies. No two kids have the same, to,
to have the same set of allergies.
Like that is the prevalence thatis happening, you know, at the
like child level. Give them another few years to
come up the ranks with those allergies.
(35:57):
And then with this continued focus on health and, and
preferences, it's, it's only going one way.
And it's, it's again, it's a challenge for restauranteurs in
the food service industry to deal with these consumers, but
it's also an opportunity. Do it right, do it well, and
you're going to have a major edge on your competition and the
restaurants right down the street.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, then you said it.
I mean data is king over here, the big data, machine learning,
(36:19):
all the technology behind that. I feel and I feel Furini right
now the app you've built, the technology you've built is
around your core problem of growing up.
And I feel it's, it's a very good vertical niche to to prove
that product market fit. But again, once you have the
data of these diners, the, it's endless the possibilities that
you can do with that data, not just getting into, I don't know,
there's, I have students in my, in the university I work working
(36:41):
with, adopt adaptogens. I don't know, energy bars to get
you to sleep. There's so much happening around
it that I feel the more aware itis.
I mean, a restaurant can of course be scared listening to
this podcast, you know, it's going to get crazy for me and
I'll run out of business if I don't contract this technology.
But again, I mean, it's, it's only scary if you don't prepare
for it and if you know about it.And if there's people like you
(37:01):
out there who have lived it first hand, preparing something
which is tested within. I think that's the best way to
catch up and and stay stay in the game for a little longer.
Yeah. And I think the, the, the, the
the last thing I'll just say on that as well as I think the
difference now with technology is the cost of also doing this
has has plummeted. Like traditionally, if you
wanted to get as someone to comein and do your allergen matrix,
(37:23):
for example, even just the basic9 could cost you $20,000 and you
and then just static PDF that has to keep being updated over
time. Like, you know, that's when it
was manual. Like we can do the same thing
with a better customer experience that's kept up to
date, that's plugged into all the rest of your tech stack for
a fraction of that amount now. And so the barrier that the
(37:44):
beauty of the technology is thatit is now enabling restaurants
to do what before was both hard and expensive and manual.
And so I think that's the other piece here and that's across the
board. That's not just in our world,
that's does the AI tools that are out there now from
bookkeeping to legal to marketing to sales to every part
of your business are incredible.And there's so many focused,
(38:05):
focused restaurant vertical onesas well.
You know, I think investing in, in, in a, in a, in the best in
class tech stack is going to, isgoing to give restaurants an
edge. Yeah, I know for sure.
I mean, and, and speaking about how you've spoken about the, the
technology yourself and how passionate you are.
You spoke about investors and how this, this is a business
like the business side of things.
How do you see when, I guess when you go approaching
(38:28):
investors or talking about, I don't know, pitching this idea
to people who would invest in it, How is the atmosphere around
food startups? Because I know, for example,
from my personal experience in Europe, when we see the whole
scale of how VCs are funding or how private equity is funding
startups, Food and Agriculture or food and Agitech is a very
small compared to one of the bigstartups.
And I heard about the states a lot.
(38:49):
I'm currently reading a book from Andrew Chen about the cold
start problem, which goes aroundall the big tech startups,
Netflix, Tinder. Yeah, beautiful book and like
reading that. And then everything around how
Airbnb was built with the Brian Chesky stories, Y Combinator,
the whole culture of like startups and and tech funding.
Does your product, like, does your product appeal as a tech
product or is it something to, Imean, they don't feel
(39:13):
knowledgeable enough for that. How?
How is the approach to your product?
Yeah, I know we're an AI companyultimately, right at our, at our
core, like we are, you know, arethe core of our tech AI and data
is what is what powers our entire ecosystem, our entire
product, our entire everything. And so food, like we're not a
(39:33):
food company, we're a food tech company, a restaurant tech
company as well. But like, ultimately what we're
trying to do at like from a company standpoint is build the
data layer that powers ingredient transparency across
the whole food ecosystem. We want to be that middle layer
that works not just with all therestaurants and hotels and food
(39:54):
service providers, but with all of online ordering, with your
door dashes, your Uber Eats, your grub hubs, with your first
party ordering as well, with alllike just being that layer that
manages this. Entire problem and not just in
the US, this is a global problemas we've kind of alluded to as
well. So the vision and the
opportunity for us as a company,I believe is absolutely massive.
(40:15):
And for investors, as you said, who aren't necessarily experts
in the space, which most are not, it's just an edge.
It's like anything, you just have to educate them, you know,
give them the data, give them the, the, the information they
need to, to learn and about whatwe do and how we do it and what
the opportunity is, and then allow them to make an informed
decision. And anyone who's raised venture
(40:36):
before will know that, you know,there is plenty of no's for
every yes and you're not a fit for everyone.
But it's just a matter of grinding until you find the
people who resonate, understand the mission, understand the
opportunity and who who back youto be the right team to to
execute. Yeah, I mean, and no better way
to do it once you've you live the problem yourself and grown
up in a family where you had a restaurant yourself.
So Dylan, before before we leavethis podcast, I want to ask you
(41:01):
like, what keeps you going? What is like, I don't know if
there's one rewarding moment from from since launching
Foudini. What is?
What has it been for you? The customer feedback on, on how
important this what is to them and what a difference it would
make in their lives, I think that's what it keeps coming back
to. It's like this.
This is not a problem where we're saving $0.10 for someone
on every transaction. This is solving a problem for
(41:22):
people which can save their lives and can make them enable
them to act like a lot of peoplewho don't have food allergies,
which is just being able to go to a restaurant and enjoy the
experience like everyone else and food and dining out.
And, and that whole experience is such, I think a huge fabric
of, of society and community andlife generally.
(41:43):
And so many people are, are feelexcluded from that or feel
unable to enjoy that because of this lack of transparency that
that has existed for a long, long time.
And so the genuine knowledge that we are making a tangible
difference for such a huge segment for a real problem that
truly does exist. Umm, nothing has changed for me
(42:04):
since that first aha moment and I've just been bullish on on on
making sure that we can scale the solution to help all those
people and the restaurant industry at the same time ever
since. I mean, it's amazing to hear
experience Dylan. Lastly, before we close this, as
I told you in the beginning, thelisteners over here are people
who are, I would say most of thelisteners are still in
restaurants or, or people starting country education or
(42:26):
people getting into the trade. And some major chunk of them
also people who are sort of donewith the restaurant model and
they're looking for like, what else can they contribute to?
And I feel like chefs, yeah, have a lot of knowledge, apart
from like, they have knowledge about daily operations they can
contribute to, I don't know, jobs and careers outside the
restaurant system, be it in foodpolicy making.
I think people in food policy need advisors who have been
(42:48):
chefs before or, I don't know, education.
You need people who have been chefs before.
What advice would you give to them, especially to people who
want to head of business, like be be an entrepreneur?
Because like the things that yousaid for me, the biggest
takeaways, like how you said before this became a tech
company, it was very much about paper and pen.
Walking into restaurants, doing this in a small scale and like
using the lean startup model to test your product market fit and
(43:11):
then taking the whole tech side of things.
What else could you say to people who are who have these
entrepreneurial ideas as a chef?Well, a great example for anyone
who's a chef out there. We partner with a company called
Meez Meez and their CEO and founder Josh as a chef and he
essentially built a recipe management tool, which is
probably the best recipe management tool that exists in
(43:32):
the US from from that functionality standpoint.
And again, he was like myself, anon-technical background.
He was a chef and he built a tool to help chefs because
again, he who could have better subject matter expertise than
himself. And So what I would say is 1.
If you have a vision for, you know, solving a problem that you
(43:52):
experience yourself in your everyday work, you know, you are
very likely to most, the most likely and the best candidate to
solve for that. But secondly, to your point,
it's not like you have an idea and then the next day you have a
company, right? Like I would advise anyone who
has that idea, spend plenty of time doing a lot of market
research. Like how big of a problem is
(44:13):
this really? If it's like, is it, is it a big
enough market for an investor toback, uh, is, you know, speak to
as many other people that you think experience that problem
and validate truly. Then don't just ask for a, you
know, I'll just tell me this is a great idea.
Like challenge them to truly answer the question honestly and
validate. No, this is something that is a
problem and this is something I would pay for if you could solve
(44:33):
for it as well. And I do as much of that
diligence and homework as you can before or, you know, taking
a more significant plunge. But again, we talked about AI
and tech. The beauty now is there are
tools like lovable and other like vibe coding tools out there
that anybody with no technical experience whatsoever can, can
spin up a prototype, you know, in a matter of days now and to
(44:54):
test and, and, and to, and to see if there, there's something
there. So the barrier to entry has
dropped drastically from what itwould have been five years ago.
And so again, if you, if you, ifyou truly believe in the idea
and you've kind of got the validation and data you believe
you need to, to, to give it a go, absolutely back yourself and
give it a go. But I would always just say take
(45:15):
the bit of time to get that validation first before you quit
your job hand in your notice. That's certainly what I did.
I took several months before I built up the conviction that
this was the right thing to do. Now beautiful Dylan, I mean, I
couldn't I couldn't sum it up better.
And, and thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing
your story and for showing how apersonal struggle that you
started off with in the beginning of the podcast can
(45:36):
lead to like a whole system exchange.
I see it as a system exchange because I feel this is the last
piece of the puzzle which is missing for a restaurant who
really wants to comply with these these with these allergens
and intolerance. They have an easy tool now.
And there is there is no room for complaining anymore.
And you have showed us how food and tech can together make the
world a little safer for for millions of people.
It's not, it's not a handful. So, yeah, thank you so much.
(45:57):
We will link to you and to Foudini in in the show notes.
And it's been a pleasure. Appreciate it a lot, thank you
so much for having me on, I really enjoyed the chat.
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