eva chen and Tom bannister transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Each week, we talk to the coolest culinary personalities around, the folks shaping and shaking up the food scene. Today is Valentine's Day, and even though the holiday is slightly lame, I am sorry. Well, that is unless you work in the candy or floral industry. I thought it would be fun to have a couple onto day show. We've invited the granola king of New York and his granola muse.
It's none other than Tom Bannister of Tom's Perfect 10 granola, and my old friend, Eva Chen, head of fashion partnerships at Instagram and a best selling children's book author. Her most recent children's book, I Am Golden, is a beautiful tribute to the AAPI Experience. Eva and Tom are college sweethearts, parents to three wonderful children, social media savants , and basically a romcom waiting to happen. Stay tuned for our chat. We have a new sponsor this week, and I am so excited to tell you about them. It's American Unagi, a company based in Maine and founded by entrepreneur, Sarah Rademaker, who is also the CEO.
American Unagi offers locally sourced, responsibly raised, smoked eel. Their eel filets are salt-brined and have a rich smokey flavor, plus a high natural fat content. They are an incredibly versatile ingredient. For you home chefs out there, there are so many things you can make with smoked eel, from rice bowls to salads, to banh mi, to sushi. You can find American Unagi smoked ell on lukeslobster.com. Luke's Lobster, that is a company a lot of you know, has partnered with the nonprofit, Island Institute, to support Maine's coastal communities and the fishermen and women based in Maine.
Their work with American Unagi is part of that initiative. Again, you can find American Unagi on lukeslobster.com. Use code cherry15 for 15% off all products at lukeslobster.com through March 31st. That's a great deal. If you make something from Luke's, be sure to tag Cherry Bombe. I would love to see what you've cooked up. Folks often ask me how they can get more involved in Cherry Bombe. We have a great membership program for those who would love to become official members of the Bombe squad. Those who join get an official Bombe squad card, plus access to special events and networking sessions.
I've met a lot of great folks through our virtual networking sessions and look forward to meeting many of you in person this year when we start to do in-person member events again. A membership is $40, and we have some special offers right now for new members. Purchase any membership and you get a free book. Drew Barrymore's new cookbook. It's a sweet deal, so check it out at cherrybombe.com and become a Bombe squad member today.
Now, let's check in with Eva and Tom. Eva Chen, Tom Bannister, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Eva Chen:
Thanks so much for having us.
Tom Bannister:
Thank you very much. Wonderful to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
It is always exciting to have granola royalty on the show. I have to ask, do you feel two pressured to eat granola every day?
Tom Bannister:
I don't feel pressured to eat granola every day, but there's always granola around. I am often working on a new recipe, so there's always granola in various stages of conception lying around in different bowls. I tend just to ease it, but I don't feel pressure to eat it.
Kerry Diamond:
Eva?
Eva Chen:
I would say our apartment is much like the Ruby Wonka's chocolate factory, but with granola. As Tom mentioned, there's literally bowls of granola scattered everywhere, and on any given day, I can graze from anywhere between three and 10 bowls that are just placed all throughout the apartment. Not in one consolidated area, like our kitchen island. It's interesting because I don't know what the flavors are a lot of the time before I eat them, and so sometimes I'll take one and it's spicy and another one might be savory. But I don't know if I feel pressure, but it is always there. It's like the hum of white noise in the background like when you're flying. That is granola for us.
Tom Bannister:
The smell of baking granola.
Eva Chen:
It's a great smell, to be honest. It does smell really nice in our apartment. Maybe a candle, Tom. Maybe we should do a candle next.
Tom Bannister:
Good idea.
Kerry Diamond:
That is a good idea. Let's start with how you two met. Who wants to go first?
Tom Bannister:
Well, we met at University of Oxford, which was where I was studying, and Eva, studying at John's Hopkins in the US, she came over for a semester to Oxford, to the UK, and ended up meeting me at a party. Yeah, we've been together ever since.
Eva Chen:
That's a long time ago, we met. We were basically, not to sound hokey, but we were college sweethearts and we were long distance after that, and it's interesting looking through the lens of food at our relationship from when we were in college, and we'd be doing late night junk food. There was a place in Oxford that was literally a truck selling deep fried Chick-fil-A esque burgers, which were very delicious, honestly. Now I'm a vegetarian, but thinking about that and now when we are going out to eat, the thought of that. You can chart our relationship through food, which is funny when you think about it.
Tom Bannister:
That takeout truck was called Hassan's, if I remember.
Eva Chen:
Yes. Hassan, that's right.
Kerry Diamond:
Good memory.
Eva Chen:
Iconic
Kerry Diamond:
Tom, was it love at sight? Did you turn to the person next to you and say, "That's the woman I'm going to marry," like a romcom?
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. Love at pretty quick sight, I guess would be a way of describing it. It's definitely Whirlwind romance meeting. Yeah, I think we met three or four weeks before the end of the semester when Eva was coming back to the States.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh no. You only had three or four weeks together before she left? This really does sound like a movie.
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. We only had three or four weeks. Yes, it was a pretty whirlwind thing. Then we just talked on the phone a lot every night after that, from the US to the UK, which in 2000 was not as easy as it is now. There wasn't FaceTime, there wasn't Zoom. AOL Messenger was just launching.
Eva Chen:
Oh, God. That makes me feel extremely ancient. Let's be vague about it, please.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll move to the next question, Eva. All right. You were pre-med at John's Hopkins University. I didn't realize that about you. How did you wind up in the world of magazines?
Eva Chen:
I always thought that I would be a doctor. I always loved science and health in general and wellness. I'm a first generation American child of immigrants, and I think parents, I think, want their children to go on to very pre-professional "stable careers." Think doctor, lawyer, banker, engineer. I think it's as a result of instability they may have experience while immigrating to the US. They want their kids to have really stable foundations. I never really questioned it just because I had a decent aptitude for the sciences.
But I took an internship at Harper's Bazaar when I was in college just as a last hurrah before starting to study for the MCATs, and I just fell in love. I had always loved the written word, I always loved fashion magazines because my mom subscribed to all of them. I guess I never put two and two together that this was a job that people actually had and a career path that someone could be paid to test beauty products, which, Kerry, I know you know all about as well.It was a mind blowing moment when I walked into that office the first time and saw all these amazingly smart women bustling around and talking so intelligently about fashion and beauty and culture.
I never really looked back from then. It was a dream come true to work in editorial for the amount of time I worked in it, which was about a decade, and I still love health and wellness, a lot. The Hopkins stuff definitely ... I feel like there's no ways to experience, is what I always tell people when I do informational interviews or when I meet college students. It's like, "Just because you are an economics major and you're not working in economics doesn't mean that it's a waste experience. You could bring that job to a publishing house and bring context and background." Having the big picture perspective from looking at your job and career, I think is really important.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I'm so glad you did that because we never would've met you, Eva.
Eva Chen:
True. Our paths never would've crossed had I-
Kerry Diamond:
No.
Eva Chen:
... not had that time at Harper's Bazaar figuring out my life.
Kerry Diamond:
Tom, I don't know if you know this, but I've tried to hire Eva several times over the years when she was an editor and failed each time. But she's done well despite that.
Eva Chen:
Debatable. But I always loved working with you, Kerry, and continue to be inspired by you.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh. Same. The two of you, I'm so blown away and so many respects. Just the fact that you have three beautiful children blows my mind. I was looking through your Instagram the other night. I can't believe how tall Ren is.
Eva Chen:
Ren is a giant. Oh my God. Super tall. Tom is very, very tall, but you're talking about the kids and it's almost like you're going to summon them because I'm sure any second now, one of the kids is going to come barreling in and grab the laptop and drop it on the floor, and it's going to be like BBC dad from a few years ago all over again.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh. All right. Well, let's talk how you made the leap to Instagram, which is how so many people know you today. When did that happen? How did that happen?
Eva Chen:
For me, I was working as the editor in chief of Lucky magazine, which was just an amazing experience. I really loved that magazine when it first came out and I'm a huge shopper. I actually think of myself as a fashion enthusiast and then ... But I just love finding new brands, talking about small brands especially, and thinking about the next generation of talent. This was during a shift from print to digital, the second one actually, I think that the industry has gone through. When I left Lucky, it had just been transitioned over into an e-commerce site.
It was a time of huge transition for the magazine, and I just had Ren, my daughter, who's seven now, a few weeks before. It was a really hard decision, but I decided I needed to do what was right for our family. I took a step back from Lucky just to spend time with Ren, and it was during that time that I was approached by someone who I had met at various tech conferences like South by Southwest, and he basically was like, "We've been thinking about Instagram and fashion." Again, this was seven or eight years ago.
He was like, "We really are looking for someone to help bring fashion to Instagram and Instagram to fashion, and have you ever thought about joining a company like Instagram?" It was funny because and Tom will remember this. First of all, he did it ... We were at ABC Cocina, which had just opened, and the famous, the green pea guacamole controversy of 2000, whatever year it was, '14 I guess. That's what we were eating at this meeting, and I remember coming to Tom and I was like, "Well, I really just ... I don't know. I don't know if I'm ready to go back to a full-time job. I just really want to spend time with Ren and savor this time."
Tom said, "This is the perfect job for you because you love Instagram. You're basically doing this job of talking to designers, models and stylists already, and teaching them about Instagram. Sounds like a great opportunity." Tom has always been such a great supporter and also a great person to brainstorm and big picture dream with. I took the job that year, and it's been seven years, which is bananas. I can't believe it's been that long.
Kerry Diamond:
It did seem like the perfect job for you at the time. What is your job today? Describe it for everyone.
Eva Chen:
Sure. I work at Instagram/Meta, we are calling it now, and my role is to work with the fashion industry, whatever that takes form, the public figures within fashion mostly, and really educate them on everything Instagram has to offer. I think that's how my job started, and in the last few years, it's transitioned over working on the commerce and shopability of Instagram. I remember when I started at Instagram, it was my dream, I was asked on my interview with Kevin Systrom at the time, "Where do you see fashion on Instagram in a few years?"
I was like, "The dream would be to see what someone's wearing." Let's say Alexa Chung, and say, "Oh my gosh, I love her shoes and I love her hat." I love this editorial and literally be able to tap someone's Instagram and shop it. It was this cat and mouse game of trying to find the brand, and then you're like, "Okay, wait. She's wearing a stripe shirt from GANNI." But then I go to the website and I can't find it, and maybe it's spring, summer 2020.
Connecting the dots there for making Instagram more shoppable is something that I've been working on for the last three years, which has been really fun. I would say the next part of my role is really thinking about the big bad metaverse that people are just beginning to explore, this wild, brave new world we're looking at and thinking about how does fashion fit into the metaverse.
Kerry Diamond:
And food, which will ...
Eva Chen:
And food.
Kerry Diamond:
You'll dress everybody in the metaverse and Tom can feed us-
Eva Chen:
I know.
Kerry Diamond:
... in the metaverse.
Eva Chen:
Tom needs to do an NFT granola. Tom can do an NFT of his mustache. I'm in full support of this.
Tom Bannister:
They definitely eat granola in the metaverse. I know that.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm happy to hear it. Thank God. Before we get off the topic of fashion, because of you I watched Next in Fashion on Netflix.
Eva Chen:
Yeah. So fun.
Kerry Diamond:
It was so good. It was so good. The person who won at the end was so deserving.
Eva Chen:
Oh, she's so good.
Kerry Diamond:
I won't say who.
Eva Chen:
She's so, so talented. Yeah, no spoilers.
Kerry Diamond:
No spoilers.
Eva Chen:
No, the show is a year old. People still get very mad.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh wait, it's a whole year old?
Eva Chen:
I think it's a whole year old, but they just announced it's coming back with Tan France who's amazing and exceptional, who you should have on this podcast.
Kerry Diamond:
We've had Anthony on. We need to reach out to Tan.
Eva Chen:
Then Gigi Hadid is going to be co-hosting it.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, fun.
Eva Chen:
She loves food too. She's a huge foodie.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, I think she said once she wanted her own food show. The show was so sweet and I was so touched. You at the end, you were crying and everything. I was like, "Eva's going to ruin all her makeup."
Eva Chen:
Yeah. I cry very easily, but it was a fun experience to film, for sure.
Kerry Diamond:
I bet a lot of happy tears were shed over your books, Eva. I'm sure folks know this if they follow you on Instagram, but you are also a children's book author and a prolific children's book author at that. Your latest book, I Am Golden, was published earlier this month. Congratulations. That is such a beautiful timely book. I would love for you to tell us more about it.
Eva Chen:
Oh, thank you. I'm actually just wrapping up the book tour for it, and I'm shocked that I have a voice left. I Am Golden came out to two weeks ago. It is probably my most personal book to date. It's very much the book that I wish I had growing up. I actually have a copy of it here behind me that your listeners won't be able to see, but I can describe it. I Am Golden tells the story of a little girl who feels like she lives between worlds, and it's really owed to the immigrant experience and a manifesto of love for the Asian-American community.
I wrote it during the COVID-19 crisis when there was this huge spike in anti-Asian hate crimes happening from coast to coast, and really globally, in part no doubt to phrases like China virus. It really got me, and Tom as well, thinking about how to talk about culture, how to talk about community, and background and heritage. I didn't have a book like this when I was a child. I didn't have a book that said the shape of your eyes is beautiful and that you should feel confident in who you are and talking about the immigrant experience and the struggle that my parents went through.
I hope it's a great tool for teachers, for students, for educator, for parents to have these tricky conversations all packaged in a beautiful book that ... The illustrator, actually, she's also in tech. She works at Google and she does the Google Doodle. When you go to google.com, you know how the illustration changes every day? She's one of the artists on that tiny team, which is so cool.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I love the Google Doodles. What is her name, Eva?
Eva Chen:
Sophie Diao, D-I-A-O. It was an amazing project to partner on with her. She's also Chinese-American, so we both put a lot of our own stories and own struggles into the book.
Kerry Diamond:
My sister is a librarian at a public grammar school in Massachusetts. I have to get a copy and send it to her for the school library.
Eva Chen:
I would love that. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. This is your seventh book, as we mentioned, but your eighth book also came out right-
Eva Chen:
Lats week.
Kerry Diamond:
... after that one. Yes. If you're listening, you're like, "How do you have two books in one month?" It's all the supply chain thing. I'm sure a lot of you have been following it. Melissa Clark's cookbook wound up in the bottom of the ocean or something. I don't know if you saw that story, but everybody's book schedules in disarray.
Eva Chen:
All over the place.
Kerry Diamond:
Yes.
Eva Chen:
I think the supply chain is just ... I feel like it's almost a cliche now to blame it on the supply chain. If I can't get a reservation at a restaurant, I'm like, "Oh, supply chain."
Kerry Diamond:
But that really was why you have back-to-back book launches. Right?
Eva Chen:
Totally. Exactly. It is as a result of mysterious supply chain. I don't know that I'm ever going to have two books coming out one week apart again. I would highly not recommend it to any authors listening. It is highly stressful, but it all worked out and I'm grateful that these books will be out in the universe.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about book number eight.
Eva Chen:
Book number eight is called Colors of Awesome. It's a board book. Parents listening to this, know that is the fairly durable format that kids can chew on and teeth on. There are two other books in that series. One is called A Is for Awesome! The other one is called 3 2 1 Awesome! Those two respectively are an alphabet book and a color ... Sorry, and a numbers book, and this one is one teaching kids about all the colors. The rainbow as told through powerful women. Like white is for Kamala Harris's white pants suit at the inauguration. Yellow is for Vera Wang's yellow gown. Purple's for the color purple. It's all toed through historic women.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that. What inspired you to get into the children's book business? Was it having your own children? Was this something you had always wanted to do?
Eva Chen:
I always wanted to write children's books ever since basically I learned how to read. I was talking to my mom about being a working mother a few weeks ago, and she was saying how, I remember growing up, going on all these business trips with my mom. We would go to Korea together, and I was saying, "Gosh, it must have been so hard for you to travel with a baby," basically me, and she was like, "Once you learned how to read when you're about six or seven." It was so easy because you just had a suitcase of books and you would just be quietly sitting and reading.
It was always a dream that I think like many professionals and people can identify with that was just in the back burner. I never thought it could be a reality. It was always something that was like, "Oh, in my dreams, I do this." But then I think it all crystallized when Tom and I had kids. Tom and I both had the experience of reading to Ren and Tao, not yet to River, but reading oftentimes the same book three or four times in one night.
I realized I can do this. The first book was called Juno Valentine and the Magical Shoes, and it's a kind of story of feminism of fashion and a fairy tale, all mixed into one. I've been with the same editor ever since, and cooking, writing, like anything, any sport also, requires a lot of practice. I think I've evolved a lot as a writer, and I think the new book, I Am Golden, is something I'm extra proud of because it's definitely the most distinct in terms of voice.
The main character whose name is May, it's very much my story. I try not to write with Ren in mind. Juno Valentine's name, June was my grandmother on my mom's side who I was super, super, super close with growing up. I've always said to Tom, "I love the name June. I love the name Juno." As we were not having any more kids, right, Tom? Unfortunately, Tom's like, "Yep," the name June/Juno will have to stick with the book series and not another cute chubby little baby.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I was going to say there are always pets, but you said you'll never have a pet aside from a goldfish or something. Did I see that on Instagram?
Eva Chen:
We can have no more mouths to feed. This is no more mouths to feed, no more close the folds. It's a little too much.
Kerry Diamond:
Noted. Speaking about children's books, did you ... I'm only bringing this up because it was such a heartwarming story and I was so happy to read it. Did you read in the Times about that second grader in Idaho who wrote his own book and snuck it into the library?
Eva Chen:
Yes. Oh my gosh. That is so, so cute. Someone needs to give that kid a book deal. If I were a book publisher, I literally would be calling this kid and saying, "We will make it into a real book." It's such a good story and it's so heartwarming, and I love stories like that. Because books, and children's books in particular, really allow children, give them the space to dream, and also makes them ... It can be a safe place for them.
I know that, for me, books growing up were very much my best friends. I feel like I learned. Tom and I were just talking about that this weekend, how it's like. I feel like I really learned about families and the way the world works through books. We need more books with representation, so when people see, they can see themselves in the books and they can see their story, they could see experiences of bullying, immigration, struggle, everything in children's books. These stories are so important to tell.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, congratulations on all the success. Let's talk food because you were actually in the third issue of Cherry Bombe. Thank you very much for doing that. That was all the way back in 2014 when you were the editor in chief of Lucky magazine. We had a column called Snack Time, and you shared that you were a vegetarian and into healthy snacks. Is that still the case?
Eva Chen:
Vegetarian, pescatarian, not so into healthy snacks. Although I do have some spring bone, raw brownie bites in front of me, which are super delicious. But fruit is my favorite snack still. Second favorite snack, I guess just because of proximity, would be Tom's granola.
Kerry Diamond:
Good answer. What's your favorite fruit? What can we always find you snacking on?
Eva Chen:
Well, right now it's the Sumo orange season. I love Sumo oranges.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, don't you love those?
Eva Chen:
Even though it's literally $5 an orange. I love berries, blackberries. We live nearby the Greenmarket, so we go to the Union Square Greenmarket pretty frequently. I love the apples from all the various stalls. We always have apples. There's a brand called JOJO's Chocolate. I buy by the giant bag at Costco, and I like it because it has ... It's not too sweet, it's quite bitter as a chocolate, and each one is the perfect amount, the perfect bite, and so I'll have ... I'll ration myself and have three of those. Tom is not a snacker at all.
Kerry Diamond:
No.
Eva Chen:
He has the most self restraint I've ever met of a human. There could literally be ... We have Daily Provisions' Crullers in the apartment right now.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh.
Eva Chen:
I'm like, "I'm going to rush myself to half of one," and Tom will just walk by it, which I do not think is normal.
Kerry Diamond:
How do you deal at Instagram? Because we've been there a few times and they are swimming in snacks every 10 feet.
Eva Chen:
Swimming in snacks, lots of cafeterias. But there were certain things that I prefer to snack, and they had dark chocolate-covered almonds that were our favorite. The fruit. There's always a great fruit bar and salad bar, but there were also a lot of junky options, which is not my vibe. It was cereal, but it's hard.
Tom Bannister:
The salad bar.
Eva Chen:
Yeah, the salad bar was great, and the granola. I will say the granola at Facebook was one of the things that when Tom used to visit the Facebook offices, he would always have some of the granola and say, "This is amazing, but this is how I would change it." I remember it was one of the inspirations. Right, Tom?
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. I got a few recipes from the chef there. He just, when we were starting out, gave me some pointers. Yeah. It was great granola. If I remember, they used condensed milk, so it's...
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, so it's very sweet?
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. Sweeter and chunkier.
Eva Chen:
I now know about the melting point of condensed milk and the evaporation point of condensed milk and the malleability of condensed milk. I've heard many a rant about it.
Kerry Diamond:
I can't even imagine how much you now know, Eva, about granola. This is a great moment to transition into granola. Tom, I don't think of granola as a British thing. I have to add, was it popular when you were growing up in Manchester?
Tom Bannister:
No, not really. Muesli is the equivalent in the UK, which is a little different. It's less baked together and you have less of a wet mix in. It's more just a sorted fruits, nuts, maybe some oats. That was the closest, but I probably really started to eating it when I moved to the States, probably when we would go to hotels on holiday. The breakfast buffet, that was probably where I first got into it. Then over the years, just living in New York would gradually stumbled across artisanal granola from all of these different places little bakeries and whole foods, other places. Just really fell in love with this as a snack. It's a great post-exercise snack. If you've been on a run, you've been on a swim, it's a great way to re-energize. I feel as though I ate it quite a lot in that context, as well as for breakfast.
Kerry Diamond:
Was there any point pre-pandemic where you thought, "I'm going to have a granola empire one day?"
Tom Bannister:
No, I never imagined that I would be making and selling granola.
Eva Chen:
But I always felt like it was years and years and years of hearing Tom talk about granola and like, "Oh this one's okay." Sometimes we would go on various trips or business trips and we started jokingly having Tom rate the granolas on my Instagram, and he would do what we call Tom talks. Not to have TED Talk people come after us for trademark, but Tom would do a Tom talk about granola and he would say, "I'd give it a seven out of 10." I do think I kept saying, "Dude, you should launch your own granola because you know what is a 10 out of 10. You've tasted every single granola. Don't undersell yourself, Bannister. Your granola taste buds are platinum."
Tom Bannister:
I think, as Eva mentioned, I started reviewing granola, I guess, on Eva's Instagram, and that just started the flood of granola. We just started getting more and more of it and I was exposed to more and more different kinds. It's funny watching those videos, the kind of analysis that reminds me very much of my dad. He would often come up with a very nuanced analysis of wine or food or cheese or scorns or whatever it is that you hadn't quite thought of and perfectly put his finger on what could be improved about it. I feel as though that's actually where this might originally come from.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. So good taste buds run in the family?
Tom Bannister:
Yes. Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Tom, you do have a day job though. Tell us what your day job is.
Tom Bannister:
I'm actually in advertising. I'm a creative director in that agency called Billion Dollar Boy. Before that I was a producer for 10, 12 years, before that in the film industry. I've always been really in those content creation storytelling industries.
Kerry Diamond:
We know you love granola and we know you are a restrained snacker, as Eva describes you. Were you much of a foodie or a gourmand before this? How would you have described yourself?
Tom Bannister:
To be honest, I was never really much a foodie. I'm a man of simple tastes, to be honest, just when it comes to food. My son, River, is eight months old, but is clearly a gourmand. He just loves food. I wouldn't put myself quite in that bracket, but I do appreciate a good meal. I appreciate a good restaurant.
Kerry Diamond:
Is Tom's Perfect 10 the first business you've launched?
Tom Bannister:
It's not. I had a production company called SXM through which, over 10 years, produced a lot of content commercials. Actually, Tom's Perfect 10 spoked out of that. Yeah, I've pretty much always worked for myself from moving to the States when I was 21, through to about three years ago when I became a creative director, I pretty much worked for myself. In many ways, small business entrepreneurship is my default mode.
Kerry Diamond:
Did this come very natural to you, or is creating a food business a completely different beast from what you've done in the past?
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. Creating a food business is something completely outside of what I've ever done. I've never cooked for more than 10 people for Christmas dinner or something along those lines, and never really thought from that perspective of being a food entrepreneur or a food business owner. That side of it was completely new. But I think from being a producer for so long, when you're a producer, you sign onto a production and you could be going anywhere in the world, Puerto Rico, Africa, the West Coast, and you're with a group of people that you've just met, and your job is to put together this production.
Oversee lots of people, lots of creative people coming together and try and get everybody behind a unified vision and problem solving every step of the way. It's always very unusual out-of-the-box problems. I think that experience is very similar to running a food startup or being in the food space and that you're inventing it as you go along, being flexible and reacting, trying to come up with innovative solutions to problems that you didn't see coming.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you develop the flavors, given that you didn't have a food background? How did you do that and who helped?
Tom Bannister:
I pretty much did it ... Definitely, Eva has been a massive voice, muse, inspiration in all of this. Tasting every granola and giving her thoughts and insights. A lot of the big wins I think in our flavors have actually been from ... Some of them from Eva's ideas. But I started out. When I had children, obviously when you have kids, your life completely changes and you have to rethink everything. You're at home more, you're in the kitchen more, you're doing family things more. That was the change that happened to me. I just found myself in the kitchen with my young children.
Ren was probably three or four at the time, and it was just a great fun activity for us to do as a family, me, Ren and Tao. Just make these different flavors of granola. That was really what attracted me to granola, was it is a blank canvas, the versatility of it. You can really take it in so many different directions and different flavors, different creative insights and inspirations going into it. It all aligned really with me making granola with my kids, filming it, putting on Instagram.
Kerry Diamond:
You really put yourself out there though in terms of feedback. You still have a monthly subscription, but now folks can buy the ginger zing, which we'll talk about in a second. But you truly wanted feedback and even have this special card where people can rate it, take a photo of it, put it on social media. Most chefs, you talk to them about things like Yelp or reviewers. They don't necessarily want that kind of feedback, but you seem to embrace that. I also think your audience loves you so much and loves what you're doing that they're happy to be the guinea pig for flavors that work or don't work.
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. That was, along with granola, just being this fantastic versatile blank canvas. I think the second aha moment was, "Wow, other people are as passionate and interested in granola as I am, and they're willing to share those insights and DM me with advice and tell me what I'm doing wrong." If you go back on my highlights and look at the journey through making this granola, I'm gradually getting better and better, and that honestly is just the response from followers on Instagram, the DMs the insights, and it could be anyone, like food scientists to chefs to just people like myself, novices. That feedback and that community insight that you get, that crowd collaboration is just such a powerful source.
Kerry Diamond:
It's also brave. Sometimes when people buy something, they expect it to be totally perfect. They're not willing to go along on this ride.
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. I didn't fully think through that side of it until I was in the middle of doing it, and then it was like, "Oh, wow, I've just made 500 bags of granola and given people scorecards and invited them to rate it. What have I just done?" As with many things, I didn't fully think through the implications of it until I was way into doing it. I feel as though there's maybe a little bit of naivety there.
Kerry Diamond:
Clusters are a big thing. Your fans seem to really care about cluster ratio.
Tom Bannister:
Clusters are huge, and the biggest thing I think is crunch. The texture of it is really crucial.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about ginger zing because that, I'm guessing, has been your most popular flavor to date because that has graduated into permanent availability status.
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. Yeah. The model is we do a flavor of the month and you can sign up for a subscription to it. That subscription is really ... We do a limited amount of granola each month. That flavor is only available for that month, and then everybody rates it, chimes in, then you get the scorecard with the bag. Then based off of that rating, I decide whether I'm going to bring it back or not. So far out of 16 granola flavors, only one has come back. It's really interesting to see the feedback and how certain flavors and types of granola are really divisive and others are really popular.
Kerry Diamond:
Give us an example of a divisive granola flavor.
Tom Bannister:
Anytime where you are doing something that's extra peppery, extra hot, extra salty, it does tend to elicit more divisive reactions from people. That's a good example, but the ginger zing flavor was really such a crowd-pleaser from the start.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us what's in that one.
Tom Bannister:
It's candy ginger. Candy ginger pieces in amongst the granola oats, sorghum, almonds, pecans, crisp rice. The other key ingredient is we have this ginger infused maple syrup from Runamok Maple in Vermont, and that really gives the flavor this deep gingery flavor, which I feel as though all of the ginger granolas that I've had are missing. They feel quite ginger light. This has that flavor, and then the candy ginger almost gives it a zingy touch of spice.
There's a little bit of black pepper in it. I've heard from people that that unexpected combination of the texture of candy ginger juxtaposed with the texture of this extra crunchy granola really works well together, unexpectedly for people.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your personal favorite so far?
Eva Chen:
This is a very tough question because it's like asking me to choose which of my children is my favorite. I feel very intensely connected to each of the flavors. I have been lobbying very, very furiously to Tom to bring back peppermint chocolate, which was a huge favorite of mine. I love the minty chocolatey flavor. The other one that I love that was probably maybe one of the more polarizing ones was mangonada. Tom, I want to do it justice, but it's a tangy tart mango flavor, right?
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. Mangonada is probably the flavor I'm most proud of. Mangonada is this Mexican kind of mango, sweet, sour and spicy drink with a touch of lime in it. I've never really had a granola that combines that taste profile. The first sourness, then sweetness and then spiciness on the finish.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I'm sad I missed that one. That sounds good.
Eva Chen:
That one is amazing and so unique. I don't think that you're ever going to find another mangonada granola, and then the third one that's my favorite is the one that actually is coming out. Is it in two months, Tom? It's the one that's scattered in various bowls around our apartment now like offerings to the granola gods.
Tom Bannister:
You mean next one's flavor?
Kerry Diamond:
Can we get us sneak peek?
Eva Chen:
Can we say that there are chunks of golden apple?
Tom Bannister:
Yes. Apple is the leading taste profile.
Kerry Diamond:
It's a good reason for folks to go subscribe so you can find out what this secret flavor is going to be. Tom, what's the plan? Do you want to stay direct to consumer or do you hope to be in stores one day?
Tom Bannister:
That's a really good question. We're having so much fun just exploring this direct to consumer space and being on Instagram with a product. It's really exciting to be in that space. I think there's so many changes and the way that it's coupling with content and influencers and just speed of change in the D2C space, I think is really exciting. It's really exciting to be a part of it. As I said, I've spent my life in content creation and in advertising and working with clients, working with other brands. For me, it's just really great for once to be on the other side of the fence with my own brand and to be the client and the agency at the same time is a really rewarding experience.
Kerry Diamond:
Tom's Perfect 10 was very much born on Instagram, as we've discussed. What advice do you have for other founders about using Instagram to launch or promote their business?
Tom Bannister:
I think what I was talking about before with that idea of value coming back. It's not just you putting value out into the world. It's positioning a product or yourself as being able to receive that crowd value, that value from lots of people, insights, feedback. Think of it a research and development platform as much as a sales channel. Test products, use some of these really strong interactive tools like polls and other ways of really engaging with people and getting that feedback.
I think that's a switch that I made in my mind, that it's not just that old media sensibility where it's this one way channel. Just putting out product and influencing people to buy it is the wrong way of looking at it. I think it's much more about co-creation, co-collaboration with your audience. That's a really important switch if you're going to use social media to really think about.
Kerry Diamond:
That's great advice. If you could do a granola collab with anyone, who would it be?
Tom Bannister:
I was thinking about this before, and this is a little bit of a crazy answer perhaps to this question, because you're probably expecting a food person. But before we had the idea for Tom's Perfect 10 we had this, or I had this much less commercially sound concept, which is basically a philosophical granola. I had this idea of putting granola out there with a kind of insight or piece of life advice on the bag.
Eva Chen:
It was very intellectual and wonderful, but I was like, "I don't know if we need Carl Jung on granola."
Kerry Diamond:
Some people do. Let's do a speed round. Last pantry purchase.
Tom Bannister:
I might be giving away my next flavor, but I just brought a ton of diced cinnamon dried apples.
Kerry Diamond:
Ooh, it's a clue.
Eva Chen:
That's a granola pantry. Our house pantry purchase, I would say was sriracha. I bought three gallons of sriracha. I love a economy purchase, size.
Kerry Diamond:
Most used kitchen tool.
Tom Bannister:
Mine is definitely my measuring cups. They've become close friends of mine, and I have them in a number of different sizes and I have certain preferences when it comes-
Eva Chen:
Yes.
Tom Bannister:
... to measuring cups.
Eva Chen:
No one can touch his measuring cups. He freaks out. I would say, for me, the tongs I feel like are very good, the most important utensil for everything, especially since I'm air frying everything right now.
Kerry Diamond:
Is there a treasured cookbook in the Bannister-Chen household?
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. The Flavor Thesaurus was something that I read a lot as I was experimenting with flavors. Niki Segnit. I think just beautiful writing, very experimental creative ideas when it comes to mixing up and mashing unique flavors together.
Kerry Diamond:
Favorite food as a child. Eva.
Eva Chen:
Favorite food as a child, I would say Chinese buns. Anytime we would go to a Chinese bakery, they're just the most delicious breads that are very full of sugar and yummy. Egg tarts from Chinatown as well. They all have a sense of nostalgia and deliciousness for me.
Kerry Diamond:
Tom.
Tom Bannister:
I was a big lasagna fan when I was a kid. I went through phases, being in my 20s, but I gravitated a little bit away from eating it.
Eva Chen:
You still want lasagna. Sometimes when Tom is like, "Lasagna," I'm like, "Wow, okay."
Tom Bannister:
It's a good winter food.
Eva Chen:
It's the perfect food for winter because it's so patty and just ... When it's done well, it's really good.
Kerry Diamond:
Have you two had the rolled lasagna at Don Angie?
Eva Chen:
No, but-
Kerry Diamond:
No?
Eva Chen:
... we'll add that to our list.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh. Get yourselves. You could walk there.
Eva Chen:
Okay. Let's do it, Tom. Valentine's Day. Boom. Done.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Favorite food smell. Eva. Can't say granola. Your second favorite food smell.
Eva Chen:
Oh no. Second favorite food smell is the smell of garlic. Is that weird? I love garlic. I could eat garlic by the bushel. I'm trying to remember what restaurant serves this, but where they just bake a garlic, and then you just ... Cloves just basically they dissolve on a piece of toasted bread. I love everything garlic. So Conde Nast, which famously for a long time, did not serve garlic. Was always that cafeteria, I'm like, "Man, they could use some garlic."
Kerry Diamond:
Garlic was famously banned from that cafeteria. Yes. Tom, how about you? Favorite food smell other than granola.
Tom Bannister:
Probably say baking bread. It's a little cliche, but when I was working out of the commercial kitchen, just some of the best smells or just the smell of these freshly baked loaves of bread that some of the small businesses that were making. We close second bacon maybe. Pizzas are pretty nice.
Kerry Diamond:
Brown sugar bacon. That's good for a granola maybe.
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. I think there's definitely something there.
Kerry Diamond:
Where's your commercial kitchen?
Tom Bannister:
Well, I started out ... I don't actually work out of there anymore, but I started out an entrepreneur space in Queens, which is this local government run commercial kitchen there. That was where we made the granola for about six months.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you have a co-packer now?
Tom Bannister:
We had a co-packer for the ginger zing, and then we have a local bakery that I work with in Brooklyn in Bed–Stuy to make the monthly flavors.
Kerry Diamond:
Got it. Okay. Dream travel destination. Where would you two like to go?
Eva Chen:
With or without kids, Kerry?
Kerry Diamond:
I'll let you answer that.
Eva Chen:
I would say without kids, I've always wanted to go to Bali, which right now seems like unattainable far away when you have three young kids under the age of seven. Then with kids, I would love to go to Costa Rica. Tom, what do you think? I feel like they would love a rainforest and to see parrots flying around and talus spiders, and I know that there's a large number of crawling insects there to enjoy.
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. I was going to say that a rainforest, the Amazon Rainforest would be mine. I've always wanted to go. My six-year-old self would be horrified that my 40-year-old self got to 40 and had never been to the Amazon Rainforest.
Eva Chen:
I can see a sassy little six-year-old Tom being like, "You are so not cool, Tom. Get it together, go to the Amazon. Come on."
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. If you two had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, a food celebrity you are not married to, who would it be and why?
Tom Bannister:
Eva had a good answer for this one.
Eva Chen:
I have a good answer for this one. Instantly said it has to be a sushi chef, like Nobu Matsuhisa or someone, because it's like you're on a desert island, you're surrounded by fish, that's all there is to eat. You want someone who truly understands how to prepare fish. That's who I would say. That would be my vote.
Kerry Diamond:
You are so smart and practical. That's why I love you. No one's given a practical answer like that in all the years we've been doing the show. No. No.
Eva Chen:
I am nothing ... I am depressing new practical, but it's just I don't need a ... No know disrespect, Tom. There's no oven there. It's like, "We're not making granola. We need someone to spice and dice fish and can make some really amazing sashimi, maybe a little crudo.
Kerry Diamond:
They know what to do with seaweed. You're also surrounded by seaweed.
Eva Chen:
Exactly. Then what would happen is that we could open an island outpost restaurant and then people would start flying their private jets to try the sushi on this desert island and then we'd get rescued. I have our whole plan.
Kerry Diamond:
Tom, are you on board with this or do you have someone else in mind?
Tom Bannister:
Yeah. The sushi chef is a great answer. No. My mind went to Gordon Ramsay just because he seems like a guy who would be useful in a survival situation. I feel as though he would get in the zone and...
Eva Chen:
I think he'd be entertaining, but I'd also be worried about ... I feel like there'd be a big fight or blow out at some point where he would start screaming at us, and then it would be like a Lord of the Flies situation and we would have to banish him to the other side of the island. I don't know, Tom.
Tom Bannister:
He may try and make himself king of the island and-
Kerry Diamond:
And there's only room for one king, that's the granola king. I'm with Eva. I think the Gordon would maybe just shout at you the whole time, but who knows? Who knows? Anyway, you two are delightful. I love talking to you. I love anybody with a side hustle and you two are putting so much fun, great stuff into the world. I can't thank you enough.
Tom Bannister:
Thank you.
Eva Chen:
Thanks so much for having us.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Eva Chen and Tom Bannister for joining me. Be sure to check out Tom's Perfect 10 if you or someone you love is a granola aficionado, and pick up one of Eva's books for a child in your life or your inner child. Thank you to Luke's Lobster and American Unagi for sponsoring today's episode. Use promo code cherry15 for 15% off all products at Luke's Lobster through March 31st. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe magazine. Our theme song is by the band, Tralala. Thank you, Joseph Hazan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios, and thank you to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. Thanks to you for listening. You are the bombe.