The Future of Food: Seattle Transcript

Kerry Diamond: Hi, Bombesquad. Welcome to the Future of Food, a Radio Cherry Bombe mini series. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond.

Kerry Diamond: The Cherry Bombe team toured America last year and traveled from Atlanta, to Detroit, to Portland, and lots of places in between to ask women what the future of food means to them. Throughout the series, you're going to hear talks and panels that we recorded on each stop. You'll hear from chefs, journalists, activists, bakers, and even a drinking coach. These members of the Bombesquad shared their vision for what's next in their world, and the world around them. I hope this series inspires you to stop and think about your future.

Kerry Diamond: Thank you to Kerrygold for supporting our tour and this mini series. Kerrygold is the iconic Irish brand, known for it's award winning butter and cheese made with milk from grass-fed cows.

Kerry Diamond: For this episode, we're traveling to Seattle, Washington. Our event was held at Book Larder, the wonderful cookbook store owned and operated by Laura Hamilton. We're going to kick things off with a talk about cookbooks and community by Deborah Balint, an Instagram cookbook club pioneer. Before we get this show on the road, let's check in with our sponsor.

Kerry Diamond: I don't know about you, but when I think about the future of food, there's definitely cheese in it. You know what I've never known, is how cheese is made. I got a chance to talk with Sarah Furno, a farmhouse cheese maker based in Ireland, whose family created the delicious Kerri Gold Cashel Blue Irish farmhouse cheese. Here's Sarah telling us a little bit about the process.

Sarah Furno: Well it all starts with the milk.

Kerry Diamond: The milk that Sarah uses comes from the cows on her family farm. What makes this milk so special?

Sarah Furno: We're very lucky Ireland. We've got a very mild climate, so our cows are eating grass for most of the year and why is that important to making cheese? Well, I know that the flavor of our milk is what gives our cheese a particularly sweet and creamy.

Kerry Diamond: But milk is only the first part of cheese making. Later in the show, Sarah will tell us more about how her incredible Kerrygold Cashel Blue Irish farmhouse cheese is created. Want to give Kerrygold a try? Visit kerrygoldusa.com to find out where you can buy their award winning pure Irish butter. Salted or unsalted, of course. Or, their iconic Dubliner cheese. That's kerrygoldusa.com.

Kerry Diamond: Let's welcome Deborah Balint.

Deborah Balint: Thank you. The future of food is online cookbook clubs. Cookbooks and local neighborhood cookbook clubs of course have been really popular, because they're fun and people get to try new things. With social media and the internet over the last couple years we've seen a rise in online cookbook clubs. So, I'm Deborah Balints, and I'm rainy day bites on Instagram, and several years ago I started the first online cookbook club on Instagram. At that time there was no others.

Deborah Balint: And, I had noticed going through my feed, I saw people posting photos of getting together at their local neighborhood cookbook clubs and I thought "gosh, that would be so much fun. I would totally love to do it." But none of them were close by and the timing never worked and I sat there and I thought "you know, this is something I really want to do.

Deborah Balint: There has got to be other people out there like me that for whatever reason they can't attend one in person too. But they still want to join in. They still want to do it. So, the lesson in that is if there's a community that you need and it's not out there, create it, because at the end of the day there's gonna be other people like you that have that same need. So, that's how I started the online cookbook club.

Deborah Balint: At this point I've featured 57 monthly selections. The group has made a total of, we're just over 6100 recipes and there's something about if you're cooking form the same book at the same time using the same recipes you create a shared experience. What happens with that shared experience is you end up building community. You form friendships and you end up having a network of people who are supportive. They're getting you inspired to create other things from the book.

Deborah Balint: To challenge yourself to try new cuisines or new techniques that you thought "oh gosh, I could never do this. I've never attempted this pastry before." But suddenly I put it out there as a challenge recipe and said "I've never done this either let's do it", you know? We're all in this together sort of thing. You form a support group of people with that too.

Deborah Balint: Because, everyone's discussing strengths weaknesses of recipes. they're asking for help and it just ends up creating this great community of people all doing the same thing at the same time. At the end of the day, you do it because it's fun and when you do it from online you end up having people from all over the world who are joining together with a similar passion for cooking and a love for cookbooks. So, that's pretty much it. I hope you guys join one.

Kerry Diamond: Thank you to Deborah Balint of Rainy Day Bites, for getting so many people to cook and to share what they create. Our next speakers are Kari Brunson and Autumn Martin of Frankie and Jo's, the plant-based ice cream company. Let's hear what the future of food means for them.

Autumn Martin: I'm Autumn Martin, co-owner of Frankie And Jo's.

Kari Brunson: And I'm Kari Brunson, also co-owner of Frankie and Jo's. And we're really excited to be here in front of everyone to talk a little about what we believe is the future of food.

Autumn Martin: We have a plant-based ice cream company here in Seattle. Two shops, one in Capitol Hill and one in Ballard. We opened our first shop in 2016, just a couple weeks ago 2016 actually we just had our second birthday. Frankie and Jo's was really built around the desire to create a vegan ice cream, a high quality vegan ice cream. Because we really felt that there is a need to have a shop dedicated to ice cream made from alternative milk sources.

Kari Brunson: So, a little bit about our backgrounds. I got into food in a very interesting way. I have a background as a professional dancer, and entered into the food world and decided to start a juice bar at the farmer's market and turn that into a café called Juice Box. That opened in 2012, so now we're basically grandma in restaurant years. And then Autumn ...

Autumn Martin: I started Hot Cakes in 2008 at the farmer's market, so we just had our 10 year anniversary.

Kari Brunson: Woo-hoo.

Autumn Martin: Yeah, super exciting.

Kari Brunson: She's a great grandma in a restaurant years.

Autumn Martin: Gray hair to prove it, let me tell you. Yeah, so we're an interesting duo. I come from the pastry world, I've been a pastry chef chocolatier for almost 20 years now. And Kari being a former ballerina worked her way into the natural restaurant sect I would say from getting tired of the unhealthiness of the restaurant industry.

Kari Brunson: Yeah.

Autumn Martin: So, started a juice company which has morphed into Juice Box café. So, our two backgrounds just go hand in hand with Frankie and Joe's where we are producing an ice cream made from, as I said earlier, alternative milk.

Autumn Martin: So, when we talk about the future of food. I'm sure every single person in this room probably knows it's a huge can of worms, right? You can't just talk about one thing that we want to see change in the future of food. Every issue is dependent on the other issue having some kind of spotlight on it and some attention paid to it. It's a very holistic we need to think about it from a holistic perspective.

Autumn Martin: But, we're kind of chipping away at the issue of using animals for our food source. And as we move forward, more humans are being born every single day. That's not going to change, we know that. And so how do we feed our traditions and how do we nurture ourself through animals and do that in a sustainable way?

Autumn Martin: So, in my mind and in our mind and in Frankie and Joe's, we really want to work on creating these uber traditional foods that we love and that are so important in our family and in our culture using plant based ingredients. And not only plant based, but ingredients that are really clean too.

Autumn Martin: Because you probably know that the plant based industry can be kind of laden with chemicals and gums emulsifiers and these processed foods that are made to mimic animal foods. So, we're really trying to make a traditional food that's really important in our culture, with clean plant based ingredients.

Kari Brunson: All plant based food, all vegan food is not created equal. It does not equal healthy or clean et cetera. Just like food that isn't vegan or plant based.

Autumn Martin: Yeah, so.

Kari Brunson: I mean, I can talk about clean ingredients. That's something that's actually very important to me, I feel like, when I think of the future of food, and the plant based food movement and plants in general. It's not just about "this is vegan, therefore it equals X". And, our customers actually are telling us how important it is that we are transparent and that we are being very intentional about everything that we put into our ice cream as well.

Kari Brunson: And as a consumer myself, I'm also sort of doing that same thing. I have recently overhauled my whole beauty program. The things that I drink, natural wine. The food that I eat. I always am looking at the label, and I'm like "why did they put that in there? I don't think I'm gonna purchase that". Because I don't know what that is. Like, why do I have to Google search it?

Kari Brunson: So, we have spent time and energy trying to create our products without the use of anything that you wouldn't be able, you don't have to google search what's in our ice cream. And that is something that is very important to us, and I do believe is the future just as a consumer myself know what I see. What our customers are telling us.

Kari Brunson: What's amazing as a business owner is that without our customers we don't have a business and ultimately they are telling us what it is that they are wanting to see. So, it's a challenge.

Autumn Martin: It's a challenge when we have to change the way that we think and changing people's minds takes a lot of energy and we're ready to do it.

Kari Brunson: Yes.

Autumn Martin: Yeah, thank you.

Kerry Diamond: Thanks to Autumn and Kari for telling their story, and for putting such a great product into the world. We visited Frankie and Jo's when we were in town and were blown away. My favorite flavors, the brown sugar vanilla, and California cabin.

Kerry Diamond: Before we get to the panel, let's return to our adventures in cheese making, with Kerrygold. Earlier we heard from the farm house cheese maker Sarah Furno, about the first steps in the cheese making process for Kerrygold Cashel Blue Irish Farmhouse Cheese. That first step? Getting great milk. But what comes next?

Sarah Furno: It's a fermented product, cheese. So, you have to add in, you have to start the fermentation process. Initially when we did this we used to just work with homemade yogurt, so it's called a starter to acidify the milk. You can sour it, there's lots of different ways of doing it. And then you also have to add in a coagulant to separate the fats and proteins. We work with vegetarian rennet it's a plant based rennet.

Kerry Diamond: Once all the ingredients are in, you and your cheese are in for the long haul, with days of turning, shaping, and separating.

Sarah Furno: And then you have to let the pre-mold develop for a number of weeks, and then we wrap this, and then we keep on turning and then it takes another three and a half months before it develops its full flavor and character. It's a long, long, process. Cheese is not made in a day. I will say the cheese is the sum of its parts.

Kerry Diamond: And trust us, those parts are delicious. Want to try Kerrygold Cashel Blue Irish Farmhouse Cheese? Or the savory sliced cheddar cheese for yourself? Visit kerrygoldusa.com to find a store near you. That's kerrygoldusa.com.

Kerry Diamond: Welcome back, we wanted to spend extra time in Seattle so we could visit some of the incredible female owned food business we hear about back in New York. We crammed in as much as we could before and after our panel, who you're about to hear from. At the end of the show, I'll share some of the places we visited.

Kerry Diamond: But first, let's welcome Linda Derschang, of the Derschang Restaurant Group. Chef Emme Ribeiro-Collins, of Alcove Restaurant. Linda Miller Nicholson, AKA salty Seattle. The innovative pasta artist. And Molly Moon, of Molly Moon's homemade ice cream.

Kerry Diamond: When you hear the term "the future of food" what is it that comes to mind? So, Molly you have the unfortunate position of being right next to me so I'm going to ask you first.

Molly Moon: Okay, I just want to say something to podcast land. I am living in the future right now because I am pumping breast milk with my robot boobs I call them. So, I'm sorry if they make a little bit of noise into the microphone.

Kerry Diamond: So, you're doing that right now?

Molly Moon: Yes.

Kerry Diamond: I am so impressed.

Molly Moon: I would unzip my jumper if you wanted to see. Speaking of alternative milks.

Audience Member: It does it for you?

Molly Moon: I am wearing pumps, I'll show you later.

Audience Member: You're gonna turn this into ice cream right?

Molly Moon: No, no. This is for my baby daughter. I do make breast milk popsicles but we'll go into that later.

Kerry Diamond: That's the future right there.

Molly Moon: When I think of the future of food, I think of a couple things. I think of how you have to eat food with people that you love and how as the world becomes stranger and technology advances, something that will stay the same is having dinner with your parents if you're a kid or with your kids if you're a parent or your best girlfriends forever.

Molly Moon: And that, it's something that no matter how scary or strange the future is, there's something about eating and food that will stay the same, and that's really comforting to me. Another thing I think about the future of food is, I think the future is female and you are right. There are not a lot of women building empires like Linda is, and I have always considered her a huge role model and went to her when I was writing my business plan, and hope that there are more women in ownership and that the working landscape in food as a server or in the kitchen is more fair to women. I think we have a ways to go in all those areas and I think that the future is brighter.

Kerry Diamond: Linda.

Linda Miller Nicholson: We vote, and we're very fortunate to be able to vote. Especially in this country we have accessibility to that and most of us have had that accessibility for about 100 years now. I see the future being more consciousnesses toward voting with our pocket books. You vote once a year or in your primary's on a piece of paper, and a lot of people see that as a hugely empowering step. Some people see it as futility.

Linda Miller Nicholson: Every single day, we vote with how we spend our dollars, and I would like to really think about the fact that throughout our lifetimes we can make a huge impact with how we spend our hard earned money. So, if I'm thinking about what the future looks like and how we can truly affect change, that I think is the number one thing that we have the actual literal tangible power to do to make certain that something like actual corn is available in 10 years from now and Monsanto/Bayer hasn't completely ruined the taste of it.

Linda Miller Nicholson: Make sure that we seek out those products that we think are truly important with regards to what we want to eat, who we want to support, and who we want to empower which the future is female.

Kerry Diamond: Amen.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: Okay, the future of food. Two things. More plant-based diets, people eating less meat. I definitely feel it's going that way, and I hope that it is. For the environment, for our health. But also as a woman in the restaurant business, I definitely hope to see more women in the business and in the business of food. So, whether it would be in growing or producing food, or owning businesses around food, but also owning restaurants as chefs, as managers in restaurants.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: The more women that we have in leadership positions, the more women that we are going to be able to, the more women that they will hire. And be able to mentor and bring up. So, that's what I would like to see happen.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: When I think of the future of food, and the future in this industry, to me the future is diversity. When I say diversity, obviously as the previous lady said, more women in the industry, more people of color. And not just with your staff diversity, with your clientele and making sure that your business is accessible to a large group of people.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: And obviously diversity in food. I'm Brazilian, my parents have owned a Brazilian restaurant for almost 20 years and I think that there's a lot of underrepresented cuisines and culinary's from all over the world that really deserve to be more prevalent.

Kerry Diamond: Emme tell us about your family. How did they come to open a Brazilian restaurant in Seattle?

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: Yeah so, my mom has always been a cook. Back in Brazil, I moved to Seattle when I was six years old, back in Brazil she owned a catering company so it was a part of our lives forever. So, when we came to Seattle my mom was the cook of the Brazilian community, she would always be cooking for gatherings, and then it kind of went into the Seattle community.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: She started cooking for caterings and things like that and some people just believed in her and helped her open a restaurant which kind of in turn helped me take over and be able to be in the position to have this restaurant now because if they hadn't believed in her I probably wouldn't have this restaurant right now.

Kerry Diamond: And did you work in the restaurant when you were younger?

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: I did. The restaurant opened when I was 12 and I loved busing, hosting, whatever it was, I wanted to be in there. I worked as a server for a long time at my parent's restaurant and other restaurants in Seattle. I always thought I was gonna be in front of the house service, just like love people. Love talking to people. But, my love was culinary and cooking, so that's kind of where it got.

Kerry Diamond: Had did you transition into the kitchen?

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: Master Chef came to town in 2010, which me and Linda-

Linda Derschang: Don't point at me.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: Me and Linda, I won't say which one of the Linda's. Sorry. So, I was a server at the time, Master Chef came, and it was for amateur cooks and I made it. Me and Linda made it to LA-

Linda Derschang: Talk about bro culture.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: I know, exactly. And I don't know why that made me want to join the culinary industry but surprisingly, yeah exactly true. When he was kicking me out, Mr. Ramsey was like "you should go to culinary school. There's something there", which I'm sure was probably all scripted but I was like "you know what? I actually should" and when I came back to Seattle I enrolled in culinary school.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: So, I went to culinary school because of Gordon Ramsey. Funny story. But yeah, I went to Seattle Culinary Academy and yeah I just started working at Molly Moon here in Seattle, a couple other restaurants, and then I have a 10 year old, a three and a two year old.

Kerry Diamond: You have three kids?

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: I have three kids. Although I was never able to breastfeed. And I was a private chef for a really long time but then I kind of missed cooking for the community, so yeah.

Kerry Diamond: So, did you do a Kickstarter?

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: I did do a Kickstarter for the restaurant. So, my parents restaurant was not in the greatest shape, I don't know if anybody ever visited Tempe of the Brazillios, was really like hole in the wall little Brazilian restaurant for 20 years. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted something to look nicer, but I didn't have the money, the capital to.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: As you know for women to get capital, for women of color to get capital is really hard. So, thank god for Kickstarter's and all these new ways to be able to get capital for your business because yeah it really helped me out a lot.

Kerry Diamond: And now it's called Alcove.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: It's called Alcove, which is english, but it's like afro-Brazilian inspired by the pacific northwest. I think. I had a couple names, I had some names in Portuguese but everybody's just like Alcove. And to me, I'm Brazilian-American, like I said I came here when I was six, so I'm okay with an American English name.

Kerry Diamond: Thank you for being here, what a tremendous story. Alright, going back to Molly now. So Molly, like I said, when we were at your original shop this afternoon you had this fantastic poster about all these things that had happened over the past 10 years of Molly Moon, and one of them talked about employees and how you have health insurance and dental and vision and paid time off and all these things. And I was just like "oh my god, how do you do this?" You have a seasonal business.

Kerry Diamond: And obviously that's the future. I mean we can't, restaurants can't continue the way they are. Like everybody really needs a living wage, needs to be paid better, we need to figure out the tipping situation. So, I'd love to hear a little about how the heck you do it.

Molly Moon: Well, thank you for all those sweet compliments. I think, well before I started Molly Moon's I was a political activist. So, it is in my blood sort of to do the most political thing in any situation I'm in. So, when I wrote a business plan, I was actually hoping to start a business that did the most true to my political values things, and it has all been really a grand experiment. Will it work if I give everyone health insurance that they don't pay for? Will it work if everything's compostable? Will it work if I buy from local farmers? I don't know let's see.

Molly Moon: And it really, really worked when I started my first shop in 2008. Seattle was incredibly supportive of the first sort of homemade ice cream with all these values that matched I think most of my customer's values up front shouting about it. And I think that's how we can do it. We started with, I started with the values of I want everyone to have health insurance who works 18 hours a week or more, and I don't want them to pay a dime for it.

Molly Moon: And, I want everything to be compostable because the planet. And, we'll just figure that out. And there was a third thing, oh I want to buy from the small local farms direct and I don't want to have distributors and I don't want to buy things from far away, everything's gonna be as local as possible. Now there are some caveats like chocolate and tea and coffee and all those things will be organic and fair trade or direct trade.

Molly Moon: So, those were sort of my three pillars in the beginning and I was able to be really loud about those. My customers supported that. And, we were super successful in the first few years with those. And then I just started adding on other things that I believe in. Pretty soon we started having paid family leave and now everybody that works at Molly Moon's, even the scooper gets 12 weeks of 100% paid family leave when they bring a child into their home.

Kerry Diamond: Do you just sell a boat load of ice cream every day? Like, I'm just like.

Molly Moon: We do sell a lot of ice cream. And we're layering things on and one of the biggest and most interesting challenges is the pay structure in restaurants, right? And how it's just so fueled by tips. So, that's something that I started tackling when I was very active in the committee to pass the Seattle minimum wage law. Even though that has had very huge negative impacts to my personal bottom line and to the businesses' bottom line, I'm still here and we're still here and we're making it work.

Kerry Diamond: One thing we always tell people when we make all these stops is like, "vote with your pocket book and you should all have a favorite female chef. And you should all know what businesses in your neighborhood are female owned, female run, female fueled, and support the hell out of them". So, tell us some of your favorites and what you do to support them.

Linda Miller Nicholson: I'll absolutely do that. The interesting thing, when Cherry Bombe was first a glint in your eye, I heard about Cherry Bombe through a woke man. His name was John Rowley, probably a lot of people in this room know who he is. He's a food guru. He brought us oysters, he pretty much hoisted tailored shellfish to the forefront. He brought copper river salmon to the lower 48. He was a real pioneer, he passed away last year.

Linda Miller Nicholson: But he text me, John Rowley can't text really, but he fumbled text me, he's like "have you heard about this magazine? It's the most amazing thing ever. Ruth is part of it." You know, Ruth Rachel. And, Linda you got to get in. These people are amazing, you know? And he was such a champion of Cherry Bombe, and he is such a empowered for a man in his 70's at the time to see this as the future and to know that he was ushering in and for 40 years he ushered in these new generations of very empowered people.

Linda Miller Nicholson: Not necessarily women but people in all walks of life. It's very cool to see something thrive that this person, he used to take a refractometer to the grocery store, which is a thing that measures the sugar in things. And he had no shame in just plunging his refractometer into peaches at QFC, and then "excuse me, where is the produce manager?" You're selling these? You're selling these peaches? No, you can't sell these, have you heard of Frog Hollow Farms?"

Linda Miller Nicholson: So, John brought you to me. And I actually do, on a very slight separate note, think that if we're relying on other people for the future, absolutely it's female. But, who we want to help us lead this charge is woke men. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and he was like "I got man spread on, on the subway". He's like "I know what you mean now. I know what you mean. It's very uncomfortable."

Linda Miller Nicholson: It is, it really is very uncomfortable. So, I do want to give a little bit of a shout out to the awesome woke men out there. There's a few in the crowd here.

Kerry Diamond: Absolutely, the guys that are here. This is a pretty high percentage for us, so thank you to the how man, four? I see four of you. I counted him, he's in my count. But no, thank you. We've actually had events that were 100% women, so I appreciate the four of you are here. Oh, Matthew! Five.

Linda Miller Nicholson: In terms of women-owned businesses, I do think being sort of a fledgling women entrepreneur, it's really scary sometimes. You know, you wake up and you think like "can I do this? Like, how am I doing this?" And there are people among us who did it a while ago before it was easy. You know?

Linda Miller Nicholson: I feel like 25 years ago there was this master skeleton key that got passed down from bro to bro. And you never really got handed that key and if you wanted it you sort of had to claw through and grasp onto it yourself. Now we're very fortunate to live in this advent of the post internet era where a lot of us have the smart key embedded right here, you just have to figure out how to use those biometrics.

Linda Miller Nicholson: It's really interesting to think that we can truly figure out what it is that makes us uniquely who we are and then use that skill set to create an amazing business.

Linda Derschang: There were no women to go to. I had trouble having beer delivered to Linda's Tavern the first two weeks we were open. They didn't want to see me beer. They would deliver a keg at a time. One case of beer of different varieties of beer and I was calling every day saying "I need more beer. Please bring me more beer."

Linda Derschang: And I thought, "I'm paying cash", that's the way it worked, you weren't writing a check, it wasn't on terms. You weren't using a credit card. And, beer doesn't go bad. So, if they sell me too much beer, what's going to happen? And I had been in retail before and often people were saying "are you sure you only needed a dozen? Don't you need two or three dozen?" Or this or that.

Linda Derschang: So, it was really odd. And I was asking other men that owned bars "are you having the same problem? Will they not sell you beer?" No, they were not having that problem. And it was about probably the third week we were open, these reps, I called them the high-fiving white guys because they were all these bro-y guys, right?

Linda Derschang: They were sort of sports guys, right? And they just kept saying "well, why are you so busy?" I don't know. We're a popular place, I don't know, how are you supposed to answer that? Because a woman owns it? What's the surprise?

Linda Derschang: So, anyway by the third week I guess they realized that it was a good account to have and they started taking care of us and "Linda, what do you need? Linda, can we bring you more? Linda, do you want to put another one of our handles on?" And it all really changed.

Linda Derschang: At the time, I just kept moving forward, and I didn't dwell on the fact that I was having to basically beg to buy beer from these guys. It was years later that I started really thinking about what that was. I really did just kind of get past that and move forward and it was years later I started telling people about the beginning of my career. And as I repeated that story and people would look at me, especially women, but men too, wide-eyed like "what?".

Linda Derschang: I still don't understand exactly why they were doing it but maybe, I don't know, anybody have an idea because it seems really strange to me if they are sales people. That was in 1994. There weren't any other women I knew in the industry to ask if they were experiencing the same thing. I didn't know any other women that owned bars. It was quite a few years later that I started, and it wasn't, sometimes people say "well, were you just not reaching out?" No, there weren't any other women to reach out to.

Linda Derschang: There were some women that worked in bars but even then there weren't that many women that were bartending. Maybe a woman was a book keeper somewhere and it's definitely really changed, thank god, especially over the last 10 years, I've started having a lot more friends, women friends in business. I mean, look at what's going on in our city.

Linda Derschang: But many are quite a bit younger than I am, and I'm so grateful to have so many because it's been a game changer to be able to call women, and get advice from different women but call them and say "I'm dealing with this, are you? Have you dealt with it before?" And I know some like Molly came to me early on asking for advice but it really shifted with a number women. Kari. Rachel also from Rachel's Ginger Beer, into just exchanging information rather than them coming to me for advice.

Kerry Diamond: Sometimes being a mentor is a difficult position to be put into because you don't necessarily have the same experience or it was a different culture. How do you ...

Linda Derschang: You notice she didn't want to answer the question but I look out, keep going.

Kari Brunson: When people come to you from a mentorship capacity, how do you handle that and how do you answer specific use cases?

Linda Derschang: Molly can answer.

Molly Moon: Linda is amazing, she is such a good advice giver and she is so giving to other women. And I have been the benefactor of her advice for 11 years. But, she's also very busy and she is a one woman show. She has so much on her shoulders and she handles seven different groups of investors and it's incredible what she does.

Molly Moon: But, the first time I met with Linda I showed her my spreadsheets of my startup business plan. We were at a coffee shop, at Bauhaus, whoa, I'm sad. And we were there and she was totally into it. She was like "have you thought of this? Have you thought of this? You need to put a line here, this is too much." You know. "Have you thought of this?" She was so awesome.

Molly Moon: And then all the sudden she looks up and she was like "oh my gosh, I've given you an hour and a half. I have to go!" And she like left the coffee shop.

Linda Derschang: I call that my ADD alert.

Molly Moon: I don't care, I still followed up and she still gave me advice.

Linda Derschang: And I was having a lot of fun and I do enjoy the number side of things actually. Then Molly has also grown in her business. You know, the relationship changed very quickly into discussing how we were handling certain landlords. We share one landlord.

Molly Moon: More women landlords.

Linda Derschang: Oh my god!

Molly Moon: That's what we need.

Linda Derschang: Yeah. Women attorneys.

Kerry Diamond: Alright, we're gonna go to the next question that I think all of you got in advance and we're gonna do a little bit of a speed round because I think some of you might have questions for the panel. But I asked them to look forward 10 years to the year 2028 and tell us where they think they will be, their business will be, et cetera. Even if it's sitting on a beach. So, Molly. 10 years from now.

Molly Moon: In 10 years I will have a 15 year old daughter and a 10 year old daughter, and that's what I thought of first. And a 20 year old business. And I hope to own, this is so silly but I love it, I really want to own a Hawaiian coffee farm on a big island and spend half of my time there. I don't know how I'll do that with kids in school, but I'll figure it out. And be spending a lot of time writing and speaking to other women who are starting businesses.

Kerry Diamond: Gosh I love all that. Linda?

Linda Miller Nicholson: I would like to continue to make the aspirational achievable. So, a lot of people come to me and they say "your career seems so crazy, where do I check the box for that on the college applications", and you can't check a box. And I think the answer is "put in a lot of work. Put in the 10 thousand hours in terms of finding your passion and truly sticking with it, and then continuing to spread joy". It's amazing to work in food, food is the great common equalizer, and bringing people together is something we need in this effed up gosh darn world. Should out to me for not effin' that up.

Linda Miller Nicholson: So, I'd like to continue to do that on sort of a global trajectory, understanding that we live in a global society and not as much of a local one anymore. And truly bringing people together over food in a way that something they thought previously wasn't possible was sorcery, is in fact something they can do in their own kitchen using ingredients that come from plants that they grow in their yard and chickens and ducks that poop them out of their butts every day.

Kerry Diamond: Awesome. Linda?

Linda Derschang: I've never had even a one year plan. My life has been kind of free flowing and so 10 years, that's a big one. I will also be 70 in 10 years.

Linda Miller Nicholson: Whoop whoop!

Linda Derschang: Yeah. And I know I don't want to retire, but I don't want to work the way I worked in my 30's, 40's and 50's. So, I'm really looking at that transition into still working and being a part of my company but also empowering the people that I work with. And some of them have been with me a really long time. To really take charge of a lot with our company and keep the company going and succeeding and doing what we're doing.

Linda Derschang: But if I could be a away about half the year, and I'm working towards that. I love being in New York but also just traveling. And I'm building a house in the Yucatan with a friend in a little town. So, I would imagine that we will probably spend some time there. So that's the best answer I can give because who knows what I will be doing in 10 years.

Emme Ribeiro-Collins: Thank you. I hope that in 10 years, Alcove is 10 years old. I hope that I am able to have other restaurants. Pretty much I hope I'm Linda Derschang in 10 years. That's what I want to be. I want to be Linda in 10 years. Yeah, very inspirational, you, Renee, other women in Seattle. That's where I want to be in 10 years. I'm only 30, so I think I can do that in 10 years.

Kerry Diamond: That's a great goal Emme. The Renee that Emme mentioned is chef Renee Erickson. Who has incredible restaurants and bars in the city, including The Whalewinds, which we were fortunate to visit. Our other stops. Rachel's Ginger Beer, Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream, Kari Brunson's Juice Box, where we had the best savory oatmeal. Linda Derschang's Oddfellows Café in Queens City, and Chef Rachel Yanh's Trove, for really inventive noodles, kimchi, and dumplings. The Cherry Bombe team and I can't wait to go back to Seattle.

Kerry Diamond: Our show was produced by Jess Zeidman and supported by Kerrygold. Thank you to our Seattle hosts Laura Hamilton of Book Larder. If you love cookbooks, and who in the Bombesquad doesn't, go visit Book Larder. Thank you to all of our speakers, to Matthew Amster-Burton of the Spilled Milk podcast who recorded our event, and to the amazing members of the Bombesquad who joined us for this taping. Thank you for listening to the future of food miniseries. Here's to a delicious tomorrow.