Valeria Alvarez Transcript
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hi, everyone. You're listening to The Future Of Food Is You, a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Abena Anim-Somuah, and each week, I talk to emerging talents in the food world and they share what they're up to, as well as their dreams and predictions for what's ahead. I love this new generation of chefs, bakers, and creatives making their way in the worlds of food, drink, media, and tech.
Today's guest is Valeria Alvarez. Valeria is the founder of Peel Soft Serve, a banana-based soft serve shop in Miami Shores. Using two ingredients, bananas and coconut milk, the soft serve is a delicious and sustainable treat fit for the future. Valeria and I chat about her upbringing in Colombia, the beautiful things that can come from ugly fruit, the ins and outs of running a food business, and the trip to Indonesia that inspired Peel. Stay tuned for our chat.
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Now, let's check in with today's guest. Valeria, thank you so much for joining us on The Future Food Is You podcast.
Valeria Alvarez:
Hello, I'm so excited to be here.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Can you tell us where you grew up and how did food show up in your life?
Valeria Alvarez:
Sure. I was born in Colombia. I was born in Bogota, but both my parents are from other parts of the country. My dad is from Manizales. My mom is from the southern part called Huila. I essentially come from a family of creatives. My grandpa from my dad's side, he was a tailor. My grandma was a seamstress. From my mom's side of the family, my grandpa was an entrepreneur. He had a bunch of billiards, and my grandma had a bakery. Both my grandmas were full matriarchs. Both my parents lost their fathers very early. Essentially, they raised children on their own. I grew up around a very family-centered reunions, and I come from such a massive family. I grew up going to different fincas and by going to-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What's a finca, for our guests who are not acquainted.
Valeria Alvarez:
A finca is just a farm. It's a farm.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, cute.
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah. A farm in different parts of the country where you grow your own food, you have a ton of animals, you wake up super early, you go on hikes. It's just kind of like-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Like a rancha.
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, exactly.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I love that.
Valeria Alvarez:
Some of my fondest moments are making bread from scratch. Things like pan de yuca, pan de bonos, arepas, tamales; all of that was just something that I grew up doing a lot with my family. To this day, my family still owns a couple of these fincas, and my uncle does own a citrus farm. We still go out there right now during the holidays, and we pick our fruit. It's really great. Columbia is just really known for its exotic fruits, for its exotic vegetables. I used to go to all these fruit markets, and I would pick up fruit from all these different parts, and it was kind of second home to me. I would love to go to the fruit markets growing up.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I feel like so many of our guests who come on the show have second lives. Even before you started working on Peel, you worked at startups, working in new market expansion. Can you tell us about some of the places you worked at, and were there any lessons that you think you took from those that helped you in building Peel?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, so I moved to the states pretty early on. I've always just had a love for travel and just really love immersing myself in cultures. Coming from immigrant parents, they really wanted me to study something like business or go into medicine-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Lawyer, yeah.
Valeria Alvarez:
... a lawyer. I chose international business intentionally just from that desire of wanting to get to know foreign places.
I began my career working for agencies here in Miami with a focus in Latin America. It'd make sense because I'm bilingual. This is during 2014 where a lot of the tech companies were moving their Latin American headquarters to Miami from places like San Francisco, and it just made sense for me to kind of live here. And so I worked for the travel engine, KAYAK, for a couple of years, helped them with their market expansion into Latin America, and then I went over to a company called Zendesk for a little while, also kind of expanding their Latin American markets.
I would really just spend weeks at time in these foreign places, whether that was Mexico or Argentina. Or Colombia, even; that was one of my markets. That's what I love to do. I would go weeks at a time, and I would just immerse myself in their culture. Granted, I was working, but that's really where my love for travel just sparked. That led me to then start taking a lot of solo travel, and so I started going to other parts of the world and exploring those cultures as well. That's essentially how I began this idea and this concept that I have today.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's a great segue into the trip you took to Indonesia in 2016, and it seemed to be a very important trip for you. How did that experience spark the creation for Peel?
Valeria Alvarez:
Essentially, it was just me and my three girlfriends, and we went to-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Love a girls trip.
Valeria Alvarez:
I love a girls trip.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Valeria Alvarez:
They fill my cup. We just went to Bali for a couple of weeks, and again, we were just fully immersed in the culture. We were at this one beach called Semiyak for a little while. Every day, it was essentially the same. We'd wake up, we'd go grab a smoothie bowl. And for those that don't know what the smoothie bowl is, think of a banana with a milk alternative such as yogurt, and then you would top it off with more fruit. So whether that's fruit or nuts or seeds-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Mango, papaya.
Valeria Alvarez:
... mango, anything. These places used to get absolutely packed. You're talking surfers, because there's a lot of surfers in Bali, or kids on their way to school, or, yeah, just expats like us. We were just hanging out.
And that's when I thought about it. It felt very community-oriented, and I said, "This would be a really fun concept to bring back to Miami and to have it be my creative outlet when I got back here," and that's what I did. I came back to Miami, and I was so set on this concept of smoothie bowls with a really good consistency. That's when I really kind of started exploring with fruit markets.
And so I began going to this fruit market here in Miami called Allapattah and getting to know the local suppliers and learning about their daily fruit production. That's when I really just stumbled on the base that we use today, which is bananas, and allowing those suppliers to teach me about the surplus of fruit that they had. That's kind of where the idea sparked.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I'm really curious to hear after you decided, "Okay, fruit's going to be the thing, I'm going to meet the suppliers," what did the recipe and flavor development process start to look like?
Valeria Alvarez:
My partner, who also happens to be my husband, he's a brewer.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, very cool. Does he have a brewery?
Valeria Alvarez:
He does have a brewery here in Miami. It's called Veza Sur. He studied chemistry, and he's very good at recipe development. I approached him with a concept when I came back. He helped me just basically test these recipes for a good six months. And so what we did is we bought a small soft-serve machine, and we were living in a really small efficiency at the time. We just put this in our kitchen counter, and then we just began.
I come from just eating very simple ingredients. I think for me less is more, so I knew that I didn't want to add any additional sugars, and I wanted to keep ingredients at a minimum. He knew that in order for us to have the same consistency as a good soft serve does, we needed to add a little bit of fat, and so he came up with coconut milk as being that milk alternative that we add.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, and it's so accessible, too.
Valeria Alvarez:
Exactly. Essentially, those are the two ingredients that we use to this day as our base.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's really beautiful because you started off going to the farmers' markets, and now you open the first edition of Peel, we'll call it Peel V1 at the Legion Farmers' Market. Why did you think that was a smart way to start out, and what was the initial response when you started serving there?
Valeria Alvarez:
I didn't really know what people's reactions would be. It's like soft serve made out of bananas. It just seems like a bit far from the typical soft serve that we're all used to. I wanted to definitely just test out this concept and see if it was something that people were leaning towards in Miami. A farmers' market just kind of felt the right way to do it, because you get just so many different people from all walks of life come. You get a lot of locals who care about sustainability. You get a lot of locals who care about the vendors, their stories. We just really wanted to test out the concept, and it worked out in our favor.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
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How did you come up with the name?
Valeria Alvarez:
I wanted something light or fun. Initially I had thought about the name Musa, which essentially is the scientific name for banana. But I was like, it sounds a little too-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Technical.
Valeria Alvarez:
... so technical.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Valeria Alvarez:
We were talking with one of my friends one day and they're like, what about just a banana peel? And I was like, what about just a peel, and peel is easy. It kind of rolls off your tongue. You can portray it to just more than bananas. It portrays to all the fruit that we use, the establishment.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Most fruit has a peel.
Valeria Alvarez:
Most fruit have a peel and yeah, that's kind of how the name came about.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It just feels very bright. I know that it's yellow, and it... Yeah.
Valeria Alvarez:
If you look at our logo, I wanted our logo to kind of have a happy face feel, so when you see the peel and you see the banana right under it, if you look at it from far, it always looks like a little happy face, and that's kind of the energy that I want to bring.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I love that. Good vibe with the soft serve.
Valeria Alvarez:
Always.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So you retrofit an Italian Piaggio. I don't know if anyone knows it. They're this little scooters with a little hatch in the back, and you retrofitted that with the soft serve machine, thus creating the Peel Mobile. How did you come up with that experience, and, yeah, what was the reaction to that again?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, the Italian Piaggio was so fun. I bought it off this one vendor who used to get only a couple of these straight from Italy.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, fun. Like a fruit vendor or-
Valeria Alvarez:
No, he was just some random guy.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, who just sold... Yeah.
Valeria Alvarez:
He lived in Miami and he sold Italian Ape Piaggios. I had never seen one in my life, but I knew that he collected these cars, and I was like, I want to essentially recreate the back of one of these and have peel on the road, more than just the farmers' market. I bought it. It was originally blue and painted it bright yellow, recreated the back to fit a small ice cream machine. Basically, the same ice cream machine that we started off with back when we were doing recipe testing. And then, we placed it in the back. But one thing I did not consider, and it's something that I've actually spent the last three years learning about, is just how much electricity soft serve machines pull.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, because you have to cool it and churn it, and the whole thing, yeah.
Valeria Alvarez:
And so you need a massive generator for a very small soft serve machine, and so I quickly outgrew that. We did it for a couple of events. People to this day still ask for the Italian Ape Piaggio when they ask for-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Is it still in commission?
Valeria Alvarez:
No, we sold it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Man, ugh.
Valeria Alvarez:
We sold it. But we have the Peel Mobile, and it's our trailer that really catapulted us from a farmers' market to kind of the next level into what we are now. It's just a full-size trailer. It has a great generator. It has AC for us inside. We live in Miami. It's so hot all the time, and yeah, it really worked out for us.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
How did you decide on bananas to be the fruit that would start the process?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, it happened during the learning process on that supply chain and visiting the suppliers. It was always something like banana or pineapple that I had in mind when I started thinking about the base that I wanted to use. But I settled on bananas when I started learning about the food waste process, especially with this fruit. Essentially, the banana supply chain is pretty interesting and I had no knowledge of it before I started doing this. It's between the time that bananas reach consumers, they go through the hands of producers, exporters, importers, distributors and retailers, and that can typically take a lot. Like a couple of weeks.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, wow.
Valeria Alvarez:
It is during this supply chains that bananas start to ripen due to how long it takes from the producer to the retailer.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, so you got them green, and then they're slowly-
Valeria Alvarez:
And then they slowly start browning, and this leads to banana having a relatively high carbon footprint. So between transportation, pesticides, plastic waste, organic waste, they really do have a big impact on the environment. And by the time they get to these suppliers and places where we pick them up, these suppliers can't resell them.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
They're not aesthetic enough.
Valeria Alvarez:
Because not aesthetic enough, and that's where the concept of ugly fruit comes. These suppliers, at least here in Miami, they call it banano numero dos, and those are the bananas that we pick up, and those are the ones that we use into our soft serve, and that's why we don't add any sugars. Right?
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. So they're probably sweeter at that point, right, because a little riper as well.
Valeria Alvarez:
Exactly.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Valeria Alvarez:
The browning of the bananas is actually what we call mother nature's brown sugar. Because as bananas brown, enzymes break down the starches in the banana, and they produce more natural sugar, which is the reason why essentially we don't have to add any sweeteners to our soft serve.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And coconut also has that sweetness, I think, pairs so well together-
Valeria Alvarez:
And a little bit of fat, so it creates that consistency that we're looking for.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. As your business is growing in demand, how are you able to maintain the sustainable practice? How has this practice influenced other decisions in your business?
Valeria Alvarez:
That's a great question. I think ultimately what's great about bananas is that they do grow, so there's always going to be a surplus of them when we need them. We have been lucky enough that we could not buy all of them so far because we're still a small business and a small shop, but I think as we do grow, we're going to be able to purchase these off these suppliers and help them essentially gain a little bit more income that they would've not had otherwise.
And so that's our goal. Our goal is to just really minimize supply chain process and be able to repurpose all the fruit that never made it to the grocery stores by also allowing the suppliers to get a little bit of goodness from it, too.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Opening a brick and mortar space is no joke, especially jumping from your little pickup truck to having a space. I'm really curious to hear how you're able to build out the space in Miami Shores, and what resources did you rely on to make it happen?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, so we had been looking for a space for a really long time. We had our trailer between July 2020 to July 2023 essentially, and we had been parked in front of a gym for the majority of that time. It was during the last six months before we actually found a space that we started doing a lot of collaborations with different institutions and businesses around the city, which really helped us grow our community. We wanted our first door to be essentially very walkable to customers, so a place with very good foot traffic, a place where families and kids can come visit.
Luckily, we have a lot of friends in this industry, and through a mutual connection, we were able to find our current location in Miami Shores. There's tons of new families there. We've been received very well by the community, and a lot of people do come from other places in Miami. They drive, whether it's like 40 minutes to visit the store or they just come from all over. So we feel very lucky that we have found that space.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's really awesome. What I love is that I've only been able to experience Peel via Instagram. It's so awesome seeing the different arrays of toppings, nuts, granolas, and other fruits that you're using to add to the bowls. When you were thinking about accessorizing the soft serve, so to speak, where did you draw inspiration for the toppings?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, so we've always wanted for our customers to be able to enjoy Peel at any time of day, so it was really important to make toppings that allowed for that. We do make a lot of toppings in-house, whether it is our granola that we make, which is gluten-free; to our house peanut butter, which is made from just peanuts. We have very elaborate drizzles such as a vegan chocolate sauce, salted caramel, strawberry drizzle. Everything at Peel is vegan and uses natural ingredients.
We do have signature bowls on our menu that have both a mix of sweet and tart, and they're recommended to our customers depending on what they're craving. So if they want something sweet, they'll probably most likely purchase the PB Cup, which is topped with peanut butter, cacao nibs, banana slices, chocolate drizzle. If they're craving something more filling and less sweet, then they're probably up for our Crunchy Bee, which is topped with coconut flakes, peanut butter granola, local Florida honey. And then we have all sorts of fruit as well, depending on if you're yearning for something light. We really love to play with our toppings, allowing our customers to just really decide what kind of mood they're in for.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You don't only have bananas. I saw this incredible orange creamsicle situation you had, or you have passion fruit, even dragon fruit. When you're thinking about other fruits that you want to incorporate into soft serve, are you just relying on based on what customers are telling you or what you're getting at the market, and how does that come about?
Valeria Alvarez:
I'm always on the lookout for new fruits to add. Everything does have banana in it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, nice. Banana is always the base.
Valeria Alvarez:
Banana is always the base, and we usually add a third ingredient. We often look for fruits that overpower the banana a little bit. We stay away from fruits that might not, so it'd be hard for us to make a watermelon flavor, for example, because it's too watery and there's not enough flavor in it. But something like passion fruit, mango. Which, during mango season here in Miami, we use local mangoes. We try to go as local as possible depending on what's in season. We did this amazing collaboration just last month with black sapote, and black sapote only grows during the wintertime. So it's-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Is it like a seed or another fruit?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, it's a fruit. It has a chocolate pudding taste.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, I like that.
Valeria Alvarez:
We would just add that to the banana base, so you'll always have the banana base, but you'll always have an elaborate flavor, and it really just does depend on what's available and what's in season.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It sounds like collaborations have been a big part of your work. I'm really curious to hear, I know Miami's food scene is so bustling; I feel like you have the traditional Latin cuisine, you have all these big-time restaurants, and you have a lot of family-owned establishments. How has the Miami food scene been supportive of you and your work?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, I would say the Miami food scene has become a very tight community. We really do support one another. We show up for one another's businesses, and we just really love to see each other's growth. We have been very lucky, again, to collaborate with a lot of these food businesses. I think ultimately there's just so much room for everybody in this city, and allowing people to have similar concepts is okay. I think when somebody comes out with a new concept in Miami, I think we've really cheer them on, and it's been really great to be in a city that gets to do that, especially coming from a place, being in a city that 10 years ago didn't have that. So we've really grown in the last decade in this scene.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Are there any favorite female-owned businesses in Miami that you've just loved and have become pals?
Valeria Alvarez:
I love this question just because I really do love female-owned businesses in Miami. Everything from food to art to, there's just so many female-owned businesses that you can find here. But food establishments, you can go very elaborate route like the Boia Des, or the Rosie's Cafe, or one of my local favorites just down the street from where I live is called Lemoni. Magdalena Coffee is women-owned. Then you also have Caja Caliente down in The Grove. There's so many amazing food options here.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
We're huge manifesters on the podcast. Are there aspirations you have for the business, and where do you hope to see it grow in the next five years?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, I mean, Peel, it was such a foreign concept five years ago to me, and I didn't really know where it would lead. I just feel so lucky that it has led me to where it is today. I only hope that five years from now, we have a couple of Peel locations here in South Florida. We are perhaps expanding to other places.
This is a little out there, but sometimes I feel like I would love to start giving back to the community by educating people a little bit more on food waste, maybe perhaps in schools kind of teaching people where the source of food comes. I think the opportunities are kind of all over the place. Rather exciting.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, I don't think it's out there. This is a great segue into a question of how do you hope Peel inspires people to create more sustainable food businesses? Because I feel like that's something that I think a lot more people are trying to invest in. Even if they're opening a food business, they're wanting to be able to have some facet be sustainable, whether it's the cutlery or the types of produce they're using; or even sustainable when it comes to people, making sure your staff are healthy and taken care of.
Valeria Alvarez:
For sure. Yeah. For us, choosing the sustainable route was also a smart business decision. Using a hundred percent rescued bananas for our soft serve was really just an effort for us to be more sustainable, but also they were perfect bananas to use for our recipe. It doesn't always happened in the business world that a sustainable choice is the obvious business choice, but we hope that other businesses find opportunities to do these more, and hopefully find these synergies become more and more convenient moving forward.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I always like to ask this question, but is there a dream guest or someone you're at admirer of that you'd love to come get some Peel soft serve?
Valeria Alvarez:
We've had some really amazing guests in the past.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, fun.
Valeria Alvarez:
Sometimes I'm not even in the shop, and I hear that they showed up. I'm like, "What do you mean, they showed up"? That's so exciting. And they heard from word of mouth. But it's honestly just really anybody who cares about what we're doing, our sustainability efforts. We really do put so much love into doing this business, and I think as long as people are appreciative of it, know the source of where this is coming from, they're dream guests in my book, honestly.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I'm curious, was there a fun celebrity that came in or-
Valeria Alvarez:
Cindy Crawford came in.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
No way.
Valeria Alvarez:
Came in-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Cover girl.
Valeria Alvarez:
Cover girl. I was like-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Peel girl, I should say.
Valeria Alvarez:
Peel girl. I know. If you're listening, just come back.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Valeria Alvarez:
She was a really fun one that came recently.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, that's so fun.
Valeria Alvarez:
We got a couple of fun celebrities every once in a while. Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Has Pitbull come through yet, or-
Valeria Alvarez:
We haven't had Pitbull.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I feel like he's Mr. 305, so.
Valeria Alvarez:
Honestly, if you're in the Miami area, we've got so many. I feel like everybody's moved here, so hey, hopefully we have a couple of Peel locations near your neighborhood soon, and you can just pop in.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes. We're manifesting.
Valeria Alvarez:
We're manifesting.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I love that. Is there a dream brand or person that you love to collaborate with on a flavor?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah. We've been really lucky to have collaborated with pretty cool brands so far. I think in the near future, it'd be really fun for us to collaborate maybe with athletes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
There's tons of sports teams in Miami.
Valeria Alvarez:
And there's tons of sports teams, so honestly, I can't think of one per se that comes to mind, but I'd love a really fun tennis player.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes. Coco Gauff?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yes. Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Okay.
Valeria Alvarez:
Yes, Coco. That'd be really fun to have athletes. Just because again, Peel's such a fun concept. It's light, it's refreshing, and it's so healthy and good for you that, yeah, I think athletes would be a really good fit.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Coco would be so great, I feel like. Because she also eats the little fruits. If you've ever watched her playing tennis, she has a little fruit thing.
Valeria Alvarez:
Coco.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Coco.
Valeria Alvarez:
Coco.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Coco's agent.
Valeria Alvarez:
Coco's agent.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
We've got a deal for you. How do you hope that your work with Peel inspires Latina founders like yourself, particularly in the American culinary landscape?
Valeria Alvarez:
Yeah, I do think that there's a lot of opportunities for growth, innovation, cultural representation. As more attention is being paid to diverse voices and perspectives in the culinary world, I think there's a lot more interest in exploring diverse cuisines and our culinary traditions that we have in Latin America. We're seeing a lot with companies like Siete Foods, for example, that they were able to introduce their Mexican heritage and personal experiences, and I eat one of their tortillas every day.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Love that.
Valeria Alvarez:
But I think there's just a lot of space for us. I think a place like Miami is a great place to start as well, because there's just such a culture diversity here. And anywhere, honestly. I think there's nothing like good Latin American food.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What do you think the future is for sustainable driven food companies like yours?
Valeria Alvarez:
I think small businesses will find it increasingly easier to find ways to be more sustainable without significant cost. No business is perfect in regards to sustainability, but there are increasingly more services and resources to improve sustainability for small business in many ways.
So for example, we pay for a composting service that takes all of our banana peels and gives them back to a local farm. This service did not exist five years ago, and so I see more and more of small businesses like this emerging in the near future as sustainability and supporting local agriculture just becomes increasingly more important to people.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Valeria, thank you so much for this conversation. If we wanted to continue to support you, where are the best places to find you?
Valeria Alvarez:
Our social media is @peelsoftserve on Instagram. If you want to send us an email or get in touch, our email address is hello@peelsoftserve.com.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Valeria Alvarez:
Thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Before we go, our guest is going to leave a voicemail just talking to themselves 10 years from now. You have reached The Future Of Food Is You mailbox. Please leave your message after the beep.
Valeria Alvarez:
Hey, Valeria, it's me. I hope that when the time you're listening to this that you have found yourself in a very happy place, that you are rocking it, and hopefully your business is rocking it as well. Peel is strong as ever. You have built on this business over the last decade into a place that feels extremely comfortable and extremely great overall. I only wish that you've had patience, that you have had a lot of help along the way, that you've been able to collaborate with everybody that you've wanted to collaborate with, and that you are at peace of where you are.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our show. Thanks to Kerrygold, Dona, and Hampton Grocer for supporting our show. The Future Of Food Is You as a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thanks to the team at CityVox Studios, executive producers Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, associate producer Jenna Sadhu, and editorial assistant Londyn Crenshaw. Catch you on the future flip.