#91: Seriously Reducing Food Waste with Jordan Schenck of Flashfood

Jordan Schenck is the President and Chief Operating Officer for Flashfood, an app-based marketplace that connects shoppers with fresh produce, meat, and other groceries at up to 50% off. This interview focuses on why food waste is a complex issue and how Flashfood works to help reduce food waste.

Read about the origins of Allspice: https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-is-allspice-p2-995556

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Plan to Eat podcast, where I have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you save time in the kitchen, reduce your grocery bill stress less about food. And delight in dinner time.

Roni: Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Plan to Eat podcast today. I have Jordan on the podcast. She is the chief customer officer at flash food. Flash food is an app that connects shoppers with the fresh produce meat and groceries from your grocery store that are potentially going to go bad and kind of rescues them from the landfill gives a discount to the consumer.

Beneficial for both sides of the market here. Jordan. I talked about that a little bit today. Mostly we talk about food waste, where it comes from, how we can kind of try to combat it a little bit. And we actually kind of go down some rabbit holes about recipes and meal planning and cooking. I had a really [00:01:00] fun time talking with Jordan.

She's a super interesting person

and stick around until the end because flash food is offering a special promo for plenty podcast listeners. So look forward to that. And here's the interview.

Jordan, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Jordan: Thanks for having me.

Roni: Why don't we just get started by having you give your own intro of who you are and what you do?

Jordan: Definitely. I, as of today, my name is Jordan. I am the chief customer officer at an app or company. I would say company. I always say app, but it's like, we've got a lot of tech, a company called flash food. We partner with grocery retailers to take food. That's nearing its best buy. That's perfectly good.

Perfectly delicious, fresh. That's. Um, so we have a group of people that's about to head to a landfill, and we allow them to list it on our platform for up to 50 percent off. So folks can get insane deals on really, really good food that would seemingly find itself [00:02:00] not in the bellies of everyone.

Roni: Yeah, that's great. I think that that is very multiple parts of that are very needed right now. Like food waste is a huge deal. Isn't there some statistic that it's like, 33%, like a third of the food that we buy goes in the landfill. And that's just from like a consumer standpoint. I don't even know what the number is as the more like industrial, you know, like grocery store number is,

Jordan: yeah, it's essentially if you think about all food produced, like 40 percent of it about ends up in a landfill at a sort of any point in the chain. Some of that's at home, some of that's grocery, some of that's industry. It's. It's a lot, and the majority of that is actually fresh food, so meat, produce, dairy,

like that's what you're finding sort of well over, I mean, like 70 percent of that is, it's all fresh, and oftentimes that's the most, I mean, not oftentimes, it is the most nutritive food, like it's [00:03:00] where the good stuff comes from, uh, and that's what we're looking for.

always very keen to throw away.

Roni: Well, I'm curious from your perspective, is that a. An issue. Is it a supply chain issue overall? Like, is there being, is there too many things being produced overall and not enough people to consume them? Or is there just like some weird middleman situation there that's causing things to go to waste?

Jordan: Yeah. I think it's like any industry you, you never, if, if we were able to be like the boss of the entirety of the food system, you would probably look at this. As an operator and say, here's where all the inefficiencies are in the chain. The reality is these chains are abundantly complicated from like the grower and the grower has a ton of things going on, right?

Like the seed you buy from the. The fertilizer, if you're using it or like all of like the shipping, everything is like happening and then you've got like the processors and then you've got [00:04:00] the brands and everyone that's doing it. It's just like, and then you go to the groceries and there's like a billion people in between.

Like the, the chain is. Is it complex? It's long as a lot of stakeholders, everybody in the chain is always incentivized to do best by themselves, which is by way of their, their profits. Uh, their bottom line, naturally that's not to think about like, okay, how would I do this effectively so that it's whole it's always sort of in the context of, of, you know, business.

I, so naturally we get in a place where things are wasted. I think what's. Really fascinating to me. And you asked the question of like, is it a people thing? We actually overproduce. If you were to think of a full diet of like 2000 calories, we're, we're overproducing double that for every human being on the planet.

So there isn't a issue of like, is there people, we actually make more food than there is people. Today. We just actually, we don't distribute it back to those people. and that, that chain [00:05:00] doesn't have that. The comparable incentives like going into a grocery store and having like a mountain of beautiful apples, right?

So that's what, that's what you'll see in all of it.

Roni: And so a lot of the things, the fresh foods that you guys are rescuing from the landfills, are they considered that more like? Perfect produce that's, you know, in that shining pile of apples in the grocery store. Is it more like the misfit market style of things that are a little more like blemished and maybe didn't get picked up at the grocery store the first time?

Jordan: Yeah, it's everything. It's perfect. It's perfectly beautiful stuff. It's sometimes stuff with a bump like it, but it's not this sort of specific remit of has to be X, Y, Z. It's truly just what is been pulled out of regular inventory and on its way to. To waste and is completely consumable. Um, so that's, that's where we, we play.

Roni: Yeah. [00:06:00] And so I'm curious about, I mean, to me, it makes sense that it's the more perishable items that are ending up in the landfill because if something's in a box, it has more preservatives. You know, most likely and the, you know, the best by date might be a lot further out is a, is part of the problem.

People not understanding expiration dates and best by dates in the grocery store, or maybe they're actually not very accurate. I know that's kind of like a, uh, like it's like a broad, like the best by I, the idea of like a best buyer sell by date is kind of like a broad general idea. And oftentimes not very accurate.

Like you could have something that you're like, well, Once again, this is perfectly edible, but the best by date said that two days ago it was bad.

Jordan: Yeah. I think the, the reality of Best Buy is that it's a, it's, it's essentially a standard of, of operating. It's an, it's an SOP that's assigned by our, or any country's legislation in terms [00:07:00] of how we would think about the food. And then. A system that's infinitely complex with, you know, billions of people, you're going to create a standard that's going to have nuance, but like, you're not going to vary from the nuance because the sort of the mitigation of that risk is, is tricky.

Right? So oftentimes you find with best buys, they are assigned to an SOP because the SOP needs to exist because we want to make sure that we put health. Of folks there. Does that mean that like certain things like you and I walk into our fridge and we like sniff test it. I literally to just cooked with a, um, Crushed red tomatoes that were from like 2023.

Um, and that's like, again, that's where you as the consumer sort of come into the decision making. As long as that provider. Has told you explicitly that you are making the choice to go beyond what we've recommended but now that's on you so that that's sort of how all of that comes to be as it's just that like it's like it's the exchange of [00:08:00] Of compliance and de risking the sort of reality that you're providing trillions of pounds of stuff to billions of people.

And that in and of itself, you and I both know, like humans are, it's just a, it's a big blob of things happening.

Roni: Yeah. The more that I think about it, the more complicated it feels and it does make sense for, whoever is involved in the system to try and like cover their butts because you don't want like a huge outbreak of E. coli or something because people were all eating eggs that were way too old.

Jordan: Yeah. It's those it's almost like, but I, when I look at the, the sort of the issue that we're tackling, it's. It's almost like regardless of what's happening with some of those assigned SOPs and requirements, we're still wasting. And the other reality is like the way that we've created this call it structure of how we experience [00:09:00] food, whether it's fresh, predominantly fresh food in the grocery store has this, you know, requirement of like the wholeness, the merchandising is so important.

So when you talk to businesses, like, A, um, misfits are imperfect. They're not dealing with the whole issue of like the tower of perfectly shiny apples or the very full looking meat case they're able to sort of merchandise on the one item on the screen. So they've got a really tight, sort of supply chain management because they're not dealing with like that abundance of like truly visual display.

That's often where you see a lot of these things come. To head and when you were asking the question of like center store where best buys are more important like the merchandising requirements in center store are not as like ephemeral as that of like a meat aisle or a produce aisle and us as human beings were like pretty we've been poorly conditioned to like do a couple of things one like if the shelf is empty but there's like one thing left we're like oh that's bad

like we just have this weird [00:10:00] thing about like scarcity mindset and we get a little funky about that.

That's one. So things need to look full to sell. The other thing is we have this relationship with perfection and the way that food looks though. Like if anyone is a home grower, you know, that food grows in all of these like beautiful, creative ways. But for some reason, when we hit the grocery store, we don't like celebrate.

That obscurity of food. We're like, no, it has to be like a straight a student

Roni: Yeah.

Jordan: and you can't taste it in the grocery store. Right? Like you can't just like start, I mean, chomping on the carrots that you're about to buy to then like Wade, whether or not like something that's maybe grown to look perfect might have foregone that sort of like delicious, like umami taste that you're going to get from like homegrowing in the salt, like there's all sorts of fun things that.

That go into consumer behavior. I think for us, what we find is it's it's essentially the same. It is the same thing that you're getting in the environment of the grocery [00:11:00] store. It's just now, as we would say, sort of within its Goldilocks window of, like, perfectly priced and ready to eat. Not in this other sort of window where it's going to be, you're paying a premium for something that's maybe got some like visual beauty to it or like a day more's time.

Uh, that's, that's really where we play.

Roni: Yeah. Well, I feel like I, with our app with plan to eat, we, I feel like I really understand, you know, how individuals or families can reduce their food waste. Like just creating a meal plan helps reduce food waste. I think like we did a survey several years ago and about 80 percent of our customers say that they just automatically waste less food when they create a meal plan.

It doesn't have to be in a like special meal plan or anything. But I feel like. So I understand like the individual aspect, I think a lot better than I understand this more like an industrial aspect to it. So can you just talk a little bit about how flash food [00:12:00] works and like maybe how that technology works out in the world?

Cause yeah, I'm, I'm feeling like, okay, I need to be clued in since I don't understand this area of the food chain. Yeah.

Jordan: when you fire up an Instacart and you're shopping for food, you're firing up a flash food app and you're shopping for that food that's, It's sort of been listed on flash food. So if you, I don't know what your, whatever grocery store is, uh, you would shop our app.

You're going to get the great discount. You're going to know what you bought and you're going to walk in the store and pick it up. And you know, oftentimes with us, you can complete your total cart. Like you may be able to get a giant box of produce, which we have these incredible produce boxes that are like five bucks.

And then you're getting like five to 10 pounds, which stuff. You may get some meat to balance that out. And then you may go in and sort of round your shop out. You'll tend to find these great deals with us. That's how it works pretty simply. And for a grocer, they're essentially like [00:13:00] it's, we're just integrating within their daily process of when they're calling or scrapping out some of these items, you know, every morning or later in the evening.

And then instead of that heading out, You know, to the trucks to take to the trash. It's getting pulled into and posted on flash food. Uh, things are extremely ephemeral on our platform and that they are oftentimes very, like I said, they're very ready to eat in terms of their date. Uh, we even have fun features in our app.

It's so ephemeral that if you don't move to, like, buy it in your cart, someone can pull it out, because the inventory is also extremely limited. Like, you're not dealing with these, you know, hundreds and hundreds of items. It's like, truly, what does the grocer have? That's within the inventory today, if that makes sense.

Roni: Yeah, it makes me think of when you're on like Etsy or something and they're like seven other people have this in their cart. And I'm like, okay, yeah, whatever. But in the case of flash food, it's like, oh, I should probably [00:14:00] really buy this thing.

Jordan: Yeah, um, there, there's not, like, it's, it's not the, like, Etsy motivating. Ours is truly like, no, no, no, like, you, like, someone's, they're taking it. It's going, yeah.

Roni: So when they, so they use flash food. And so you mentioned Instacart is flash, is flash food partnered with these other like grocery deliveries? Like where does, how does the consumer actually get the food then once they order it?

Jordan: they, so they order it like, um, and then you walk in store for pickup. So we don't work with, yeah, I was using it as an example of like, just like Instacart, you shop and then their team delivers it with us, your shopping on the marketplace, and then you're going into your grocery store to pick it up. 

Roni: Oh, okay. 

Jordan: yeah.

So you'll go into the local store, you'll, you know, get your order. And like I said, sometimes you've got a full cart of stuff and other times you're going to finish your sort of shop for the day or the week. What have you.

Roni: Okay. That makes a lot more sense. Wow. So, you talked about the, you know, obviously we're wasting less food by doing this. I feel like [00:15:00] customers are going to save a lot of money to be able to use this. Are there any other benefits that you notice that your customers see by using flash food?

Jordan: Yeah, the biggest benefit is the savings is number one. And for folks, that's always going to be the most important. I think what's really amazing about this platform is it's one of the only places where you're going to get prices for commodity goods at like half off. So

Roni: Hmm.

Jordan: the meats, the, the dairies, all of that.

And that's, In this day and age, extremely hard to do. And also in this day and age with what we've experienced with inflation and prices as a whole, it's just, it's sort of the number one thing. The other benefit you do get from it. I mean, there's another benefit, obviously, that is like the multiplier of what happens from a call it carbon emission standpoint, when food ends up trucking the landfill, ending up in landfill, off gassing and landfill.[00:16:00] 

There's that reduction. Do do consumers buy because they're excited about, like, reducing off gassing and CO2? Most likely not. You're probably going to think price first. And I think for us, it's. Important to deliver on the value of what a consumer wants and know that like the added benefit is this just like helped our planet feel a little bit healthier.

The other benefit too, is because it's all fresh, you get this incredible multiplier of nutrition. So we're, like I had mentioned earlier, we're moving a lot of produce on this platform. Like it's a huge seller. You, we get these incredible stories from our community of like, Being able to feed their family a plate of fresh vegetables.

We get other fun stories of like, I can finally be the berry parent because berries are like crazy expensive. And we all know that like little humans, if they had it their way would survive on berries, but like [00:17:00] that doesn't feel that great for your, for your wallet, but if you can, you know, get those berries or what have you at a fraction of the cost, like, you know, go for it.

So I think we, we get this. This great moment in nutrition. And then I would say the other part of it is we, we really provide communities who may or may, who may have not had access to a grocery store just from a price standpoint. So we do service the SNAP, SNAP and EBT communities, communities on fixed incomes.

And the ability to go and shop at your grocery store, like go in there and buy a full cart and not, and feel your, you know, your snap and EBT dollars multiply is just another incredible benefit in, in all of this. So that's, I mean, and that's the realm we get to play in, which is, which is a really fun place to be when you're building brands and businesses.

Roni: That's great. Yeah. It's funny though, that you mentioned that maybe there's not very many consumers who are going into the grocery store and thinking about like their carbon footprint. But I'm, I live [00:18:00] in Colorado. I'm argue there's a lot of people around here who are thinking about that very consciously.

Jordan: Yeah, yeah. But like, Colorado is like, is Colorado. And I, I really, I love Colorado. Don't get me wrong. But like, you're not going to have to hard sell a Colorado. And I'm like, let's think about, think about those things. So, in all fairness.

Roni: Yeah. So, okay, so there are definite benefits for the consumer. Do you guys do anything that, um, incentivizes the grocery stores to participate in this as well?

Jordan: Yeah, I think the for the grocery store, you know, these the grocery store knows it's going to waste a grocery store is also just like us hates wasting, right? Would rather service the community. So for a grocer is working with us as a is another vehicle to accomplish some of those sustainability objectives.

It also happens to pay back on the bottom line because what you would effectively Yeah, absolutely. You know, written out of your, um, sort of total earnings. You're now able [00:19:00] to recover that cost because we are also an external service that drives foot traffic. When someone's getting ping that you posted a produce box or meat or what have you, you're going to pull someone in store that may or may not have visited that week.

And so we actually act as like a multiplier. So someone who's a shop flash food shopper in a grocer is going to come in 1. 1 more times a month and spend. You know, upwards of 20 extra dollars. So for them, it's like this incredible moment to offset that shrink, but it's also a vehicle in terms of like, Oh, it's like marketing, uh, which is again, it's, it's, it's cool for them.

So that's been the, that's, I mean, that's been a lot of the upside of what they've seen. And then obviously like, there's, like I said, there's the sustainability goals that exist within the business, but it's actually driving value at the same time.

Roni: Yeah, I guess I can see how that's a really mutually beneficial relationship there because, um, like [00:20:00] a customer might've just heard that and been like, well, they're, they're forcing me, they're getting me in the grocery store more often, but potentially you're actually able to buy more food for your family.

If you're spending less on, you know, like the meat and dairy and those things, like you mentioned the most expensive things at the grocery store. And so instead of going home and being like, okay, we only got so much food and we're scrounging the rest of the week. Like you actually then have more food to be able to give to your family for the rest of the week.

So I 

Jordan: Totally. Yeah.

Roni: I don't know if you yourself are a meal planner or not, but I'm wondering if you happen to have any tips or ideas related to meal planning when it comes to these more ephemeral types of purchases that people might have. But I'm just, picturing potentially people bringing this food home and then it also being so close to, you know, Going bad that then it does go bad at their house before they're able to use it.

So give any ideas around how somebody could prevent that from happening in their [00:21:00] own home.

Jordan: Yeah, I think that one is. With like food that's getting close, like, you know, buy it when you're ready to kind of process or consume it. On the platform, you can get a ton of bulk stuff. So you'll get meats, you'll get, produce. Folks will, if they've got the space, will freeze that for, for prep. I tend to Like if I'm getting a big produce box, it's usually like a fun jump ball of meal prepping for me.

So oftentimes it's like kind of random, like, you know what you're going to get in it. And I know that like on a Thursday, if I'm shopping, I'm going to have time on Saturday to like, Sort of create what I'm going to create. If I've got like, you know, like 5 yams, 10 potatoes and a bunch of onions. And I got like a, I mean, for me, I like the creativity of it.

I think for some folks it's like, Oh, like I've got all this stuff. What do I do? Uh, so I tend to time it around when I'm going to have like space within the 24 to 48 hours to [00:22:00] like convert it into something. And then I'll usually make it know that it's going to be like what I'm eating for the next, like, or the family's eating for the next three or four days.

And then I'll like freeze sort of whatever is in. In the sort of like excess category of like there's no way we consume this and it's usually like when I'm making like stews or I mean even when I make bowls like even when I'm making like oh I'm going to prep this bowl for the week you can like people just forget there's a lot of stuff that you can just save.

Roni: Yeah.

Jordan: And so it's really cool with it. Like when I'm shopping on the platform and I'm getting some of those like larger format things, like the savings is actually like, you don't realize how exponential is you're like, Oh man, I just like, I just made this like stew. And now I've got the stew that was like over 50 percent off and now I've got it for like days and days and days.

And I'm like, Saving a ton of money and it's also like crazy healthy and all of that. So that's my advice. I always plan it around like when I have time on the back half of it to do the work. Cause it is going to take like, there is work in meal prep. You know, sometimes it's [00:23:00] fast. Like sometimes it's like 15, 20 minutes.

Other times, if you're crazy like me, I'm like, I made a lasagna the other day that took literally all day. But that was just because the recipe required it to.

Take the entirety of your soul, but you just need to make sure you have this, you're planning the space to do it and then you, you just get it done.

Roni: That's really great advice that we kind of consider that like reverse meal planning, more or less, you know, like most people think of meal planning is I plan the recipes. I go to the grocery store and pick up the things. And this could be like, I go pick up the things from the grocery store, kind of like you would with a CSA box and be like, here are all the things that I have.

What are the recipes that I could make with these unique items that I maybe normally wouldn't have in my week?

Jordan: I think it's cool because it pushes you. So I'm, I'm not the like, I go, I have the, this is just a me. I don't have like the plan. And then I buy, I'm like, I've got this stuff. And then I spend like a good portion of like a 15 to 20 [00:24:00] minutes being like, okay, how do I do the game of substitutes? Like what's the like, if I don't have the rice or if I don't have this spice, like what works in here and that I have fun doing that.

I think for some folks that sounds like that is not fun. The good thing about our app is you're going to know everything that you buy before you go in. So there isn't like a true surprise. I just happen to I love the like, it. The other day I like didn't have allspice. I was like, I never even looked what allspice was.

And I was like, Oh, it's just a combination of these three spices in some form of a ratio. I was like, this is insane. Like, why have I been buying this when I've got like these three things sitting in my spice drawer that I could have just like combined? Which then I was like, of course it's like garam masala.

Like, I'm like, like we do these, like, it's like herbs. It's like herbs for bonds. Like, of course we make these combos. And I had never. I had never really thought of that. And I feel like that's how we ended up with like zucchini noodles. I actually don't know if it was like a carb thing. I think someone was just like, Oh, what am I going to, like, I don't have [00:25:00] noodles.

I have to like make noodles. I think we will make it be like a keto thing, but I actually think it was like someone just being like, what else can I noodle in my kitchen?

Roni: I like that's a hot take right there. Yeah,

Jordan: when I look at things in my kitchen, I'm like, can it noodle? Like, it, like, what, what will happen if I do this? And, but that's, like, also the mindset. You have to kind of go into the fun of, like, the recipe doesn't have to be the recipe. And oftentimes it's, like, it's still Really good.

I'm like, also, what can I salsa? Like my everyone I'm like known for my salsas because I'm just like constantly like on a creative endeavor, because it's crazy. How many things you can salsa it makes them like really good. And it doesn't just have to be the like vehicle of like tomato, onion, cilantro.

You can, you can care it, you can like dragon fruit. Like you can go crazy with salsa. Yeah. Same thing with [00:26:00] sauces.

Roni: I love these ideas. I feel like my thing is like, what can I turn into a meatball? Like obviously like basic meats in your meatball, but I feel like you can put a lot of different foods inside of a meatball and it still is a delicious food. You know, like you can like shred carrots and put them in your meatball, shred your zucchini, put it in your meatballs.

Like there's lots of options there.

Jordan: a meatball is a canvas,

Roni: Yeah,

Jordan: truly. Like it's just, it's a canvas. And if you think about everything, like if you took everything that you did and you're like, okay, this is a canvas and I am an artist. Sometimes things are like shockingly surprising. Sometimes they're like, okay, which is fine because like, that's the, that's the fun part of it.

But yeah, that's, a meatball is a canvas.

Roni: I love this. I love this idea overall. And I think that a lot of people who probably listening to this podcast, because you don't really listen to this podcast. I think if you don't please like to meal plan or like to cook, uh, are identifying with this just simply because if you're somebody who [00:27:00] enjoys cooking, I think most people who enjoy it, find it to be a really creative process.

And are not afraid to do some substitutions, not afraid to try a different spice. In something, you know, try some garam masala in their meatballs and see what happens. So

Jordan: People don't realize that every culture in the world has a meatball. It can be even a vegetarian meatball. We as like a human race love to just put things into balls and put spices in them. So like, it's really like, once you understand that like that, it's so safe that it's like actually quite hard to like, not have a successful meatball, uh, you, you like kind of get into, but I totally get it where it's like when you're cooking or at least starting out on cooking, like, it's like, oh my God, this is so intimidating.

And what I've always like, what I think with like meal planning is my sort of things are like, always have a good spice cabinet, like just have a little bit of diversity [00:28:00] there. It's like, It changes everything. And then like have a good acid, like just, you know, you got a vinegar and a lemon around that's going to make it work.

And then like, if you've got that, you can kind of just start fiddling around and figuring things out with food. But that's always like what helps. Because to your point, like you can make a garum, you can make like more of like an Indian flavored meatball. You could also like make an albondiga. You could make it like you could throw some cumin and chili powder, whatever you got, like it works.

Yeah.

Roni: My favorite, one of my favorite recipes actually is like chicken meatballs. So it's ground chicken with garam masala in it. So it's the best ever. Okay.

Jordan: now that I've said it like you're like, no, it's a legit thing. I've never put in and I was only going back to my all spice dilemma this week and learning. I felt so silly. I was like looking it up. I was like, what is this plant? I'm like, Oh my God, it's not a plant. You're

Roni: Well, I didn't know that's what all spice was. I feel like you could, you could infer that from the name of all spice, but I just kind [00:29:00] of figured, I don't know what I figured it was. I really didn't know the Garam Masala was in all space. So I'm going to have to

Jordan: no, it's not. And it's not an all spice. Garam masala is like a version of all spice for Indian culture. Cause it's a combo of spices and all spice is like, I don't know if it was like an American, I don't know who invented it, but it's also a combo of spices. That's why it's called all spice,

Roni: right. Okay. Okay.

Jordan: like ALL spice,

Roni: Yeah.

Jordan: isn't that great.

I just like, and then it's also like herbs to Provence. Like that's just like. lavender, rosemary, like it's everything that's growing in the field in the French, the South of France, like ends up in a jar. I feel like everyone has it. And I think America's version of that is all spice.

Roni: this I'm learning a lot right now.

Jordan: It might not be American though. I like want to like Google it while we're on this call now. Like

Roni: well, what is it? Is it like nutmeg

Jordan: nutmeg and yeah. And then, um, cinnamon.

Roni: Oh my 

Jordan: did all spice originate?

Roni: have all three of

Jordan: Oh no, no. It was West Indies, Central [00:30:00] America and Mexico. It's like, Oh wait, no, this is a real spice. Oh my god, I thought it was.

So here's the crazy thing. When you buy allspice, no, it is a true tree. It comes from a tree. And this is why I'm like, where does it come from? It is its own thing. And then in our world, we've like, deviated from the production of like, traditional allspice to like, making these combo allspices.

so like if you're 

Roni: like imitation vanilla or something.

Jordan: I think that's like what we've ended because allspice is actually a thing and look it says it's coming from west indies mexico central america it is from the the true the tree fruits when it's three years old so it's like it's an allspice berry but we don't we when we mass produce it we we like we're blending in some cases

Roni: Wow. I'm fascinated by this.

Jordan: I know. I could be totally wrong too. Someone's gonna like, at me and be like, you're an idiot. It's actually just the pimenta tree and you didn't have the spice and you read it wrong, which is like my other take.

Roni: We'll do, we'll, we'll do a Google search and put something in [00:31:00] the, in the

Jordan: You know, you're going 

Roni: show notes so

Jordan: fact check, it's a berry. This is a berry. This is why we have the internet to prove yourselves wrong. And then I was like, what do I do if I don't have all space? And it's like, easy. Most all spices are X, Y, Z. And it did taste the same because I was making a Bacchamel for the lasagna and it wanted all spice.

And I was like, that seems, and I couldn't find it in like the grocery stores weren't carrying it. And I was like, are we on an all spice shortage? 

Roni: Uh, I was gonna say that I, I do like your idea of having like a well stocked spice cabinet in a, in a, some sort of an acid around, because I constantly reference the book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, as just like, it's, I feel like it is the culinary Bible of how to become a better at home cook. Like if you're, if you're somebody who's concerned about I'm new to cooking, I have no idea what I'm doing, you know, maybe you have some other basics around, but, um, I've, I learned so much.

I mean, I've been cooking my own food since, you know, I [00:32:00] moved out of the house at 18 and I just read that book like a couple of years ago and was like mind blown by some of the things that I learned in there. It was so interesting.

Jordan: it's, it's the best. And like, I didn't know if you've ever like gotten a chance to hear her talk. She'll talk a lot about this, like flavor and spice dilemma. That's sort of like the underlying thesis of like, when like the forgotten flavors, like we've sort of, you know, we've homogenized cinnamon. We don't even have like people like me knowing the origin of all spice because I can't find it.

But it's probably in some short supply knowing that it actually comes from this thing. And that's why I couldn't find it. So of course we would like create odd little, um, hacks around it. It's the same thing you've seen with the Aleppo pepper. Like the Aleppo pepper extinction is like a net result of war.

Like she'll go into these like really complicated things around flavor, which is the other fun part of like the basics of the kitchen. Once you get into it, you're like, there's this sort of. There's stories behind like the flavors of everything we eat, [00:33:00] which is really, really, really cool.

Roni: Yeah. I love that. I love thinking about just the cultural significance of things. And that's one thing that she does really well in that book is she attaches certain flavors to cultures and different cuisine types and stuff. So that way you're not guessing like is basil only Italian or can I use it in, you know, Indian food as well? 

Jordan: Yeah,

Roni: that she's just fantastic. Uh, well we got off topic a little bit, but I'm totally okay with it.

Jordan: we can delete it. You could just like cut it. 

Roni: No, I love it, 

Jordan: especially me being like, what is these? What are these spices having like a total panic attack? Now knowing fully well that it's like, Native to Jamaica, named lovingly Allspice because it worked in everything.

Roni: Ooh, that's a great tip right there. I feel like that's a good party, um, tidbit

to throw out 

Jordan: I've got the trivia that I'll never forget.

Roni: Yeah. Was there anything else you wanted to mention about flash food [00:34:00] that we didn't bring up already in the conversation?

Jordan: I think we've covered the bulk of it. Uh, we're, you know, we're, we're in the midst of scaling nationally. I'm sure a lot of folks that listen are, Here in, uh, the United States. And so we're, we're definitely coming to a lot more places and hopefully knock on wood Colorado soon enough. So, like you said, we can get the folks who like, get it, but are buying because they're excited about their carbon footprint.

Roni: Boulder's going to be a huge market for you. Let me just tell you right now.

Jordan: I'm sure it's boulder is the easy sell.

Roni: Yeah, it is. Well, if there's nothing else, I just want to say thank you so much for this conversation. It was really fun and it was great to learn about flash food. I think it's a really. it's not a revolutionary concept, but putting it into an app, I think is like the revolutionary concept for it because you're just making it so much more accessible for people.

Jordan: totally. It's, it's just [00:35:00] a simple solution to an insanely complicated problem. We should never have complicated solutions to complicated problems. Things tend to get a bit. Weird if you do that. So I think we're, we're just excited to bring it to more folks.

Roni: Yeah. That's great. Why don't you mention, where people can learn more about flash food and maybe where they can find out if it's available in their area or not.

Jordan: Yeah. I mean, you can download the flash food app. It's a free app and all of your available play and Apple app stores. You'll be able to see on there where we're located, but you can find us mostly, I would say Midwest, East coast, a bit of Northern California, and a few sort of places sprinkled throughout and more to come.

If you download it and hold on to us, or at least get in our mailing list, there's going to be a lot of announcements coming up for more places to find us.

Roni: Awesome. That's great. Y'all make sure there's a link in the show notes. We have a link [00:36:00] to locations. So if anybody wants to just quickly click on that to check out the locations, they can do that. And otherwise, thanks again, Jordan. I appreciate it.

Jordan: Appreciate it. This was fun. Thank you.

Roni: Thank you as always for tuning in to today's interview. There are going to be links in the show notes to learn more about flash food and find where it's located. If it's close to you in your area and flash food is giving plenty podcast listeners a special promo, so you can use the code plan to eat. All one word, you can do uppercase for it, and it's giving you 5 off a minimum of a 10 purchase.

It's going to expire at the end of 2024. So if flash food is available in your area, go use that code and save a little bit of extra money. I will make sure that there is, that information in the show notes as well. So you don't have to remember this, just go check out the show notes. 

And if you want to support the Plan to Eat podcast, the best way to do that [00:37:00] is to share it with a friend. The more people that are listening to the Plan to Eat podcast, the more interesting interviews that we can have on here. And so share it with a friend or give us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or Spotify.

Thanks again, and I will see you in two weeks.