YouSaid · the spoken record

Oren Frank

lines on the record
29
first
2015-11-25
most recent
2015-11-25
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “Yeah, I think you're right. I think for me, part of the whole transparency thing, like you say, is also what resources are required to raise this beef or put that other piece of food on your table? Or is there any of it left in the ocean and therefore we should be leaving that alone altogether? And to the extent that we can know more and more about that and or find more efficient ways of farming, whether that's fish or produce, that's a really exciting area too.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And down the line, I would say that efficiency matters very much. So that's why things like gobble or soylent might be working. What we're seeing is that people care about efficiency, but also nutrition and access to information. So until even companies like Gobble or Soylent can tell you that their solution has all the macronutrients and micronutrients required for your family to be healthy with great accuracy, there's still a question in consumer's mind and a lot of overinformation that needs to be answered. But I think it's going to be a combined solution of hobbyist cooking from scratch. Hopefully something like gobble or efficient daily cooking solutions, efficient powder or pill solutions, and then also the whole sensory experience of going out to dinner will absolutely remain as a really special thing to do for people with their loved ones.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I'm excited about the future of food because I think that there's so much innovation going on. And I actually think that no one solution is going to own the future. I think it'll be a constellation of solutions that fit different people and also people at different stages of life. So for example, I know some folks who do soilent for breakfast and lunch, and then they'll do gobble or cook from scratch for dinner.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I'll get 10 friends to buy in. And the rest is history. But I would say that another piece of it is that I care a lot about family. So even though I wasn't a cook, I made the decision to start a food company because I care about family. And I think that as people grow up, as they start, you know, maybe choosing a partner or starting a family, they care about nourishing that family. And the way they look at food evolved. So I used to eat out of a tray. And then now as I get to a certain place in life where I might start a family, I start caring about food and where it comes from. And is it healthy or not? And so that's, I think that's where my care for food comes from. And now my like interest in helping food fit into this like 24-7 busy lifestyle.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “The way it happened is that I started eating very poorly. And so I felt a direct health effect of eating takeout every day. And I was lethargic and tired and I was running another business. And I was pretty unhappy for a while. And I would talk to my family about it. And they were heartbroken because they spent all this time while I was growing up feeding me only home cooked food. We would only eat out maybe once a month. So Gobble just started very organically by me solving the problem for myself and posting a Craigslist ad and asking, hey, can anyone make me home cooked food for $8 a plate?”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “You admitted that you were learning how to cook flipping and kind of getting into it. And you did use the word delta when you were describing preparing a meal. And you've told me this, that you are not the world's most involved chef food person. So why did you start a food company? And how did that happen?”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “We can see more people caring about health and food transparency and where their food comes from. And so I slowly see more people eating. They want meat as a garnish on their food as opposed to a center of plate every single time, which I think is great and in line with what we know right now.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “And so you're saying at least people are trying to okay, this meal, this one meal this week, I'm going to go vegetarian, or maybe that's increasing, but like you can't pin down a trend at this point yet.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “That's right. They're all individual meals, so people will switch out, let's say, a beef for a vegetarian meal or a chicken for a vegetarian meal. And I care about that and I care about a balanced diet. So we focus a lot on vegetarian meal innovation as well.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Right? In our menu rubric, we have a certain, we have rules around how many healthy meals and how many comfort meals we would offer or how many traditional American meals or ethnic meals. About 10% of our user base right now is vegetarian. There is a vocal population that are gluten-free. And we do see folks that usually get our omnivore box, which is chicken, fish, and red meat dabbling in vegetarian meals.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Absolutely, absolutely. It's such a funny shift because we go from all of all those biscuits and mashed potatoes to lots of salads and Shredded chicken or salmon and that kind of thing. So we're ready for that shift. January and onwards is really a game time for developing new habits for folks. And so for food services and especially subscription food services, it's good to be prepared.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Hm, well, we change the kind of food that we're serving. And of course, there's different vegetables that are in season that we use squashes and root vegetables. And we only see, the only shift we see is when people are traveling out of town. So most people take a longer vacation in December. If their home and it's not a holiday, they're eating gobble. It's something that people depend on and get very upset about if it doesn't show up, which is exciting to me. I want to be an integral part of your life. And we actually ask someone to let us know when they're skipping a week why it is so they'll tell us, hey, the menu isn't good or I'm out of town or I'm cost saving right now. So according to all of our”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I am. We have a very fun Thanksgiving tradition and I think it shows in how we run the company. My family gets together with about 12 other families at someone's house. There's tables all over their house and living room and a formal area and a regular area in the kitchen. And now it's almost three generations. It's grandparents, parents, their kids, and now new kids. And we've been going to the same house for 15 years and everybody brings food as a potluck. So I actually have never missed one in all the years I've been going.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Oh man. Well, this is advice for myself too. I'm very precise and perfectionist person. And the way we designed our dinner kits so that type A, precise perfectionist people can actually cook and get a great meal on the table without worrying, was it 11 minutes or 9 minutes and that kind of thing. So I guess the advice I would give is a simple one. And that's just to relax and understand that most of the time cooking comes out great anyway because it's just made with that care and love within some delta of time limit and reason. So the way I kind of loosened up and even got into cooking when we were inventing these dinner kits was by was by learning to flip food in my pan. I would just use a spatula or a ladle when I was first learning how to cook. And our executive chef, Thomas Ricci, you know, taught me how to pick that pan up and flip everything so that it would cook so much better.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Right? That's a fun one. Some people actually hide the box. They'll open the box. They'll take out everything. They'll, you know, put it wherever they put it. One guy went so far as to tell his wife he was taking cooking classes and always has been cooking a meal before she gets home with his gobble dinner kit. And when the box was delayed, he had emailed, you know, called, direct messaged, and just said, hey, send it to my office. Like it can't show up at my house because my wife doesn't know. So it's pretty fun how people use it and make it their own. And a lot of parents even say, hey, you know, my kids think I'm a great chef thanks to gobble.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “It allows us to reach more people. And so before while we drove similar to an on demand company within city limits of, let's say, a San Francisco or Palo Alto, now we can reach every home in California and people are enjoying Thanksgiving from Gobble in San Diego, Tracy, you know, Bakersfield and Palo Alto all at the same time.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yes, well, there are two huge logistics problems that we solve. One is actually producing all of the food Which is very difficult, which is actually where we focus most of our software efforts. And the second is, after all, that's produced and packaged at high quality and at high safety, it's sorting all of that into all the customer orders, more of like an Amazon-like pick and pack sort of warehouse operation. The actual delivery at everybody's houses, while we used to do that, and that's a fun routing problem to figure out, we now outsource that to on-track and FedEx.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And that will be going down after everything is successful. But we actually have emergency trucks ready for overnight shipments, a certain buffer amount of every single dish. We've been doing this for long enough to where we know how much buffer to make and how many misdeliveries we expect on any one shipment day to have contingency plans in place for the inevitable.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Mantras that we have to make, it is such high stakes of a meal that we have to make sure that all of our customers get those dinners and those sides before we really can enjoy our own. So we have a huge gobble Thanksgiving party after all the shipments are out for hundreds of people including some of you folks at the firm.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yes, well, we hope it's not a problem, but we certainly preemptively work very hard to not make it one. So we, for example, all of our shipments are going out on Monday for arrival on Tuesday, and they're built to go in your fridge, and then you can cook them off on Thursday. When you're about to serve Thanksgiving dinner. The reason we did that, and our team is actually working on Tuesday and Wednesday. And I'm flying home on Thanksgiving Day for that slide-in arrival right at 5 p.m.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “That's been a fun creative challenge for our team over the last few months, which is figuring out how you can prepare all these sides as freshly as if you cooked them, but with the same kind of pre-prep and convenience of our normal day-to-day dinner kits. So for example, the vegetables might be washed and cleaned for you and chopped as we normally do for your normal dinner kits, but we'll actually give you a, for example, a sage butter or different spices to cook those vegetables with. And you're basically finishing the cooking of them and integrating them with some flavor so that We like to say you do the sizzle and the serve.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “That's right. Yes, we do, we sell a lot of sides, but we also sell a lot of turkey. And then, of course, again, nowadays, the easier you can make the whole process, the better. So we have a gobble gobble Thanksgiving feast, and that above everything with all the sides included and the turkey and integrated instructions on when to start the green beans versus the turkey versus the potatoes. So it all comes out okay. Doing all of that work for the whole feast, I think our population really appreciates.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I wonder if it's also that mashed potatoes, don't get me wrong, they're good, but if I don't have to make some side dish, then somehow I get to make the glory dish, which is the turkey. Like nobody is like, oh my God, those mashed potatoes, or maybe they are. But anyway, the glory dish is the turkey, so maybe they just want to take the hassle out of the rest of it.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Okay, so let's talk about the holidays then. When you say that you have all this data, what are some of the things you're seeing in terms of what people are doing over the next month as we get into Thanksgiving and then into other holidays?”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Great question. I think a modern food company has to be a tech company. And I've seen companies like Netflix or Pandora or Amazon really leverage all of their rich customer data to make the experience for you very personalized on their websites. And in my opinion, people eat food three times a day. If any company should have the most data or insight into who a person is, it should be a food company. So from day one, when we started gobble almost five years ago, I have always been a huge nut about understanding people's taste and basically predicting exactly what they should and want to eat every single day. And that is how it becomes a tech company and how a winning food company will succeed.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Right, this is where the data and technology really come in. We rely so heavily on user surveys, on past year behavior, and on watching how people evolve every single week to forecast exactly how much to procure of every single ingredient, and then to make the very best menus every single week and especially for the holidays. So we have to rely a lot on data science to figure out what to cook and what you'll like. And then on our own software to actually figure out the order in which to produce all the food so that we can actually make tens of thousands of portions of turkey stuffing and send it to you on time.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “The holidays are coming up. We're all going to be doing a lot of cooking or maybe trying to avoid doing a lot of cooking. I just want to know from logistics, like you guys, so one meal is hard enough for one person to sort of pull off over the holidays. You guys are doing that thousands upon thousands. So how do you guys approach, you know, even just an average week, but even, you know, the sort of weeks and months coming up, what do you guys have to do to sort of think about who's going to want what and how it's going to get out there?”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Ushma has been up since I don't know when well before it was light up because you guys get cooking at 4 a.m. Is that correct? That's right. Prepping, I should say. Well, all of the above. So gobble, as you well know, is a sort of a food preparation meals that come to you almost fully prepped. You get to put them together in a very short amount of time and put them on your table and enjoy them. Correct? Am I correct here?”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland, and we are going to talk about food. This is sort of a technology meets the holidays segment. And to help us with this is none other than Ushmagarg, who is the co-founder and CEO of Gobble. Ushma, welcome.”

    2015-11-25 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source