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SPEAKER_04: Football season is back, and Whole Foods Market has everything you need to host a successful watch party or tailgate on game day. In the meat department, there's animal welfare certified marinated chicken wings, organic chicken sausages, hot dogs, and more. And you can grab football-ready sides in a flash. Everything from mac and cheese and potato salad to sushi. I love picking up Whole Foods guacamole, which if you haven't eaten it, you're about to get your mind blown because it's actually amazing. By the way, catering from Whole Foods makes tailgates a breeze. Explore the menu at shop.wfm.com. Save 20% from September 20th through October 17th with promo code FALLCATERING, all one word. Don't sleep on the build-your-own-taco bar. It's always a winner. Terms apply. Elevate game day at Whole Foods Market. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. If you're a small business owner, it isn't just your business. It's your life. Whatever your business might be, you want someone who understands. And that's where State Farm Small Business Insurance comes in. State Farm agents are small business owners too, and know what it takes to help you personalize your policies for your small business needs. Like a good neighbor? State Farm is there. Talk to your local agent today. OK, on to the show. And this week, we're re-running an interview from last fall with Chef Pierre Chiam. His company, Yolele, is betting big on Fonio. It's a nutritious and drought-resistant African grain that could feed billions of people on our warming planet. Hope you enjoy. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So one of my favorite things to do is to wander the aisles of grocery stores. I'm always on the lookout for weird and new products. Recently, I came across some mushroom jerky, cassava cheese puffs with plant-based cheese, a Mexican fermented kombucha-type drink. Anyway, I always work to find at least one new thing in the store to try each week. And about a year ago, I came across a grain that looked really interesting. It was high in protein, gluten-free, and most intriguingly, it was an ancient grain from Africa. It's called Fonio, and I immediately grabbed a bag and cooked it up with some chicken thighs later that night. Not only was it great, but also totally different from other grains like quinoa or farro or rice. The man who is most responsible for bringing Fonio to the U.S. is a Senegalese chef named Pierre Chiam. He's the founder of a West African restaurant in New York called Teranga, and Pierre's on a mission to get people to discover Fonio. Why? Well, not only is it a nutrient-dense plant, but it requires very little water to grow. In fact, it thrives in drought-stricken areas. In other words, Fonio could be a major source of food as climate change continues to ravage the planet. In 2017, Pierre co-founded his company, Yolele, to bring Fonio to the U.S. and eventually to the world. Besides Fonio, Yolele now sells Fonio flour and even snacks made from the grain, and their products are available in thousands of stores across the U.S. Pierre Chiam joins us. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_05: Thank you, guys.
SPEAKER_04: It's a pleasure. So, you are originally from Senegal, and you grew up, I think, in Dakar, right? In the capital or around the capital?
SPEAKER_05: Yes. Yes. I grew up in Dakar in a neighborhood called Pointe-Hue.
SPEAKER_04: And you were not, from what I understand, as a kid or even as a young man, you were not necessarily food-focused, right? You were, as a student, you were into science and mathematics. Is that right?
SPEAKER_05: Yes. I was in the school of Baccalaureate, and then I went to university for physics and chemistry. But growing up in Dakar, obviously, food is a big part of the culture. But you know, it's a gender-based activity. So the kitchen is for women, and food was not an option as a profession. I never thought food could be a career.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah. But it's interesting. I know you've talked about this before. You've given a wonderful TED Talk. Anyone listening should go check it out. Dakar, because of where it is, its location and its history, it has a blend of culture. There are many different West African cultures, but also there's French influence within the food, and Lebanese influence, and Vietnamese influence. Tell me a little bit about the foods that you grew up eating.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah. Like you said, Dakar is like a melting pot, really, because of its location. You know, it's the most western coast of Africa. So it became a natural port of entrance. For centuries, it was the place where mariners would come before going anywhere in Africa. And over time, the French colonized Senegal, so we still have a strong French community there. And the Lebanese community has been there for generations now, and they brought their food culture. And you have, obviously, the West African community and the Vietnamese, because the Senegalese and the Vietnamese had the same colonial past with the French. Yes. Yes. So yeah, I had all those flavors growing up. I was exposed to that, not to mention the local cuisine, which is also very, very interesting, because my mom was from the south of Senegal, which is a part very more lush, as opposed to the north of Senegal, the south of the Sahara, and dry and arid. So that part of Senegal has a different type of cuisine with lots of seafood, which you see everywhere in Senegal, but also lots of citrus. Fermentation also is a big part of our cuisine. So my upbringing was full of flavors. Wow.
SPEAKER_04: So I know that you decided to, at a certain point, to go to the United States to continue your studies. You studied physics and chemistry in Dakar, but there was a nationwide student strike, and I guess you couldn't continue your studies. So you ended up getting a visa to the United States, and you were supposed to study in Ohio, right? Uh-huh, in Cleveland.
SPEAKER_05: In Cleveland. In a small college, yeah, in a town called Berry, actually, near Cleveland. I came here in 1989, and I knew a friend who lived in New York. So I had to land in New York and then take a bus from New York to Ohio. That was the plan. So he insisted that I stay in New York a couple of weeks, and that was a great opportunity. Everyone wants to see New York at least once, and that changed everything. I'm still on my way to Ohio. I never made it there. I stayed in New York, and three days after I arrived, I got robbed, and I lost every single penny that I had. That was... What, you got three days after you arrived in New York in 1989, you were robbed?
SPEAKER_05: Three days. My friend lived in a place on 50th Street, right near Times Square, and I'm not sure if you knew New York in 1989. Oh, yes. That was a different place. It really was a scary place, and I was horrified by Dakar. It's like a peaceful seaside city, and now I'm here in New York. That was completely different than what I expected to see. It wasn't what I saw on TV. And I'm broke now, and it's getting cold because I arrived in the beginning of fall, so I had never seen winter before. And I'm like, I'm out of here. I had my return ticket. A friend of mine happened to be working in a restaurant, and they were looking for a busboy. The only job that required no particular qualification or experience. When I applied, I came, and the bus, Richard, who is still a good friend, just took me. He saw this desperate young kid, and he gave me the job. And that changed everything.
SPEAKER_04: It's amazing. I mean, you were coming to the United States to study physics and chemistry in Ohio. You get robbed in New York, and that's it. It's all gone. And it's amazing because, I mean, you laugh about it now, but I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time, and very scary. Oh, boy. But it's crazy when you think about something like that happening. That horrible thing had to happen in order for your life to completely change. You didn't obviously go and pursue physics and chemistry. You got a job as a busboy, and you would then go on to pursue a life and career in food.
SPEAKER_05: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And it had to have happened. Now I look back, and I'm connecting the dots. And I'm like, without that incident, my life would have been completely different. I would have hugged that guy who robbed me. I mean, he changed my life for the best, I believe.
SPEAKER_04: From what I understand, you really got interested in cooking. I mean, you could again have become a busboy, and maybe risen to, eventually, to an assistant manager and manager of the restaurant. But you really were interested in what was being prepared in the kitchen, and I guess wanted to learn about that.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah. Yes, it was ingrained in me without knowing it. My mom, at an early age, I remember she had this collection of cookbooks. And as a kid, I remember that was a La Rusque Linaire, a French collection. And I used to look at the photos of her cookbook collection. And I had no desire, I just liked the pictures. It looked delicious. And now I'm here in New York City, as a busboy, I'm taking the dirty plates into the kitchen. I'm looking at this food that looks so much like the pictures of my mom's La Rusque Linaire. And I'm like, wow.
SPEAKER_04: What kind of restaurant was it, by the way?
SPEAKER_05: The restaurant was French-American cuisine. So the food was beautiful, you know, more beautiful than what I've ever seen before. And the fact that the chef was French-trained, too, he spoke a little French, and he loved whenever I was in the kitchen, he loved to practice his French with me. So there's so many things that got me very lucky, really. And that chef offered to, you know, he knew my story over time. He knew that I wanted to make extra money, because I was still hoping to save money and go to Ohio. I was like, New York is not for me, this city is crazy. And he said, okay, so why don't you come and do extra shifts in the kitchen? You know, you could be a dishwasher. And I'm like, sure, I'll do the extra shift for the money, but I don't intend to stay in this, you know, this is too hard. And I hated washing dishes. You know, I hated it so much. I hated it, but it was a necessary first step. And from dishwasher, I went to, you know, when the prep guy is missing, they always call the dishwasher and give you the knife and you start chopping vegetables and prepping. And that's how you learn your knife skills and how over time you become a prep cook, and then you're no longer a dishwasher. And then the garde de manger is missing. And then they take you to the garde de manger station and you start learning how to make the dressings and how to clean the leaves and the salads and stuff. And that's where everything changed for me. Because when I started to make dressings, and I realized that I was making an emulsion of acid and lipid. It was vinegar and oil. You're a chemist. And I'm a chemist. I'm like, hey, I understand what's going on here. And I started to look at every reaction in the kitchen from a different angle now. Because I knew the theory of it. I knew what was happening. So it was really something of like, I dig this. I like this. I like the kitchen atmosphere. I like the camaraderie. This became my family.
SPEAKER_04:
SPEAKER_04: Within just a few years of arriving to New York, you actually became the head chef at this restaurant, Boom, in SoHo. Yeah. That's remarkable. I'm trying to like, I wish I could be a fly on the wall for those long distance calls you had with family back in Dakar or maybe the letters you write. Dear family, I am not studying chemistry and physics. I'm actually the head chef at a restaurant in SoHo.
SPEAKER_05: It took me a while to do that. It took me a while. I mean, I was still very embarrassed. It was cultural. You know, you come from a culture where cooking is really a women activity. So this cultural thing was stuck with me, even though I was very interested. But I knew I was in New York and everyone in the kitchen were men like me. So it was in this world, it was fine. And I was loving what I was doing. I really loved it. I was passionate about it. But it was still difficult to tell my parents about it for a little while. And since I knew that, you know, it wouldn't be long until my mom find out and I had to tell them. So that's when I mustered my courage and went to court and say, hey, by the way, you know, I am not going to school. OK, and I am cooking and I love this. And my mom just, you could see, I mean, she was very reserved, but you could see she had this relief. She was smiling. I could feel that. And then she said, wow, that's great. What kind of cooking are you doing? And she was curious about the food that I was doing. And she started asking me questions. And then she wanted me to give her some recipes. And I was like, wow, that wasn't bad. And she told my dad and my dad came to, also he could feel the smile, but they were both amused. But you could see that they were really relieved parents who knew that their son had found something that he enjoyed doing and they were encouraging. And I was like, wow, I didn't think my parents were cool like that. But it turns out there was nothing to be cool about. I was just doing a job that I liked doing. But now I was free and I was free to become a cook and later a chef.
SPEAKER_04: Pierre, from what I've read, I mean, you were trained in the sort of European cooking styles, French, Italian. But many chefs who are trained in European traditions but don't have European backgrounds go on to open restaurants that reflect their own identities and their own backgrounds. When were you able to start exploring that culinary side of your world? Well, it started really, it came organically.
SPEAKER_05: First of all, you know, when I moved to New York, I was always craving for that food, the food I grew up eating. There was no restaurants really that serving that food, you know. So at the restaurant at Boom, the chef is interesting because he's doing a cuisine that's different. It's inspired by Southeast Asian cuisine, you know, and that's new in New York. We like in the early 90s, mid 90s, and that cuisine has flavors that somehow taking me back home. There's lots of fermentation. There's lots of acidity. You know, there's that freshness, you know, and the grains and all that. And at times when that was my turn to cook family meal, I would cook food from memory, dishes that my mom used to prepare, I mean, peanut sauce. Family meal, of course, is what the kitchen staff eats before they serve the customers.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, four, five o'clock, family meal.
SPEAKER_05: Someone from the line is the one in charge of family meal. And when that's my turn, everyone was looking forward to it now because I got them used to this caramelized onion and lime sauce with chili over rice. I had them peanut sauce with cassava. I mean, I'm bringing those flavors now, eggplants and okra and all that. And they're like, wow, this is different. This is cool. And then like this should come as specials. You know, that's how the idea started to come into me. New York is calling itself the food capital of the world, but Africa is not in this world. I'm like, hey, no, this is going to be my mission. I'm going to start finding inspiration from that cuisine and bringing it and that I never look back. So eventually the restaurant was doing so well. We opened a new branch in South Beach, Miami, and guess what? They decided to send me to run that kitchen. And I'm like, wow, this is amazing. I mean, I'm like completely, you know, shocked, but so excited because in addition to sending me to run the kitchen, I was told to even add some of the family meal specials into the menu.
SPEAKER_04: These were dishes like you were using like sweet potatoes and cassava and plantains and peanuts and chilies.
SPEAKER_05: Exactly, exactly. You said the right words. Sweet potato, cassava, peanut sauce became my first dish in an okra. And that one was so well received. I mean, there was a food reviewer who came to the restaurant and wrote an article about the restaurant that mentioned this one dish. Like, I was like, wow, this is not to me, it was like the top of everything. I mean, being mentioned in a paper here in the U.S. So that was really the thing that confirmed to me that I had to stick to this mission. So when I came back to New York, I decided to start the catering business. And eventually in early 2000, this catering became my very first restaurant. Yo lele.
SPEAKER_04: We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from Chef Pierre Chiam about his journey from chef and restaurant owner to founding the company he oversees today. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. Did you know that if you're an employer who's hiring, it takes an average of 44 days to fill an open position? If you're investing that much time into each new hire, you want to get it right. So what's the most effective way to find the best people for your roles? ZipRecruiter. See for yourself right now. You can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash built and experience the value ZipRecruiter brings to hiring. ZipRecruiter finds you more qualified candidates faster. Once you post your job, ZipRecruiter's smart technology works quickly to identify people whose skills and experience match it. Then ZipRecruiter sends you a list of great matches for your job so you can review the top ones. It's simple. ZipRecruiter helps you get hiring right. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free before you commit. ZipRecruiter dot com slash built. Again, that's ziprecruiter dot com slash b-u-i-l-t. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.
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SPEAKER_04: One more thing before we get back to the show, please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. It's usually just at the top of the app, and it's totally free. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm speaking with Chef Pierre Chiem. Okay, so in 2000, you opened your first restaurant called Yolele, and you'd begin this journey as a restaurant owner and then eventually a cookbook author. And from what I understand, for your first cookbook, you went to Senegal to research ideas for the book. And I guess during one of those trips, you rediscovered this grain called Fonio, which you had eaten kind of rarely as a child, right? Yeah, so I had eaten Fonio on rare occasions when my parents would take me to visit my
SPEAKER_05: grandparents in the south of Senegal. So Fonio is grown in that region in the south, in Kazimas and Kedougou. Those are like the Fonio areas of Senegal. But in Dakar, where I grew up, there was no Fonio. So I never had Fonio growing up. So I'm now writing this book many years later, and we spent time with the women of my family, really. That was where I was getting the inspiration, and I wanted the book to be about that. And as I'm traveling in the south, and I'm tasting all these different flavors, and the Fonio came back and it hit me and I'm like, oh, wow, this grain is so delicate. And in that part of Senegal, they still consider it, they call it the most delicious grain of all grains, that's like how they see Fonio. So I was like, I need to write about this grain, I need to bring this grain, I need to even include it in my menu.
SPEAKER_04: We should for a moment just stop and describe Fonio, because I've said this before we started recording, that I have made it. It's a little bit like, and help me out here, it's a cross between like couscous, like the fluffy lightness of couscous, and sort of a nutty, there's a nuttiness. But it's none of those things, it's not quinoa, it's not couscous, it's not a wheat, but it has that lightness. Is that fair to say? Yeah, it's fair to say it has the size of couscous, it's tiny like couscous and fluffy.
SPEAKER_05: It's even lighter than couscous, because you know when you eat couscous, you kind of feel heavy after. But with Fonio, it's really, I mean, you can eat Fonio and just go for a run right after it. It digests really easily. And it has nuttiness, you're right, it's slightly nutty. And the other particularity of Fonio which is really great, it's very neutral flavor, so that makes it very versatile. You cook Fonio with so many different flavors, it adapts to so many different sauces. My last cookbook was dedicated to Fonio, so I have lots of recipes from the whole journey of Fonio, from desserts to baking to savory dishes to Fonio sushi, you know, I mean there's like so many ways to use Fonio.
SPEAKER_04: Before we talk about the business that grew around this, because that would eventually happen, I want to ask you a few more questions about Fonio, because it is this grain that is, I guess it's really high in protein and amino acids and also doesn't require a whole lot of water to grow, right?
SPEAKER_05: No, Fonio grows in an area called the Sahel, you know Senegal is south of the Sahara, and it's dry and arid. But Fonio grows so easily there. It's like one of the fastest maturing grains that requires very little water, it's rain fed, but it just requires the first rain, and after that, even if there was no other rain coming or the rain is inconsistent, like it's the case right now with climate change, Fonio is guaranteed to grow. There's a nickname for Fonio, they call it the lazy farmer's crop for that reason. Because what the farmers do is when the first rain comes, they just throw the seed, they don't even till the soil, they don't really do any work to the soil, they just throw the seeds like broadcasting it, and then they can just go and sleep for two months and come back and harvest the Fonio. That's how easy it is to grow. And in addition to that, the most important part is that the agriculture of Fonio helps to regenerate the soil, because it has deep roots that add nutrients to the soil. So they create aeration in the soil, essentially.
SPEAKER_04: Exactly, exactly. And you don't have to churn it up with tractors, which releases carbon, right? Those deep roots aerate the soil.
SPEAKER_05: Exactly. And when they harvest it, they just cut the top. The roots stay in the soil, and eventually it adds nutrients to the soil, and not only that, Fonio is a nutrition powerhouse, like you mentioned, it's gluten-free and has so many properties. One of them being very important is it has, it scores a low glycemic index. Good for diabetics. Exactly. So there's like, I mean, there's so much going for that grain. And I was like, I have to figure out a way to introduce it to my readers. Because my cookbook was incomplete, I always had to think of substitution for certain ingredients. And that's when the idea of Yoleli, the business of bringing those crops to the market came to be really, when that seed was planted.
SPEAKER_04: All right, so the seed is planted. And you're starting to think this could potentially be the next quinoa, because quinoa was introduced to the US maybe in the 70s, but really didn't take off until the 2000s. Right? And, but we know there are challenges with quinoa. It's hard to grow, it's very resource intensive, and there's a shortage of it in some places. And so as the climate is changing, it would make sense to look for a more sort of robust and resilient crop. And here you go. You have one. From what I understand, even in Africa, fonio was much more widely eaten 100, 200 years ago than it is today. So what happened? Why is that the case? We got colonized.
SPEAKER_05: Colonization came, and then there was a mindset that came with it. Crops like fonio, millet, sorghum, which was our traditional crops, became the country people crop. We were branded with crops like wheat. You know, in Senegal, for instance, we love eating our baguette bread. We eat baguette bread every single day. We don't grow wheat in Senegal. We don't grow wheat in Cote d'Ivoire, in many of those countries. But Africa now is like importing, bringing wheat. I mean, and it's interesting that you asked this question, because today, with the Ukraine crisis, there is a serious shortage of wheat.
SPEAKER_04: Serious. And by the way, it's reverberating around the world, including in places like Sri Lanka. They're all connected to these shortages of wheat. We're seeing these crises happening around the world.
SPEAKER_05: And that tells you how foolish we are to rely on crops like wheat. I mean, first of all, the limited number of crops we rely on, our food system, is wheat, rice, soy, and corn. And we're ignoring crops that are much more, not only resilient, like fonio, and we need to integrate them. But the most crazy thing is continents like Africa, which have such a diversity of plant crops. And now, because one part of the world is in crisis, and the whole continent is suffering from it, because the concentration of the supply is coming from Ukraine and Russia, it is mind-boggling. So it's urgent that we rethink it and we start integrating crops like fonio. And not only it makes sense, because for our food security, we need to make sure we have that. But also because those crops are so much more adapted to the environment, they're resilient, they're drought resistant. There's a lot of reason why we need to rethink it. But to answer your question, that's what happened. After we got colonized, we started importing wheat, we started importing rice. We even had a rice culture in Senegal, but because of our connection with the French, we started importing broken rice from Vietnam so that Senegalese farmers would focus on growing peanuts that we need for our industries. Colonization was a business. So the French made peanuts a cash crop in Senegal, so the farmers started growing peanuts. It was a monoculture, and it became a monoculture.
SPEAKER_04: And as a result, fonio stopped being produced. People stopped growing it.
SPEAKER_05: And people stopped growing fonio. You had to go to Kedugu and Kazemas. That's the only places where you would see fonio.
SPEAKER_04: That's an amazing story, right? You are a chef in the United States and now have a platform with a book, and you come across this grain and you're thinking, I got to get this in the hands of American cooks. When you start to think, OK, I'm going to create a business and I'm going to start a business around this grain, and I'm going to start to bring this grain to the U.S. because it doesn't happen right away. It took you a few years before you did that. But what was the impetus? Well, the impetus was, one, was my naivety, first of all.
SPEAKER_05: Which is always important, very important. Very important. I'm thinking, I'm a chef in New York. I've seen how quinoa did it. It was not this grain, I mean, a non-grain. And then today everyone is quinoa. Fonio can do it. If quinoa can do it, fonio can do it. And all I'm going to do is take the grain and introduce it to my fellow chefs because they are all looking for new products, new food, new flavors, and they'll embrace it and then they'll serve it on their menus. And then the customers will ask for it and then the supermarkets will require it. I mean, that was my thinking, very naive, like I said. But really the impetus was when I, one of my travels in this part of Senegal called Kedougou where fonio is king. And there you realize the level of poverty. The people in Kedougou, I mean, it's only pretty much all people living there. You know, the youth, they left pretty much. They all trying to make it to the city or to Europe. They looking for jobs. They're able, they're willing to work. They're risking their lives to go find a better life. And I'm like, if this grain can become a world class crop like quinoa has become, this will change the situation here. So this really was my thing. I felt like I could bring something. It could be my contribution. You know, I thought I was uniquely positioned being a chef from this part of the world in the food capital of the world. And if this plan works, it wasn't much of a plan, but if this plan works, you know, this is going to bring jobs. People are not going to leave because they're going to stay and grow fonio and make money from it because the Yorkers and everywhere else, even people in the city, Dakar will start wanting it because all we need to do is create a chain of value. And to me, there's one thing I got right was I knew it needed to be branded. Those French, they branded their baguettes. That's how we still eating it. They branded this broken rice to us. And now I'm going to brand fonio and I'm going to make it sexy. And this is going to work. And these guys are going to have a dignified living with something that grows in their land. That's been growing in their land for 5,000 years. That was just the way I was thinking. And I just went for it. I was like, let's do it.
SPEAKER_04: We're going to take another quick break. Coming up, more from Chef Pierre Chiem, founder and president of Yo Le Le. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.
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SPEAKER_04: Hey, welcome back to how I built this lab. I'm Guy Ross and I'm speaking with Chef Pierre Chiam, who's building a food company based around an ancient West African grain called Fonio. OK, so, Pierre, your your initial idea was, you know, hey, if we can produce Fonio, if we can get people harvesting Fonio, processing it and then creating a pipeline to the U.S., we could create an industry here in Senegal that would help the local economy. But I guess at the same time, you were also thinking, let's market Fonio because it's also really nutritious, right? It's an efficient and nutrient dense product. Is that is that more or less right?
SPEAKER_05: I was thinking both. I knew it was nutritious and I knew that there was a demand for that here. Fonio, grains, nutritious, gluten free Fonio was checking all the boxes. So I was like, this is what we could do. Let's brand it. Let's brand it and create a demand for it. I knew I needed a partner and I looked into someone who also had an experience in actually doing it really. And Philip Tavero, who's a veteran in the food industry, who actually had worked with bringing quinoa in the 80s. Philip Tavero, I think at the time he worked at Dina in DeLuca, right, for many years.
SPEAKER_04: That's right.
SPEAKER_05: That's right. He worked at Dina in DeLuca. So if you remember Dina in DeLuca, they used to bring all these interesting flavors. And me when I was working in Soho, we oftentimes shop at Dina in DeLuca.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it was a groundbreaking store, that one in Manhattan. And really, all kinds of cool, amazing things came in through Dina in DeLuca.
SPEAKER_05: That's correct. That's correct. And a lot of the food we were serving, we couldn't be doing it at Boom without the ingredients, the access of Dina in DeLuca.
SPEAKER_04: So he had eaten, because I didn't mention, he had eaten, you had opened a second restaurant in New York. He'd eaten there. This is called La Grande de Car. And you kind of, somehow you started to talk to him about Fonio and it intrigued him. He thought, hey, there's something here.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah. And actually, we have two versions of the story. But he remembered reading an article where I was talking about Fonio. The article was really a call, really, for... I was so distraught by the stories of these young people. It really is a tragedy if you heard of, may not have heard about it, but there's, for a decade now, there are kids who are dying in the ocean because they're taking the guard boat, fishermen, the guard boat, trying to travel from Dakar to Barcelona. And thousands are drowning. And many make it. That's just amazing. Just imagine the journey. Many of them make it, but thousands are drowning every single year. To me, it was something needed to be done. And we shouldn't expect help to come from anywhere but from ourselves. And I was like, Fonio is actually the thing. It's growing here. And this could be desired and bring income and that would just help. So this was the thing I was talking about in that paper and Philip read it. And he reached out and we met and we talked. And I was like, yeah, actually, let's do it.
SPEAKER_04: You and Philip decide to form a business called Ulele. And how did you initially, I mean, did you go out and raise money for the company? No, no, actually we didn't.
SPEAKER_05: It started with friends and family, really. So we did one thing. We knew the logistic of it was going to be something we didn't have the means for. So we reached out to a company called Woodlands who have been importing food from 60 plus countries around the world, interesting flavors. And we knew they would get that. And they were intrigued enough to decide to send a few executives from the company to Kedugu, Senegal with us for them to see what we're talking about. And they came and those guys are like these Chicago executives who have never been to Africa and now they're going into not only Dakar, but like in this deep south, you know, six, seven hours drive through like dirt road and stuff. So it was quite a trip. But once they got there, they were all transformed and they felt so at home and welcome and they ate so well as well. And they came back and they're like, yeah, we got to do it. Let's figure out a way to do it. And that's how we did it. You know, we started working with group of women, cooperatives. They're getting the Fonio processed for us and we would ship it by containers to Woodlands and Woodlands would package it under our Yolele brand.
SPEAKER_04: You managed to broker an agreement with Whole Foods initially that Whole Foods would carry this product because they like interesting new unique products and it's a great platform to get this out there. But one of the challenges from what I've read about Fonio is the processing of it, right? Because it has a very thick hull that is inedible and it has to be like ground out of it. So how did you solve the challenge of like processing it? Because to get to the grain is a lot, it's very labor intensive, right?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah. And Fonio, that's the only challenge you see. It's easy to grow, but it's hard to process. It has a skin that's inedible. And that's also one of the reasons why Fonio didn't make it big until now because the processing was so, at the time it used to be a mortar and pestle.
SPEAKER_04: Mortar and pestle, a person literally grinding each... Oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05: You see the African mortar and pestle though, they like the big ones carved out of a trunk tree and with a big pillow and they pound it and they pound it, the big pestle. And it takes about two hours to just have one kilo of Fonio. That was the time. And eventually it became mechanized, you know, and actually a Senegalese engineer came up with a technique and Fonio was mechanized, which is the Fonio we're getting right now. There's a mechanized aspect, but it's still some manual parts of it. And we knew we had to fix it at some point. We knew we can now identify some great cooperative that are doing a much better job than others to get us a good quality Fonio. But we knew there's a moment as the demand grows that we had to figure out the solution for the processing of Fonio. So what did you do? How did you do that? So we went to a company that makes actually the best of the milling processing equipment in the world actually. And we told them, hey, we have this grain and we need to figure out how to process it. And it has to be all automated and it has to be efficient. And they took a while to come up. We had to send tons and tons of Fonio party for them to do the testing. And now we figured out we have this machine that completely revolutionized everything. Now we not only eliminated the waste because at this stage of Fonio processing, we still had close to 50% of waste, which is crazy. And now with the machine, they designed a machine that not only eliminates that waste, but it really is also processing at a much faster capacity. We have like two tons per hour, as opposed to one ton per day. It really changes everything, remove the bottleneck that was really slowing everything. And now we can access Fonio to not only the growing demand in the market here, but there's also the food industry that couldn't have access to Fonio because the processing wasn't at the standard standard called GFSI that like you can sell to big food now. So now big food is looking to meet the sustainable development goals and Fonio is offering all of that and now we have access to it. So that's opened a whole other set of perspective. We can have Fonio flour for bakers. We can have Fonio pilafs now. We have Fonio chips. That's a whole other different category we just entered now. It's awesome.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's amazing because you've expanded, as you say, you've expanded your product line from originally Fonio grain to flours and chips and other things. I think your products are now available in like 2,000 stores in the US, Whole Foods and some Target stores as well and obviously online. Tell me how you are, besides having conversations like this, how are you getting the word out? You are right now, Fonio right now is where Quinoa was, let's say in the 80s, where there's very little awareness. It's actually a very easy grain to cook. It cooks very quickly. It absorbs flavors really well. You can cook it in chicken stock or vegetable stock if you want to or water. But it's still not a lot of people know about it. So how do you make this in the Quinoa? Do you start with restaurants? Are there sort of influential places where you really want to get this made?
SPEAKER_05: It started again, you remember when you mentioned Whole Foods. There was one Whole Foods that gave us a chance. It was next to my restaurant in Harlem. And at Whole Foods, I had to go in the place itself and do some cooking demos and have people taste, you know, like I made some Fonio salad, Fonio and mango salad and kind of thing. And people would taste and every time I would do that, every time I would do a demo, the Fonio bags would fly off the shelves. So that's really when it started. And Whole Foods, people noticed that this grain is doing really well. Let's give it a chance on the second store. And then they gave us a shelf on Union Square and then on Times Square and then in Brooklyn. And then next thing we were in all the Whole Foods in the northeastern region and it kept growing like this. We also started to grow with a community of influencers who connected with the food in different ways. Some were connecting with it because of the heritage aspect of it, you know. So you have the African diaspora who could connect with this grain who is considered as the oldest cultivated grain in Africa. Others, because of the nutrition aspect, you know, we have this strong gluten-free community who just embraced Fonio and they are posting it on social media. We're using a lot of social media as well. Our platform Instagram and TikTok now. I mean, all of that is being part of it. And there's these collaborations we're doing with other brands that are also similar to ours in terms of mission of like bringing diversified food products into the market. So there's all these guerrilla type of approach that we are using to spread the word in addition to, you know, I've been fortunate to get media attention through the restaurant or through my books. And so all of those are creating awareness and more and more the word is coming out. But a lot of it is organic.
SPEAKER_04: And you have a restaurant, two locations in New York, Taranga, where you do serve Fonio. You've got delicious, I mean, I haven't eaten there, but I'm just looking at the menu, like the chicken grilled chicken bowls and the vegan bowls and all this and jollof, you do jollof, but you also have many dishes with Fonio as a side.
SPEAKER_05: As a side, there's been a series of circumstances that did help to spread the word. I think the timing was also good. People are more aware that we need to diversify our diet. We need to bring products that are not only good for you, but good for the planet and delicious. And Fonio was all of that. And again, it cooks in five minutes, so you can't beat that.
SPEAKER_04: Awesome. Let's do it. Let's eat it. Let's eat some Fonio. Let's make some Fonio right now. Right now it takes five minutes.
SPEAKER_05: Or you can even do it even faster. You get the chips, you know, so it's a snack. So you just open a bag and you are changing the world, your own contribution. I love it.
SPEAKER_04: Pierre Chiam is founder of Yolele Pierre. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_05: Thank you, Guy. It was a pleasure.
SPEAKER_04: Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode. And as always, it's totally free. This episode was produced by Katherine Seifer with editing by John Isabella. Our music was composed by Ramtin Arablui. Our audio engineer was Gilly Moon. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Ramell Wood, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. Hey, Prime members. You can listen to How I Built This early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. If you want to show your support for our show, be sure to get your How I Built This merch and gear at wonderyshop.com. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Hey, it's Guy here. And while we're on a little break, I want to tell you about a recent episode of How I Built This Lab that we released. It's about the company TerraCycle and how they're working to make recycling and waste reduction more accessible. The founder, Tom Zaki, originally launched TerraCycle as a worm poop fertilizer company. He did this from his college dorm room. Basically, the worms would eat trash and then they would turn it into plant fertilizer. Now, his company has since pivoted from that and they recycle everything from shampoo bottles and makeup containers to snack wrappers and even cigarette butts. And in the episode, you'll hear Tom talk about his new initiative to develop packaging that is actually reusable in hopes of phasing out single-use products entirely and making recycling and TerraCycle obsolete. You can hear this episode by following How I Built This and scrolling back a little bit to the episode, Making Garbage Useful with Tom Zaki of TerraCycle, or by searching TerraCycle — that's T-E-R-R-A-C-Y-C-L-E — wherever you listen to podcasts.
