Yrmis Barroeta, and Bobby Chang founders of Mission Heirloom in Berkeley. Mission: Heirloom is a state-of-the-art kitchen, food delivery system and café moving beyond organic and sustainable to provide consumers with food that’s free of all toxins.
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1:Method to the madness is next.
Speaker 2:[inaudible].
Speaker 1:You're listening to method to the madness of biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley [00:00:30] Celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Keefer and today I'm interviewing Aramis Barrow at Du and Bobby Chang from mission heirloom through a cafe and food delivery system. Mission heirloom is going beyond organic and sustainable to create food that optimizes health.
Speaker 3:We're here today to talk to [inaudible] and probably chubby chain. What is mission? Heirloom missionary loom is a platform [00:01:00] for people to experiment with their health and figure out what food is going to fuel you best. What we're doing for that [inaudible] pretty much a cafe here in Berkeley so people can come over and experiment with food, a cafe, but you also have a kitchen, right, that you are delivering product from as well? Yes, we have two locations, so what we have is a commissary kitchen, which is like a central kitchen where we prepare everything, all our meals [00:01:30] or food products and from there we deliver it to what's going to be our cafe right now because the cafe's in construction, we are actually, we have an online platform and people can go in and online and order the meals and take them home. Well there's a lot of online delivery of food now. How is your business different from all the others out there?
Speaker 4:We want to focus on the food first and make sure the quality of the ingredients are sourced. Absolutely the best possible. The cooking techniques are [00:02:00] not introducing any toxins and a lot of their food delivery service, they focused on logistics. They may have some of the components of good food ingredients and how it's prepared, but we really wanted to focus on the food first and then as a mechanism deliver the food to the people. So
Speaker 3:give me an example, practical example of how that works. Like how is it different? We are looking into 15 to 20 different layers of what goes into our food. So it's not only about seasonal, local, [00:02:30] organic. I think we're ready to go beyond that. So we're looking into also how are we cooking, how are we treating these ingredients? For example, the olive oil is that depending on the level of refinement that they all have oil house. If you heated pass, it's a smoking point, then you burst the fat molecule and by bursting the fat molecule you're creating five, six toxins that compounds that can [00:03:00] be carcinogenic. So you're going beyond the food to nutrition. It sounds like we're looking into the science behind it. We had to start educating ourself about how to develop a criteria to read the science so that we wouldn't be sidetracked or impressed by pseudo-science.
Speaker 3:So that's where our journey began. And then once we've compiled the science, we are looking for solutions in how to implement them in the kitchen. We're looking into the science behind the chemicals that are [00:03:30] usually present in the sanitizers for the three compartment sink and how that affects our health. We're looking into the science behind the bleach that are usually in the towels are used in the, in the kitchen. So we look for oxygen products so there's no leaching and no cross-contamination with those chemicals into our food because these are small things that accumulate, uh, rapidly in the kitchen. We're also looking at, for example, uh, the different [00:04:00] amino acids that are found through an animal and uh, trying to balance them so that when we make, for example, meatballs or a meatloaf, we are giving you a very well balanced, nutritious food. This is very chemistry oriented.
Speaker 3:Are you scientists? We are actually designers and we came to these as frustrated consumers and we're standing on the consumer side of the equation. We had to figure this out for over five years. We've [00:04:30] been studying about this, but what was your motivation? Our health, your health, your personal health. Our personal health. It was a little bit out of whack. You could see us and you know, you look at us as healthy people, we young, active, but there is little things off and these little things are that people tell you, oh you're just starting to get all once you leave your 20s and we refuse to believe that. And in that, uh, search led us to meet a lot of doctors, a lot of scientists [00:05:00] that usually are very concentrated on a specific subject. And what we did is try to have that 30,000 feet high view as they're putting it together and say, Oh wow, these are all the components. And where we arrive is that based on each individual's biology and physiology, everybody needs a different diet. Every person have different needs. That's so complicated. It's complex [00:05:30] and it sounds like it would be very expensive to try to do this individually for people. So how are you doing this so that you can handle everybody? Some
Speaker 4:basic things like non-gmo, gluten, grains and these are some of the bigger aggressors. And so if you start to eliminate those, then you can actually give your body a break from the inflammation that those things cause. So once you start to take some of the bigger aggressors out, your body can start to go on the path of [00:06:00] reducing inflammation, detoxing and start to sense again what healing feels like. So can we start with the bigger things, the 20% that is the 80% of the aggressors. Once you take those things out and then you can start to go and be more specific on, okay, are you allergic to this or is this causing sensitivity or what other ingredients that are causing things in your body that's causing inflammation. So it's really about going on a journey for us, it took [00:06:30] a while because we didn't understand the full landscape of this, but once you start to dig in, we've actually uncover things that can help people accelerate this.
Speaker 3:Like what? Tell me some of those things and it's interesting. It would be very easy. Instead of going into the testing route to going to what we call the exploration and discovery diet. So you can come to us and say, okay, your Mace, how do I know what I should eat? [inaudible] pretty simple. Let's give you food control food for the next [00:07:00] three weeks, four weeks, and then we start introducing certain ingredients. Once you're completely detoxed, once you give your body and your immune system a little bit of a break, it resets and it will tell you, I don't really like this ingredient. And then you can start listening to that and see your body naturally wants to start healing. So if you have a controlled meal plan for how long, I would love to work with people for 30 days [00:07:30] is not that big of a commitment.
Speaker 3:Some people do 10 days, 15 days, every little beat that you do counts. Even if you did one of the talks, yes, for three days counts. But if you're really serious about discovering, let's say we discover five Mo's affect effective ingredients that for you, I would say 30 days. And then once you are out of those 30 days, you need to give it maybe two to three weeks to start [00:08:00] reintroducing and observing what your body's telling you and the reactions are pretty strong and very tangible. And then what is the next thing that you do, you know, where do you stop? It depends on your, on you and your personality. Yeah, it depends on, some people like to take really little steps in. We're here to accommodate that and some people want to go full force and said, just give me everything. I don't want to think about it.
Speaker 3:Just give me the food and I'll tell you how I feel. Period. It takes 30 days, 90 days, I don't care. I [00:08:30] want to get to the bottom of these. Other people are like, ah, I'm fine. You know, if I, if I do a little bit, where can I start? And we usually say, well, stub with a refined oils, start cooking with g and coconut oil and see how you feel. Depending on you, you will also want a, your feedback that you want a strong feedback from your body or do you want to sell feedback for your, for your body. And that is enough. It's really from person to person of what they, what they are willing to do. So That's interesting that you're even looking [00:09:00] at the chemicals that go into the laundry and the towels and all this stuff in the kitchen. What has been your biggest challenge in that arena? What are you encounter?
Speaker 4:Well, the fee, the typical food distribution system that's out there now really addresses convenience. And so it's easy to pop into one at food distributor and buy all the things that you need, but they may not have the green solution, they may not have the solutions that are less plastic, BPA, all those things in or a [00:09:30] lesser aluminum products because that's also harmful when you're cooking with them. So our challenge has really been through seek out at every level what is going to be the best solution for now and really set that as a goal. So we continue to actually keep looking at different parts of the food service business and try to improve all of them.
Speaker 3:So you, are they changing because of what you're telling them or or are you going to have to do it yourself?
Speaker 4:Well, I think we're going to have to partially try to suggest to them like [00:10:00] we're looking for this because it's also a demand. When you start demanding, people start to go, well let's supply that demand. And so if they can't then we have to go out and look for other solutions and see what else is possible out there. And you know, frankly, we've actually come across a bunch of companies that are already thinking about this. And so, you know, our whole goal is to really change and creating another option for a food supply chain in that you, you better all the different aspects of it. And because we're designers and our background is really [00:10:30] define what's best for consumers and for ourselves really, that we can start to uncover things that are useful and things that other food suppliers may want to use and offer that information to whoever wants to go down this path of using better products and being more conscious of the things that they're using.
Speaker 3:Well tell me about your kitchen that using, I went over there. It's beautiful. Tim Berkeley. Is it communal or are there other kitchen? Sarah, it looks like a big building.
Speaker 4:Jonah is the person who developed the Berkeley kitchen and he basically saw a need [00:11:00] for, uh, food operators that were sharing commercial kitchens. And He created a warehouse full of 15 or 16 kitchens. Each kitchen is, uh, operated by one and that one operator, you're, you're in a space where you have a lot of people that work in the same industry, so you can share ideas and talk about different things that matter. Um, but essentially you have your own kitchen and he's built it out. So you have the hood and you have some basic plumbing and the things that you need to get started. And [00:11:30] we went in there and got the space. So you know there's different operators. Yeah. Ranging from caters to food production and we happened to be kind of a combination of a few of those things and it's a great venue for people to just share ideas. But you do have your own space and you operate your own business out of it.
Speaker 3:And you're opening a cafe in north Berkeley. Is it mission heirloom? Yes. It's also a missionary. Okay. What's it going to be like? We love a sophisticated food, but dressing up and [00:12:00] going to a very formal setting. It's uh, maybe not for every day. So we just want to bring it down to a casual environment where people come up, come to the counter or they're the food, get the food to the back yard. We are right behind their bank of the west to on Vine street where it used to be the, the Veggie food and they, they were in you saying a gorgeous garden that they had in the bark. It's a 2000 square feet is pretty big. So what we're doing is opening and [00:12:30] replanting it and creating a little houses there so you can connect with your food. And we're putting a greenhouse in the back as well.
Speaker 3:So it's a warm, um, through their whole year so we can sit outside and enjoy the sun. Just um, keep it open and very flexible to go with kids, to work with family, to meet uh, a girlfriend for a glass of wine. Will it represent the same philosophy? You know, how you are doing individual, how will you do that in a cafe where [00:13:00] people come from all over and you don't know them? What are going to be your basic items? All our food is gluten free and then our menus are, are design us building blocks to accommodate people. Most of our clients, almost everybody, I would dare to say I have some sort of allergy or a food, a dietary restriction. Well we see those, that restrictions or culinary opportunities and we are designing our menu and building blocks. So for example, x are very problematic [00:13:30] but a lot of people, so we're not cooking with x, but we always have the asset add on upon request.
Speaker 3:And that's the challenge is how are we going to keep it really simple for people to come in, understand the, the base of what we're doing is pretty much international comfort food. These sign in ways that it's easier to order based on what you know you can't have or you cannot have. So it's going to be sort of like building blocks to a a meal. Correct. And then we will have a little bit of [00:14:00] retail options in the front. So let's say you come in, you love the meatballs, you want to take them home and have them on your fridge. You just don't feel like making dinner from scratch, but you have the components made from scratch and you can just quickly, within 15 minutes put together a delicious dinner at home. Tell me what you guys did before you came to this. How did you meet?
Speaker 3:I got invited to a conference of entrepreneurs that's called summit series. And where's that held? It changed every year until [00:14:30] a couple of years ago they bought powder mountain and now it's a held and powder mountain in Utah and I was going there because I had this friend and we both had this idea of making a lunchbox for kids that would be a game that teach kids to eat better. So in a way, me coming from fashion design, I was making pants before and had a store doing that before. I was already in unconsciously moving into food. So I'm at this convention and this, a [00:15:00] friend of mine pulled me on the arm and she's very expressive and she's screaming. She's like, you have to meet this man because he's a product designer and in her mind he was going to help us with the lunchbox, but we became friends and then it just work because we were both closing what we had before.
Speaker 3:We both independently have given away everything we had. We were breaking from consumerism, we were looking for real. I was imagine coming from fashion [00:15:30] and you said, this is it. I want purpose in life. I don't want to put products out there just for the landfill. I want to do better. And we started traveling together around the world, helping NGOs, so we were helping them develop product lines so they would do, they wouldn't be depending on donations and have something to sell and be self sustainable. And then those trips started the search for health and that's when we said, you know what? We have to go back to the United States and do these and make it fashionable and make [00:16:00] it very successful so that all the third world countries that are starting to mimic their food intake to the American diet is they're looking up at us and say, wow, we actually have our backyards and our orchards and we have to go back to it because they are moving away from it, which is very scary. People in Berkeley, our early adopters, and that's why we came here. Berkeley have been in the leadership of moving the needle forward and I think they're ready to go [00:16:30] be on organic to go beyond farm to table.
Speaker 1:If you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness. A public affairs show on k a l x celebrating bay area innovators. Today I'm interviewing Aramis better at Du and Bobby Chang, founders of mission heirloom, a cafe and food delivery system going beyond organic and sustainable to create food that optimizes your individual health. [00:17:00] Our soil and our, our
Speaker 3:aquifers are full of chemicals. Even if you apply organic techniques, you're still kind of subject to what has happened before. It's almost like you have to remove everything and start from scratch, but that's why we're also looking looking a lot into biodynamics. We're looking into farmers. They're so aware of these that they have a consciousness of where they are in port with point of reference [00:17:30] from the river, they're neighbors, what are they spraying and biodynamics for example is re is focused on replenishing the land, but also these farmers that have a high standard organic certifications, they need to work the land for clear the land, let's say for three years, some some five years before they can even grow. Anything that can be certified organic. So there is a lot of work happening there is, I'm very optimistic with this food movement, [00:18:00] with the farmers movement, with the people, understanding that we need to move away from GMO and stick to organic and ideally even biodynamic while harvesting.
Speaker 3:Buddy. It will take a while. I believe that we're omnivores. The statistics when you look at serious studies shows that only 2% of humans thrive in a vegetarian diets. And what is it? What do you mean by thrive? The definition is the day. If we connect all [00:18:30] our organs and all our systems in a chain, right? If each link is, let's say one link is the heart, one link is the liver. One link is a, the eyes when like his immune system, if you pull that chain with aggressors, that change become stronger or weaker depending on what you feed your genetics. So the people that thrive on their diet comes to their performance and how you pull the resistance, how resilient that chain ace to the [00:19:00] different, um, environmental aggressors. If you do blood testing, where is your sugar? Where's your cholesterol? Where is your immune system? How are you reacting to different food chemicals is comes to resilience. That's what I see. Okay, and that's what I mean with thriving, you did a lot of studies, it sounds like, are you cooperated with a lot of people, researchers for this idea?
Speaker 4:We've also, I use our own bodies as the experiment, so we've gone and done vegetarian for a bunch of years, a raw food [00:19:30] vegan and all sorts of different things. Just to see how we feel from it through the experimentation, which is actually the best thing you can do because then you understand what's best for you. We start to realize, okay, well this works for me and this doesn't necessarily work for her or our daughter and the three of us became a little test group because we were eating every meal together and we were like, oh, I feel good with this, and the other person may feel, I don't feel so good with that, but I feel good with this. And so we actually saw that it is a very individual [00:20:00] thing and even though you're coming from the same family or from the same bloodline, there's still a lot of factors that will actually just make you just a little bit different from your family members. And you have to go on that search to say, okay, what are the things that actually work for you? And when you start to understand that, then you start to feel, oh, this is the fuel that best goes from my engine. And so, you know, that's a great thing to be able to discover is how do you feel good all the time.
Speaker 3:I like this, but it takes [00:20:30] a lot of time to do it, number one. And if you're doing the laying the groundwork, I don't have to do that, but I can trust that you're doing it for me, you know, or at least the basics so that I can then attempt to figure it out.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well in our journey we would say probably 20% of the things that we tried our really good. So 80% of the things in terms of resources and time and money was like, ah, it didn't work so good. So we've already distilled far so is that what that 20% of the things that are actually really good [00:21:00] are people to work with are ideas that we can work around. So we want to offer that to people and say, here's what we found. So this will accelerate people's journey as well as they don't have to spend the resources to do that. So if you can help people just accelerate that in terms of time and money and then they might find out things that can help us also to evolve what we think about and move that part of it. Then also, you know, we're all in this together. We're working at this together to figure out what works and what doesn't work. You [00:21:30] have some really great things on your web website.
Speaker 3:You, you say you have above the board standards, which you've talked about, head to tail, goodness, organic, non GMO and a chef meal daily. Yes. Right. Tell me about how you'd go about starting out on this journey with you guys? Yes. Uh, we have a mission heirloom.com and people can go in there and see what we're selling for the week. We usually post the menu a week ahead. People can come to our kitchen, get a tour, and we show people everything [00:22:00] that we're doing. Anybody that's interested can come in and then they pick up whatever order they place. So you don't deliver. People come to you in Berkeley because it's very easy for people to come and pick up. They do come and pick up. We deliver to San Francisco. We are open to grow that business as it makes sense and as, as we get demand, but sees we're just new, we're just getting the voice out around that.
Speaker 3:We're here. So yeah, people usually come to the kitchen and they take the food home. They can take [00:22:30] either a big box for food worth for a week or they take through meals. A couple of soups. Some people test us with a small order and then they come back and please bigger orders. It depends. And you listen to your customers. I understand that if they don't like the way something tastes or you are very flexible, at least at this point we can try to be as healthy as possible and ask progressive and looking for all the chemicals and all these things. But if the food is not amazingly [00:23:00] delicious NBA culinary adventure, we are not going to succeed because we're still open minded to everything that we eat. And we were good eaters and we love everything. We also know that there's people there who are a little bit more picky eaters.
Speaker 3:So we want to know, we want to know if they like our seasoning, we want to know if it's too many meatballs in a row. We want to know and we do meat bowls because of a reason, but do they know and then are they open to eat meat bowls every week? So [00:23:30] I think because we also want to incorporate the community into this and it's a leaving organism that will expand and contract. We're trying to figure out where are the flavors for the locals. We don't want just going to come and impose of our flavors. Every time people place an order, we send them an email like, what do you think? Do you like this? You're like, the spices. Is it too salty? Face it these. And we like it. Listening. Yeah, but what, what is your ultimate vision with all this? This is a big philosophy and a big shift for consumers.
Speaker 4:[00:24:00] Somebody, we want to create a another option for our food supply chain, right? And if we can create that for the consumers, which is on a lot of levels, from sourcing down to how it's produced down to Ha's delivered to them so that a consumer can now say, well, I couldn't eat out before now, but now I can go to the cafe and eat out. Or if I want to cook, we have sauces that you can take home and, and be a nice addition for your own culinary initiatives or [00:24:30] the meal plan if you don't want to do anything at all. Here's another option, right? So ultimately we want to create a platform where this model can be duplicated in other cities in the u s or around the world that have a farming community that have a bit of an urban sprawl to it that you know, are not finding the things that they're looking for.
Speaker 4:So we want to be able to create a platform that people can then start to invest in as well. So what do you mean by that? How do you give this to the community so they can invest into their own food [00:25:00] supply chain? Right. That that to us is so important. Um, you see a lot of brands that are successful and then a bigger brand comes and buys them and the ingredients completely changed, but the consumer is still left trusting that brand and you know, because of that trust, they don't look at the ingredients anymore. But things have shifted on them. Well, ultimately we want them to create something that the consumer has a piece of it, right? They are owners of their own food supply chain so they can actually understand that this is not going to [00:25:30] be sold to some bigger conglomerate and they're going to come in and things just start to shift. You know, this is something that belongs to the community and we're here as stewards to May sure that this maintains integrity. Like your mission is heirloom. That's right, that's right. And something worth passing down to the next.
Speaker 3:So you would be consultants, let's say the city of Chicago, somebody in the city of Chicago wants to do something like that. Would you be consulting to the community there? W we can help anybody. Yeah. We had this girl from Dubai that came in and spent [00:26:00] a few days in the kitchen. She's like, I want to do something like you guys are doing. And we pretty much sat down a whole afternoon and told her everything we're doing. If we prove this concept here in Berkeley, then we can say, okay, now let's go to [inaudible]. And the idea is that we're not going to go to La and put the same menu that we have in Berkeley or if we go to Taiwan, we want to figure out Taiwanese food within these standards and from one empower local chefs over there and then people [00:26:30] that are traveling that have all or use, they know the space is going to be safe, but also the space is local talks to the local flavors. It talks to the local ingredients, the local people, and that's what we want is that people to say, okay, cool. If I'm eating here, I know I'm going to get the best ingredients and I'm not going to get sick and I know what I'm getting, or there's 100% transparency in our menu and that's what we want to create.
Speaker 4:Okay. It's really about elevating the standards, right, of food operators [00:27:00] and so can we share that with other food operators so that the consumers now have more options and better options and elevated options. And so that's really what it comes down to is it can we create something that is the new standard and then we can transfer that to other places around the world building. This was also addressing a lot of our needs because we were having hard time going out to eat. We could do it but sometimes you come back and you now feel as good because maybe there is a few things that was lost in translation or [00:27:30] would they didn't pay attention to or something you don't. By creating a a place where people can have that social component again and talk to other people and for everybody to really care and be conscious of this I think starts to create a different dialogue and conversation. For this to happen.
Speaker 3:It only takes five days for your Palette to change tastes. It only takes five days of saying I'm going to eat this type of food, which is real food to [00:28:00] be able to these connect from the cravings of sugars and processed food. That concept alone is huge and that's what we're here for. To little by little figure it out. The more toxic somebody is the worst. They're going to feel through the detoxification process because all the stocks and start being released and overflowing your liver and your Oregon. [00:28:30] So now you have to eliminate these toxins at a, at that rate, your body's not used to. So you get headaches, you get pimples in the face, you get back aches, joint aches. It did. Body's telling them, wow, I'm just finally having a chance to get rid of all these toxins. But it takes a process and it takes discipline and it takes little steps and big steps, but we're here. We're here to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well I think it's great and I wish you a lot of luck and I want to have you back [00:29:00] on once your businesses, you know, a little farther down the road and your cafe opens and then we can talk some more about, you know, what's happening. Thank you guys for being on the program. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Lisa. You're welcome.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:[00:29:30] You've been listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. If you have questions or comments about this show, go to the calyx website and find method to the madness. Drop us an email. Tune in again in two weeks at this same time, have a great weekend.
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