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The meez Podcast
Josh Sharkey (Entrepreneur, professional chef, and founder/CEO of meez, the culinaryOS for food professionals) interviews world class entrepreneurs in the food space that are shifting the paradigm of how we innovate and operate in our industry.
The meez Podcast
Melina Shannon-Dipietro on Empowering the Industry to Change the World Through MAD
#79. In this episode of the meez Podcast, Josh Sharkey sits down with Melina Shannon-DiPietro, Executive Director of the MAD Foundation, to explore how MAD is transforming the hospitality industry through education, sustainability, and community-building. Melina, who has been at the helm of MAD since joining René Redzepi in Copenhagen, shares insights into how the organization is empowering chefs and food professionals to lead with purpose. From their groundbreaking MAD Academy programs, to MAD Mondays, To their incredible symposiums, Melina discusses how MAD is fostering a global network of food leaders committed to creating a more equitable and sustainable food system.
They dive into MAD’s efforts to address environmental challenges by equipping hospitality professionals with the tools and knowledge to make impactful changes in their kitchens and communities. Tune in to hear how MAD is helping chefs not just cook, but change the world.
Where to find Melina Shannon-DiPietro:
Where to find MAD
Where to find host Josh Sharkey:
In this episode, we cover:
(01:17): Melina's background
(13:54): How MAD helps
(19:12): How NOMA is involved in MAD
(22:03): MAD's academic courses
(26:14): What Melina is excited about
(31:28): Memories of MAD's impact
(33:57): MAD Symposium & MAD Monday
(39:07): Melina's day to day
(41:39): MAD in the future
(44:24): What Josh is excited about regarding meez
[00:00:00] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
If we can help people leading teams in restaurants. get the basics right. If we can get good leadership in place and we can get good financials in place, then we go on and we can tackle environmental change.
[00:00:15] Josh Sharkey:
You're listening to season two of the meez podcast. I'm your host, Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez, a culinary operating system for food professionals.
[00:00:24]
On the show, we're going to talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate and operate and how they consistently execute at a high level day after day. And I would really love it if you could drop us a five star review anywhere that you listen to your podcast.
[00:00:44]
That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky Anywhere works, but I really appreciate the support and as always, I hope you enjoy the show.
[00:00:57]
Melina, I know you from The High Line, and that's where we met, but I don't know, I actually have no idea where you were before that. What were you doing before The High Line, and then how the heck did you end up at MAD?
[00:01:07] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yeah, I feel so fortunate for the, uh, the ways my professional life has developed. So, I grew up in Albany, New York, and, um, you know, I, I never went to culinary school, and like so many of the people we, we work with, I was at university, but, Felt super at home when I was either in my job, my job prepping in a kitchen, or when I was during summers working out on farms.
[00:01:34]
And I had a consulting job after college and learned plenty about making businesses efficient. And I also realized that what I really wanted to work with was where my passions lie. And that was like very clearly food. It was very clearly agriculture, education, community building. And this was the early 2000s.
[00:01:55]
So there weren't, there were sort of restaurant jobs or there were education jobs. There were very few people doing those two things together.
[00:02:03] Josh Sharkey:
Where'd you go to school?
[00:02:04] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
I went to Harvard University.
[00:02:06] Josh Sharkey:
Oh, I've heard of that place.
[00:02:07] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yeah, that place. That place. Turns out there were two courses on food taught at Harvard and in the four years I was there, they were cancelled every time I tried to take some.
[00:02:18] Josh Sharkey:
Really? Yeah. I imagine there's more now. But there has to be more now.
[00:02:22] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
There are absolutely more, and part of that is because the field has shifted dramatically, right? We now understand that food is an important part of economies, of climate, of nutrition, at least in a way that we're willing to integrate into our education more actively, right?
[00:02:41]
Yeah. The job I had before I was at the High Line was at the Yale Sustainable Food Project, and that was when I started, it was a mandate, it was an idea only to figure out how the dining halls at Yale could serve local organic food to think about what it would mean if Yale students were excited about food and agriculture.
[00:03:04]
It had been started by Alice Waters, the chef from Berkeley and the then president of the university having a conversation one day. When Alice's daughter joined the school. And what I loved about that time was that I got to work with these incredible, both incredible students and incredible chefs from each of the dining halls.
[00:03:26]
They were putting out 8,000 meals a day. And what we were trying to figure out is how can you change the food system that is small liberal arts college.
[00:03:35] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because of the dichotomy of New Haven as well, right? Yeah. Just because Yale is. Like this pocket of, of the upper echelon of, you know, of colleges and demographic and people and then walk two blocks and.
[00:03:53]
Pretty impoverished. Yeah. Um, I'm curious if there was any sort of external work done like outside of the food system in, in Yale of like the, the neighborhood as well.
[00:04:02] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
So I think the university has taken very seriously a commitment to New Haven and partnering with a government, with the city government to make sure that New Haven remains, continues to become a better and better place to live for people, whether they work at the university or attend the university or not, and, um, what.
[00:04:23]
I loved was that our, we had a small acre, it was called the Yale farm. And that was created as a place for students to learn, to really get their hands in the soil, understand the soil. agriculture is, how to grow, how it's related to big questions around climate. But it was also a place that community members came.
[00:04:44]
And so it was a spot on university grounds where people, you know, from literally from both sides of the hill, we were, we were on a hill, one side, the wealthiest neighborhood in New Haven, the other side, the poorest neighborhood in New Haven, where those two communities were able to come together. This is, this is the power of food, right?
[00:05:01]
This is the power of bringing people together through food.
[00:05:04] Josh Sharkey:
Well, what, I mean, so you came from Albany and then you went to Harvard, what, why food? What, what brought you to the, to like get into the food, food scene?
[00:05:12] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Great question. Does one ever know what causes their path truly? Um, but one answer is, grew up in a family where both sets of grandparents were farmers.
[00:05:22]
My mom regularly took us out of school when I was very little so we could go harvest strawberries and blueberries and. Put them up for the winter, so we would have good, healthy, affordable fruit. Uh, but that was a type of work I loved. I love the beauty of sound agricultural practice. And I love the beauty in food. And, um, yeah, it just kept calling my name.
[00:05:48] Josh Sharkey:
So, yeah, see, you had a lot of family background with it as well, it sounds like.
[00:05:52] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yeah, absolutely. It's an important thing to make time. Food is an important thing to make time for in our families.
[00:06:00] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's so interesting the the ways in which people get into the food business and now of course to your point There's so many more facets of the food business other than just cooking obviously This organization is as a testament to that but there's so many things that people now do in the food world outside of just running a restaurant and It really is interesting how people get into the things that they're into food Obviously, there's a lot more surface area like getting into food because we all grew up with food So You know, whether we, you know, have parents that cook really well or we have farms.
[00:06:31]
Um, but it is kind of like random how we get into the things that we, that we enjoy, almost but like, but through no doing of our own, it's like we either, you know, grow up that way or, or we don't. And I wanted to talk to you about this when we talk about matters, it's like, there's just so much more
[00:06:48]
happening in the food industry outside of just restaurants now that people that otherwise probably wouldn't be in that industry are doing. And I'm just curious how much MAD is being a part of effectuating that, but obviously we'll talk about that when we get into MAD. So you, you're at the High Line and then what happened, so I understand, I see sort of the path from like Yale sustainability to High Line. How did MAD come about?
[00:07:15] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Being at the High Line was fantastic. Not only did I get to work with an amazing, the Highline staff meet people like Meryl, meet people like you, I also got sight lines and got to work alongside some of the best restaurateurs in New York City and best entrepreneurs. So that was a moment of getting to see people.
[00:07:38]
What Danny Meyer was doing at Union Square Hospitality Group, meeting James Freeman at Blue Bottle, Marco Canara from Hearth, of course, Fanny Gerson from La New Yorkina. And that made me incredibly curious about the restaurant world, which I hadn't been paying attention to previously. And over, through a series of, uh, fortunate coincidences, I met Rene Redzepi, and he started talking about what he wanted to build around education and food for the restaurant industry.
And you know,
[00:08:13] Josh Sharkey:
Sorry, how did you meet Rene? What was the scenario in which that, that popped up?
[00:08:17] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
The actual thing that happened. Was I sat at a dinner next to someone who had been at a mad symposium and he said, you should hear about this organization in Copenhagen. And a month later he called and he said, Danny Meyer canceled.
[00:08:32]
He can't come to dinner. You have to come fill his shoes. And I laughed because that's, that's not possible. Right. Uh, but I went to dinner and one of Renee's investors was at that dinner. And for whatever reason, he kept saying, you need to go to Copenhagen and you need to meet Renee. And And he came and met me for breakfast.
[00:08:53]
every month for six months until I said, Okay, fine. I'm going to India. I'll stop in Copenhagen on my way back. I need a layover in Europe anyway. That's fine. And so that's where it started.
[00:09:04] Josh Sharkey:
Wow. That's so, that's so serendipitous. So that's how you met him. And then it sounds like maybe he courted you to, to join. How long did it take from that first time you met Renee to, to decide, Okay, great. I'm going to go do this.
[00:09:17] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
With a little while, I liked the vision of what he was talking about right away. Fine dining at that point wasn't particularly interesting to me. I hadn't, hadn't been to fine dining restaurants as a kid.
[00:09:31]
It wasn't a place my family felt at home or welcome. But what really appealed to me about the way Rene talked about MAD and what he wanted for the restaurant world was he understood that. We're better off when we're in a community that's pushing for change and helping us to be better versions of ourselves and that he was incredibly curious and open.
[00:09:57] Melina Shannon DiPietro: He didn't believe there was only one right way and both that curiosity, that openness, and that commitment to improvement. Really spoke to me.
[00:10:11] Josh Sharkey:
So what was the overall vision that he shared with you?
[00:10:14] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
It wasn't simple as that. Let's create an organization that helps the, helps everyone who is working in restaurants, dare to make a difference.
So that was a very broad mandate. What, what is the, how do you turn that in, that vision into an organization that is helping people? And so over time we've carved out, we think of MAD as, you know, we're an organization that's by hospitality and for hospitality. And what we want to do is help people working. You know, and I say restaurants, but really we are serving people in restaurants, people in canteens, people in school, school cafeterias, people at your local coffee shop or at a wine bar.
[00:11:00]
So it's baristas, it's servers, it's chefs, it's head chefs, it's restaurant owners and managers that come to us. But we started to ask ourselves the question of how can These people help contribute to making the industry a better place to work, and how can they help contribute to making the world better?
[00:11:19]
And it's, it's a couple of big factors. In the U.S., restaurants are one of the biggest private employers. in the country. One in three Americans has worked in a restaurant. That's huge potential. And yet, we know what's happening in kitchens is not always the way we would want employees to be treated, right?
[00:11:41]
In Denmark, restaurants have a rate of sexual harassment that's twice as high as any other industry. So there's a gap there in what our ambitions are for restaurant culture, work culture. and the skills people have. So one thing we try to do is close that gap. And then the other thing we look to is the environment and how can food be a source of positive change and be a source of joy.
[00:12:10]
When we look at food being the second largest contributor to climate change, we When we look at it being the biggest contributor to biodiversity loss, this is where I feel like chefs and restaurants have an amazing, almost untapped potential to change the world. I'm not sure I answered your question.
[00:12:29] Josh Sharkey:
No, no, you, you, you did. And also you answered my other, my other question, which is sort of generally speaking, you know, what are the mandates or the, the goals of, of MAD? And it sounds like it's, it's both to help impact change in the food industry itself. Meaning like in the restaurant industry, like how that operates. As well as, you know, as a, as a whole for the world, whether it's climate or sustainability or agriculture, um, impacts there as well.
[00:12:55] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
I used to think about it really as a Maslow hierarchy almost, if we can help people leading teams and restaurants get the basics right, if we can get good leadership in place and we can get good financials in place, then we go on and we can tackle environmental change. More and more, we're seeing those.
[00:13:15]
Those are so closely intertwined. It's not an either or, it's not a first then, they're all three areas.
[00:13:24] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, no, it's so true. I mean, so many restaurants, it's tough. You're almost week to week a lot of times and Maslow's hierarchy needs is a great way to think about it. You know, you're, you're thinking about payroll, you know, what you can do for the entirety of your company or the entirety of the, of the world or even your neighborhood.
[00:13:43]
How do you help restaurant operators or just generally sounds like kitchen operators? How do you help them take better control of their, of their destiny in that way? What are the things that MAD does for that?
[00:13:54] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
That's such a nice way to say it, Josh. So we have three major ways we interact with the restaurant world.
[00:14:02]
So one is through educational courses, the other through publications and newsletters, and then another through our MADMondays, which are sort of evening discussions, evening salons. And, you know, in each of these, they're carefully crafted. So they're paying attention to who we serve and what their challenges are.
[00:14:25]
To start with the educational classes, that's our academy program. They are run, right now it's five day intensives. You know, you could go get a master's at Columbia in sustainability, and I bet it would be amazing. And I don't know anyone in the industry who has a year or two years to take off, press pause and say, I'm going to go do this and pay for graduate school.
[00:14:52]
So what we're providing is these five day intensives where you're surrounded by a community of peers, global peers. So truly perspective shifting. and then creating a curriculum, if you will, that's a mix of knowledge, practical tools, and then inspiration. And the inspiration takes all forms from the meals you eat to the colleagues you encounter to the guest lecturers and faculty who tend to be sort of the top of the top in the field, uh, doing some of them known, some of them less known, but doing some of the very best work in our profession.
[00:15:32] Josh Sharkey:
Interesting. And how do you, like, matriculate into this thing? Like, how do you get chosen or like what?
[00:15:39] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
You're ready to sign up. Um, you can come teach with us. We open applications once a year and, um, those are typically on a rolling basis. But we ask people to tell us why they come and we are looking for that spark of ambition to be better than the status quo.
[00:15:57]
We're looking for people who will be. really committed to change, um, and to taking what they learn with us and bringing it back to the restaurant they work in so that we have now a thousand alum out in the world and they come from 50 different countries. And what's exciting about those thousand alum is what they learn with us, whether it's about reducing food waste or, uh, decreasing packaging, getting rid of plastics in kitchens, being a better leader, figuring out how to build a team, making their bottom line better.
[00:16:37]
Those thousand alum can take what they've learned and share it with their colleagues. And They do that, not just in the place they go back to, but if they're doing that over a lifetime, there's a real potential for impact to add up.
[00:16:54] Josh Sharkey:
What is the cadence of these programs? Is it like a separated time and then it keeps rolling over?
[00:17:00] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yeah, we'd love to do more of them. So we did programs this spring. Right now we're taking some time to build new programs for the future. And so you'll see some more programs in spring of 25 and fall of 25. We'll have those dates up on our website very soon.
[00:17:17]
And geographically, like where are people coming from to take, because I imagine this is happening in Denmark, right?
[00:17:21] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
That's right. So the academy courses are happening in Denmark. About a quarter of the people coming to them are Americans. And then the other 75 percent really, you know, 50 different countries across the globe could be Vietnam, could be Japan, could be Colombia or Venezuela, France, Denmark, Sweden. One of the pieces of feedback we get from students is that being in such an international community, is also perspective shifting and changes their access to solutions.
[00:17:58]
We just saw one of our alum, she's in Minneapolis, has the amazing restaurant Muriel and Karen, and she has stayed connected with two alum from her class, Alejandra and Jay. And Alejandra's from Ecuador, Jay's from Australia. But for four years now, they've been connected, and they just did a pop up in Minneapolis to create scholarships for MAD Academy.
So that's amazing.
[00:18:26] Josh Sharkey:
What is the, this is just a very base question, but like, what's the language there? You're coming from all over the world. Yeah.
[00:18:33] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
So we teach in English. Danes are speaking Danish. Uh, Copenhagen is an incredibly easy city to be in. To be in. Everyone, everyone starts learning English in the first grade.
[00:18:44] Josh Sharkey:
Gotcha. And so, and if they're coming from other countries, Ecuador or what have you, then Brazil or something, they, English is sort of what their, the languages they use for that.
[00:18:52] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
That's right. Gotcha. Maybe someday we'll be doing more simultaneous translation than we currently are, but.
[00:18:58] Josh Sharkey:
Now you have AI. We start here.
[00:18:59] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yeah.
[00:19:00] Josh Sharkey:
You just get a speaker and it'll translate for you. Alright, so you have the Academy. Um, you have all these events that you guys do, the symposium, the MAD Mondays. Also, I am just curious, like, how or is at all NOMA involved in this?
[00:19:12] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Absolutely. Yes. And, and I want to return to some of our programs as well.
[00:19:17]
Um, Rene's our founder. NOMA, until we've just, just moved locations, but until a week ago, they were 500 meters down the road. So super closely involved. Uh, Rene is still our founder. Lead creative visionary. When we're building new programs, when we're thinking ahead to what the world needs or what the profession needs, he is one of the people who we're in primary conversations with.
[00:19:47]
He's got an incredible feel for what's needed.
[00:19:51] Josh Sharkey:
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[00:20:11]
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[00:20:37]
Visit www.getmeez.com. That's G E T M E E Z. com to learn more and check out the show nuts moving forward because we're going to be adding promotions and discount codes so that all of you lovely and brilliant meez podcast listeners get a sweet deal on meez. I imagine some of the probably at least some of the of the NOMA alum are supporting maybe in the educationally or something.
[00:21:05]
I did a panel a couple months ago and three of the four folks on the panel were were NOMA alum or were still at
[00:21:12]
Rosio Sanchez was there, Arielle Rosio and
[00:21:15]
Arielle and Thomas Friebel and then this guy Ryan, um, who's an incredible bartender. But you could tell it was very clear that like They had this sort of bond, the three of them and there was a language, you know, that they were speaking together.
[00:21:30]
That was, it was very clear that they had this bond and I'm just curious.
[00:21:33] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
You know, and each of them has been involved in shaping MAD and shaping our programs and sometimes actively teaching, sometimes acting as sounding boards, sometimes contributing via fundraisers. It's an incredible group. I think one of, one of the things that is.
[00:21:54]
It's part of this world is a real sense of generosity.
[00:21:57] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Well, you were talking about the courses. So you said, you said you wanted to chat more about those.
[00:22:03] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of, you know, approach at this stage, we basically separated out into leadership and business classes and environment and sustainability classes.
[00:22:13]
And in each of those classes, we're trying to give people skills that they can use. Most of the people coming to the program have seven to 10 years experience. So they're in managerial roles, either entering or learning, like really getting their chops. When we do the leadership and business class, for example, one of the great faculty members who comes in is Elin, who has her expertise is in building diverse teams.
[00:22:42]
And so she'll not only talk about why that's important, but then do role plays with people participating in our programs. And it's through that type of interaction. That you start to learn a new way to respond in the future so that instead of just being on autopilot, you now know a different way when we're doing the sustainability course, it's people like Doug McMaster, David Zilber, Guy Gyllenhaal, who are part of the work and helping lead the curriculum.
[00:23:13]
So it's a really, I think one of the spots we excel is like. It is actionable for restaurants and that is an incredibly important differentiator. And you know, what we're seeing is this is becoming important, not just to the customers. 80 percent of people say they will choose a restaurant based on whether they have sustainable food or not.
[00:23:36]
But we can see very clearly that what is available and when it is available from our produce suppliers is shifting. And so to be able to work with that and work with it proactively. Yeah.
[00:23:51] Josh Sharkey:
Oh, by the way, this is just a random question. Yeah. Only because last night my wife and I watched an episode of, uh, Omnivore, uh, that show.
[00:23:58] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yep.
[00:23:59] Josh Sharkey:
Are you all associated with that at all? Is it, uh, is there any sort of like collaboration or anything happened?
[00:24:03] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
So if you watch the coffee episode.
[00:24:06] Josh Sharkey:
That's what we watched last. That's the one you watched. That's the one you watched. Yeah. So you
[00:24:08] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
You met, you met Arthur then and Arthur, Arthur and Rene met through MAD.
[00:24:16]
tells an incredible story in our book, Mad Dispatches. You and I ate the same about growing up in Rwanda with coffee. And he tells a bit of that story in Omnivore, but I've got to say it's even more moving in Dispatches. And Arthur came to MAD Symposium and he told that story on stage. And we can share that with your audience too.
[00:24:39]
So that's one of the ways we, Noma and MAD and I'll contribute and. nourish one another creatively and intellectually is this sharing of ideas and swapping of inspiration.
[00:24:51]
Yeah, it was a really beautiful story and also really, well, depressing. Like, I didn't realize, you know, these, the, I mean, for, for anybody that hasn't watched, like these Rwandans were basically forced to produce an enormous amount of coffee that was made illegal for them to even drink or make money off of.
[00:25:09]
And so they were sort of trapped in this, in this world. And it's really incredible to see now how, you know, the descendants of them or their probably great grandchildren are now producing this really beautiful, bespoke, much higher quality coffee, and they're like really passionate about it. You can see this shift in, you know, them actually having control of their agriculture. That was a beautiful story. All those stories are beautiful, but
[00:25:31] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
I agree, and this is, this is the power of, you know, giving opportunity, of sharing knowledge, of building a community of people like, like we do at MAD. Changes the world. Yeah. Sometimes puts big changes in place, sometimes makes a small dent, and we want to help people each lean into their ability to make that change.
[00:25:54] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, so I mean I have like a million questions, but like up front like I'd love to understand Like what are you like most excited about right now and also and I apologize I'll remind you again but like I also would love to hear like what are a couple like anecdotes of like really high impact things that you've seen happen for man that you're like really proud about
[00:26:14] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Fantastic. What I'm really excited about right now, there are many, many things I'm really excited about. Your listeners should sign up for our newsletter so that we've got some big news coming out in a couple of months that I can't tell you about yet, but they should sign up for our newsletter. That's one thing.
[00:26:28]
What's ahead? But the other thing I'm excited about is that I see attitudes within our profession and external to our profession changing about the importance of education. I know you went to culinary school from listening to the podcast, and culinary school does an incredible job of setting the table, right?
[00:26:53]
Giving the fundamentals, helping. It's the, it's perhaps a mise en place, and it focuses so much on craft, and you're so early in your career. That you don't necessarily have all the skills you need to lead a team, to manage a restaurant, to serve the environment. And I think that attitude is changing.
[00:27:13]
People are starting to understand, Yes, I save up a bunch of money to go to a wine tasting or to buy, you know, a slew of good bottles with friends. I could also invest that money in my education because that education is something that I'm also carrying forward and taking with me. So I think we're seeing really new receptivity to new types of education.
[00:27:37]
We're seeing more owners and more multi-unit operations come to us and say, can you design a type of training for. And I'm excited about that because that's how we're going to move forward as a field and as a community.
[00:27:50] Josh Sharkey:
Just so I'm clear, most of this education that you're seeing is manifesting in internal programs within restaurant groups, right? Is that what you mean?
[00:27:57] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yes, there's, you know, the academy programs, uh, when they are open are open to anyone working in hospitality. And that's a program an individual can sign up for, join us for the five days and be connected into this network. And then very newly as. Owners and larger operators have started to hear about our work.
[00:28:20]
They've started coming to us and saying, we need you. We need your expertise to design a program in how our restaurant can reach its carbon goals. Or we need your expertise to help us understand what our customers are talking about when they're asking, is this sustainable? Or simply, we need some inspiration.
[00:28:40]
Our team is tired post corona, and They're still tired. And so people are coming to us for programs like that. And those we do anywhere in the world. Uh, those are, those are new, but they're, they're fun. We've been to, to Tallinn, to the, so to Estonia, to the States, to the UK, Sweden, and we aim to do more of those.
[00:29:04] Josh Sharkey:
I love that. I feel like we've been talking about that a lot this season. I was just chatting about this with Will Guidara last, last episode, and I think a couple other people as well. Just the idea that as. I mean, for sure, as chefs, we never learned, you know, leadership, among anything else in culinary school.
[00:29:21]
Very little of that is happening. There's some sort of very tactical business things, but nothing really, you know, broad stroke or that's going deeper. It is sort of unfortunate, but I hope that this continues to change because, you know, culinary school probably is not the place to learn as much of the technique as you would think because most of that you have to kind of, uh, it sounds bad to say this, but like unlearn or learn it a lot more deeply when you go to a restaurant and you, you know, culinary school, you're typically learning like very classic techniques and things, but the things that we, that we need to learn more about is, Yeah, leadership and what does it mean for a team to be, you know, successful and how do you think about like using farms in your, you know, in your restaurant, which by the way, it's really difficult if you don't do it the right way.
[00:30:06] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
What does it mean to build a relationship with a farmer? What and how does it work financially and how does it work over time and how does it move the needle for you and for them?
[00:30:17] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, and it has to start early because otherwise, because it's going to take years for that to really go downstream to or upstream to like scaled restaurants.
[00:30:25]
Yes. There's a reason why you don't see a lot of farms being used at restaurants at scale because it's just really hard. Uh, I think Dan Simons does a really great job of this with Prouding Farmers and, and there's other, Folks that do it well. It's so hard.
[00:30:38] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
The work that Sweetgreen has been doing on beef looks, looks very interesting to me. And I know they've been on it for years. Yes.
[00:30:44] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Just salad as well. They do a really good job. But, but it sounds like you all are helping a lot with that as well with just sort of at the, at the micro level of just like helping people understand the, you know. Absolutely. Yeah. How to do it. What does that look like?
[00:30:56]
Are there like, are you interfacing with farmers and the restaurants?
[00:31:00] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
We'll be interfacing more and more with farmers in the future. I did have a farmer at a party in, in Stockholm say to me, are you the person responsible for MAD Academy? All these young chefs are now calling me and asking me about the carbon footprint of what they're purchasing.
[00:31:16]
And that felt, so she thought we were a little bit of a headache, but that felt good, right? The action is being taken, the conversation is being had, and that's part of where change begins.
[00:31:27] Josh Sharkey:
That's awesome.
[00:31:28] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
You asked about impact and where we see MAD's impact, and I would say it's, It's on so many different dimensions.
[00:31:35]
But if I think of stories that like really moved me over the last years, I mean, one, Mark Rosati from Shake Shack came to an early symposium. This was in maybe in 2012, 2014, and learned what a problem food waste was. And Mark went back home to Shake Shack and started looking at where there was waste in the kitchen.
[00:32:01]
And in the end, totally revamped what was happening. You know, the lettuce on their burger, they had been throwing away two thirds of it. So his first step was, okay, we're going to move from throwing it away to compost. And then the second step, as soon as he could figure it out, was what happens to the rest of that lettuce.
[00:32:20]
And it's now it's the salad on the chicken, their fried chicken sandwich, like that will always stay with me watching, you know, the owner of a small restaurant in Paris talk with the culinary director of Chipotle about. break even points and what to do with avocado pits and peels, uh, that type of exchange.
[00:32:43]
I think about one of our students, Ido Levy from Israel. He was able, after being in our course, was able to go back to his vegetable and his fish purveyors. and shift them from cardboard boxes to reusable containers for all deliveries. And so it happens, some of it happens on the edges, but I think each one of those changes means an individual ends up feeling clear on how they can make a difference.
[00:33:15]
able to see how that, that change makes a difference and adds up. And that just has this momentum to keep going.
[00:33:24] Josh Sharkey:
That's huge. By the way, do you know Vojtech? I just sent you in the chat, um, his name is Vojtech, he has this thing. He's doing some really incredible work in food waste. I did, I sent you his, his website, but he's sort of all over that, like using every single piece of that.
[00:33:38]
And he's teaching this now. He just goes everywhere around the world and teaches people how to use the entirety of the world. of the product. Really, really cool stuff he's doing there.
[00:33:46] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
I will check him out, yeah.
[00:33:47] Josh Sharkey:
So you have this academy, and it seems like it's definitely having a big impact. This symposium, so it's annual, is it something that's evolved over the years?
[00:33:57] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
I wish it were annual. Actually, so we haven't, we haven't done the symposium in quite some time, since 2018.
[00:34:02] Josh Sharkey:
Oh wow.
[00:34:03] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yeah, we bring it back when we feel like there's the right moment, when we feel like there's something we can offer the industry. It's an enormous undertaking, Credible amount of resources, it means people flying in also. So we want to be thoughtful about when we do it.
[00:34:18] Josh Sharkey:
I actually love that premise because it's, you know, it's very sort of pragmatic. Rather than forcing something each year and finding topics, waiting for something that's like so meaningful that it's worth bringing
people from around the world, you know, together.
[00:34:31] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
It's what, Musicians do when they make an album or have to do when they open a new restaurant, right? But paying attention to what's needed creatively is, is incredibly important. I think,
[00:34:45] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. Are there, is there talks about another one soon or?
[00:34:49] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
There might be. When that, when that symposium happens, it is again, people from all over the globe, but people from the highest levels of the industry, young stages.
[00:35:00]
all together in Copenhagen, moving around the city, eating incredible food, learning together, and then coming home nourished, refreshed, ready to support this industry. You know, that's, that's the other thing I hear after people have attended our programs. And sometimes I hear it from themselves. Sometimes I hear it from the people they report to.
[00:35:22]
It's that they, come back, whether it's from the symposium or from our academy programs, or even an evening Mad Monday, they come back a little bit more in love with the everyday of work and a little bit more joyful about it.
[00:35:38] Josh Sharkey:
What is this MAD Monday?
[00:35:40] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yeah, so we knew we needed a way to get people together, even if they can't come to Copenhagen.
[00:35:45]
We wanted to give, we wanted also to create something that's a bit more local. So we bring MAD Mondays to, we were just in New York for one, and we'll come back to the States again next year. It's an evening. It's a conversation. It's a debate. Sometimes it's a debate about natural wine and whether, you know, whether that needs to be certified natural.
[00:36:08]
More recently, we did a debate on profits in restaurants and put some non profit restaurant ideas next to for profit and asked if you could do, do good and do well financially. So those are, you know, open to the public, fun evening, great conversation, good debate. And people can find out about those. I know I mentioned our newsletter before.
[00:36:32]
People can find out about those from our newsletter. But the reason I want people to sign up for our newsletter is because they are an incredible resource. Lisa Abend, who is a journalist, joined our team. And what she's doing in those newsletters, which come out monthly, is taking an issue that's important to restaurants or to the world.
[00:36:53]
and running it through the eyes, eyes of restaurateurs. So if you're trying to figure out how to provide childcare to your employees in a restaurant, if you're thinking about how to manage your restaurant financially, whether to open the books to your employees, what, what open book management would look like.
[00:37:13]
If you're thinking about how to start on the path of making your practices more sustainable. There's some clues and answers in that newsletter. So when I encourage people to sign up, it's, it's not simply so you can find out what's next. It's because the 10 minutes you spend reading that each month will change your practices.
[00:37:35] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I was curious how everyone Can get involved in more specifically, like, uh, asynchronously, how can we get involved? Because, you know, there's, there's visiting Denmark and then there's things that happen around the world. But, you know, from an async standpoint, it sounds like there's a newsletter.
[00:37:48]
Are there other like resources or things that people in the industry can, can look at or engage with?
[00:37:54] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
So newsletter, Of course, our Instagram handle, @themadfeed, and then on our website, there is a treasure of recipes. I actually just learned from a Michelin starred chef in Los Angeles, who did not go to culinary school.
[00:38:11]
This was the way he educated himself about the industry. He went to our website, he found the videos from our first six symposia, and it's everyone from Massimo Bottura or Magnus Nilsson speaking on the development of their career to Dario Cecchini in Northern Italy, you know, butchering a pig on stage, soba noodles being made.
[00:38:38]
David Chang talking about terroir for the first microbiomal terroir. Fido Guevara talking about what it means to truly be hungry where she grew up in Kenya and what she's doing about it.
[00:38:51] Josh Sharkey:
Oh yeah, I'm looking at it right now. This is awesome.
[00:38:53] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
So I think if people want content that is about, you know, food, every element of it, they can check those out and those are available as a free resource.
[00:39:07] Josh Sharkey:
Very cool. I mean, what is your day to day like?
[00:39:10] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
My day to day is fantastically varied. So my day to day could include a walk around with a restaurant manager who's figuring out how to deal with a tricky issue on her team. It could include, like it did today, a lunch created to get people in Copenhagen to talk about shaping a new food system.
[00:39:34]
It's always about looking at what's happening in the profession locally and globally. trying to understand the trends and pick out what problems are the most important and the most relevant to help people solve. It's always about helping this industry evolve. And of course, we're a non profit, so there's a big chunk of my time that is spent pitching people on the importance of this, on the importance of education, on the importance of great restaurants to our communities, and on the importance of food in relationship to climate.
[00:40:11]
No, it was after the Corona pandemic. I had a couple of people say, come to me and say, Oh yeah, MAD has been talking about the importance of restaurants for a long time and now I get it. I do spend a lot of my time fundraising part of the job and I have an amazing team to work with.
[00:40:30] Josh Sharkey:
That's great. I have to do a little of that as well. It's not fun.
[00:40:36] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
But you meet the most interesting people. I think, you know, I feel so lucky that the people who support MAD, sometimes it is someone who's been to one of our programs and is sending 25 to them. back to us every month from, from their restaurant job. And sometimes it's people who are making really, really significant contributions.
[00:40:58]
And they are people who travel for food and love food and know that the world is better for, for interesting restaurants. And that's the only way. We can keep those is by making sure they are great places to work and that the people working in them are prepared for the future and that's a future that involves climate change.
[00:41:21] Josh Sharkey:
I love that. I was looking at this, all the videos on the MAD’s website. Exactly. You don't need me.
[00:41:26] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Just go to the videos. I mean, you get an incredible taste of what we do.
[00:41:30] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. So, I mean, I know there's a announcement coming out that you can't talk about what's on the horizon. What does, what does MAD look like five, 10 years from now? How do you see this sort of evolving?
[00:41:39] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Great question. Yeah. You know, my team is gathered together all next week to begin to answer this question. So I'm quite excited about that. When Rene and I look at the future. We know that MAD and NOMA continue to evolve really closely together and that what we want to be putting energy and attention on, particularly at MAD, is how are we going to contribute to the food system of the future.
[00:42:08]
People working in restaurants have this incredible capacity and incredible training that allows, I think, two things. One, if you're a chef, you know what flavor is and you know how to create flavor. If you're a server, you know how to help someone to taste something new, right, to guide them through that experience.
[00:42:31]
And those two capacities are capacities we're going to need for the future as we build a new food system. And I think if we tap hospitality, you know, often this is left in the hands of farmers and the scientists, and I love farmers and scientists, but we need people who are paying attention to the flavor.
[00:42:52]
side of things. So certainly man's future will involve more and more programming that is focused on helping people develop those skills. And, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna do more work stateside. If the resources are there, we want to be able to bring these, these MAD Mondays forward. Amazing.
[00:43:11] Josh Sharkey:
More people. Well, thank you for what you all are building. It's incredible.
[00:43:16] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Such a pleasure to speak, Josh. Yeah.
[00:43:18] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. And yeah, it was just good to catch up. It's been, I can't believe it's been a decade, but it's probably been a decade.
[00:43:23] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
It's been so wild. Yeah.
[00:43:24] Josh Sharkey:
I know.
[00:43:25] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
I know. I was actually back in Prospect Heights and, you know, I lived in that neighborhood when you guys were open there.
[00:43:32]
And I don't even remember what's in your old spot, but I still think of that as a Bark location.
[00:43:40] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, I haven't been back there in, I live now in Westchester.
[00:43:44] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Are you in Westchester?
[00:43:45] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I'm in northern Westchester.
[00:43:46] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
You have kids, right?
[00:43:48] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah,
[00:43:49] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
So where in northern Westchester?
[00:43:50] Josh Sharkey:
Croton on Hudson.
[00:43:51] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Nice, oh that's great.
[00:43:53] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I grew up in Hudson.
[00:43:55] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
You didn't grow up there,
[00:43:56] Josh Sharkey:
No I grew up in Virginia, actually. Okay. So my family grew up in New York,
[00:44:00] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
And remind me where in Virginia?
[00:44:03] Josh Sharkey:
Uh, Northern Virginia. So just like about 30 minutes south of D.C. Right by Quantico Marine Base.
[00:44:08] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Okay. My brother's in Ashburn. Now I'll look for Quantico.
[00:44:13] Josh Sharkey:
It's enough of a, of a short drive to D.C. where like, a lot of people work in D.C. And then a lot of people work, also just a lot of like, military FBI kind of thing because of Quantico Marine Base.
[00:44:24] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Hey, what are you excited about in your work? And what are you seeing as the big themes that are emerging?
[00:44:30] Josh Sharkey:
One, people are just getting a lot better at being operators and on top of being great chefs. I think that we've seen this evolution of, you know, there wasn't nearly as many restaurants driven by chefs. Uh, you know, a decade ago, two decades ago than there are today. And so at first what you saw was just this evolution of just way more good food in restaurants.
[00:44:52]
Way more. You know, and this is really why we exist at meez. This is why I built meez. It's like, I want to bridge sort of creativity and profitability. I, like, I think you need to be able to, to do both of those things. And for a very long time, those things were almost at odds with each other. and I think what I get really excited about is seeing like how people are becoming, we have an aggregate way more better cooks and chefs than we ever have.
[00:45:16]
But we also are just getting better operators people understanding the, the, you know, how to, you know, operate, uh, you know, the, the restaurant in addition to how to make great food and great service. So that's been really exciting to see sort of those things kind of like come together, because it's, It's, if you don't have that, to your point, there's, you can't do other things, right?
[00:45:36]
You can't, you know, take what you're doing and give back to the community more and grow like other ideas out of it and things like that. So I'm really excited about that. I also just love like what we're like, I just, I love, I love building what we're building. It was a tool that I always wanted.
[00:45:52] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
And so it's just so fun to have a thing that you always wanted.
[00:45:54] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then we just kind of get to geek out on other, other things that we want to.
[00:45:57] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Making people's dreams come true, right?
[00:46:01] Josh Sharkey:
That's the best part. I mean, obviously like we have like a lot of like ROI and things that we, that we focus on as we're selling to like. larger groups and selling to more than just chefs now.
[00:46:10]
But the best feeling is always when you see the chef be like, Oh my God, where was this 20 years ago? Like,
[00:46:15] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
I remember doing this by hand. Yeah.
[00:46:19] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Yeah. Or like feeling really good about having it in an Excel, which is not nearly as good as what you’ve built.
[00:46:24] Josh Sharkey:
I mean, it's also like this enormous pressure and also like responsibility that that's probably what drives me the most.
[00:46:31]
Is that, I mean, there are thousands of people using our tool now, which is really cool. And most chefs you can think of, they have, you know, whether they're using the free account or the paid account or using means to store their recipes. And there's still a lot more that aren't yet that we, you know, we'll obviously like work on growing.
[00:46:48] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
They're U.S. based. Is that right?
[00:46:50] Josh Sharkey:
We are in about 18 countries, primarily the U. S. and Canada, but there's a lot in like South America and Mexico and Dubai, Australia, just because you can translate the recipes to like 140 languages. Right.
[00:47:01] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
I noticed that you, it's very clever. Yeah. To do the translations.
[00:47:06] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, but it's really the responsibility is like, it's both a good stress and also like the biggest motivator knowing that everybody is using this for their recipes and among other things. I'm like, these are my people, these are a lot of my friends, like I gotta make sure that we keep making this better because it's their, you know, it's their work.
[00:47:25]
So, that's always like the most fun and also the thing that keeps me on my toes the most.
[00:47:29] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
I love that way of thinking about it. Yeah. That's, yeah. What's Sergio doing for you?
[00:47:34] Josh Sharkey:
Sergio is
[00:47:35] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Like your head of sales or something. He's,
[00:47:38] Josh Sharkey:
He's on the sales team, but he kind of does a lot of things. So he sells the product, but he's also helping with like, you know, just a bunch of like operational things and, and, you know, doing what Serge does.
[00:47:48]
Yeah. It's great to see. We have like, you know, we have so many people on the team that are like, that came from restaurants.
[00:47:53] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Great restaurants.
[00:47:54] Josh Sharkey:
This girl, Ursula, who owned a really amazing spot in Chicago called Jeff and Jude's and, and then we met her at a culinary event and she was like, I love the app. And then just now she's running like partnerships and events for us.
[00:48:06] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Josh, I also loved on your website that you identify people as chefs, right? Like within their title. Yeah. So it's really clever. It's really respectful. Yeah.
[00:48:17] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Well, it's, it's, for me, like we have these like first principles, it means there's four of them that are like our primary first principles. I'm a big believer in autonomy and letting people make their own decisions and, and I'll even just run their own. sort of little world within the business and the only way it works is if you have these principles and heuristics that like we all agree upon and it's like as long as you like make decisions through these principles.
[00:48:39]
And the number one principle is operational empathy. And when you're a chef or a restaurant owner or somebody that came from that world, it's just so much easier for you to, you know, Have that because you know, yeah, I'm not going to call somebody at 11a.m.
[00:48:52] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Exactly.
[00:48:53] Josh Sharkey:
I'm not going to expect them to write me back at, you know, so, so that, that part's been.
[00:48:57] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
In fact, I'm not going to write them an email. I'm going to send them a text when it is a convenient time. Right. Yeah.
[00:49:03] Josh Sharkey:
And also we, we do a little bit of outreach now. We never really did in the past. And part of how we built the company was on this foundation of, of operational empathy in that, like we built this sort of what they call like a product led.
[00:49:15]
And that like, instead of having salespeople go out, we just give the product away for free and let you use it. And then once you want to do more, you can kind of just do things yourself and upgrade so you don't have to talk to a sales rep.
[00:49:27] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
That's awesome.
[00:49:28] Josh Sharkey:
Anyways, I will be at the next. Symposium by the way when it does happen
[00:49:33] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Good
[00:49:34] Josh Sharkey:
And very excited to see what you all are building. It's really great.
[00:49:38] Melina Shannon DiPietro:
Thank you.I will look forward to having you here. Yeah,
[00:49:40] Josh Sharkey:
Thanks for tuning into the meez podcast The music from the show is a remix of the song art mirror by an old friend hip hop artist fresh daily For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E Z.
[00:49:54]
com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Keep innovating. Don't settle. Make today a little bit better than yesterday. And remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.