Season 3, Episode 15: Improving the Quality of Low FODMAP Alternatives

Welcome back to The Gut Show! This episode is featuring a special guest named Ketan Vakil. He is the founder of Gourmend and also a fellow IBS suffer. After suffering with stomach issues for the majority of his life he began the low FODMAP diet, and while it was helpful, it was also easier said than done, because he came from a cultural background that enjoyed cooking with flavors and just rich spices and having more enjoyment in the kitchen. Because there weren't a lot of options for low FODMAP flavor alternatives, he began to create his own and that's where they began to develop the signature spices of garlic chive powder, garlic scape powder and green onion powder as well as their signature chicken broth.

So enjoy today's episode as we talk more about his story and why he started Gourmend and really why he chose the certain ingredients that he did, the quality that they honor at Gourmend and what this means for those who are living with IBS and doing a low FODMAP diet, as well as what's coming next and what he would hope to see happen in the low FODMAP world in the future.

Don’t forget to connect to others in The GUT Community, a Facebook group for those with IBS and digestive disorders to support one another and dive deeper into each episode together.

What if you could develop skills to help manage IBS symptoms in only 10 minutes per day? Today’s episode is sponsored by Mahana Therapeutics, who has made cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) more accessible through their app, Mahana IBS. This is a new app that offers evidence-based CBT to reduce the severity of IBS symptoms - until the end of June 2022 this is available at no-cost for eligible patients. Get started now and download the app at mahanatx.com/TheGutShow.

Erin Judge: Hey Ketan, thank you so much for being here, I'm really excited to have you on and I want to just go ahead and get started by jumping into your story because you now have a low FODMAP food company. What happened in life to get you to where you decided to start Gourmend?

Ketan Vakil: What happened, well, where to begin? So I've had a lot of stomach problems probably since an early teens. My father is a doctor, I'd seen doctors and he was friends with gastroenterologists, never really figured out what it was. When I was in college and again saw more and more doctors, everyone wanting to run colonoscopies and random antibiotics and there was never really an answer at the end of the day. I just sort of was like, okay, I guess I'm gonna have to just live with this, you know, I think is like some of everybody's story, oh, it's stress or it's this or it's that. I knew it wasn’t that.

For a time I thought it was butter, but it’s clearly not that. I was allergic to butter and dairy and yea, that's part of that, but clearly, lactose is not a problem with butter. So in any case, I think I'd come across some research one day on the web, just randomly about hydrogen breath test someone had taken the drawn the charts about the different pieces that were going up in the chart and I thought, that would be an interesting test to run. I live in New York City and I was looking around for somebody that would do it, it turned out Mount Sinai here offered that test, I had to like, go and like ask them to do it and it was I was in this like dark room in the back, it was probably, I don't know, 8 years ago now.

I know that test is proven, maybe not to be so accurate and in modern times, but it certainly shed some light for me. After I had that test then I was able to meet with the right dietician over there that really helped me. They had hired a younger gastroenterologist who was had a little more training in this and finally we started to work through and realize clearly, it was a FODMAP issue for me. So then I was like, I live in New York, we have great farmers markets, I like to cook. I was like, no, yeah, it's annoying. I love garlic, onion, I'm half Indian so there's a lot of that in cooking, so like, that's kind of a bummer. But I came to learn now that many of us know the tops of scallions, garlic scapes, leek tops, there's lots of stuff that tastes similar in flavor that you can get. Here in the spring I look forward to because we get some really awesome stuff from the farms around here. It's like not the scallions you get in the grocery store but these massive green ones. I was like freezing stuff down and saving it for the winter and I was like, geez, I really do try to turn these into products for other people. I sat on it for a really long time and then finally decided I'm going to do it. So yeah, finally, in 2020, we got, you know, the first product out and so we're slowly trying to get some more stuff out that's unique like that. In big cities you can get some of this stuff but I think in some parts of country, it's hard and we want to try to source stuff, preserve it well, treat it with respect and create some neat stuff. So that's what we're doing!

Erin Judge: That's awesome! Yeah, I always like asking founders of companies in the IBS and like low FODMAP space more of their stories, because it is usually the same, like no one really gets into low FODMAP just to make a lot of money or, you know, it is to fulfill a need, which is, you know, great, we have a lot of needs in our community, but it's typically from this personal need, or a familial need, or you know, something like that, that gets things started. And I feel like the most valuable products out there are started that way, because they’re started with the person that's going to use it in mind, not just oh, yeah, let's make this because it's, you know, a hot topic now or whatever. And so, what's your background? Are you like, are you in the food production background at all?

Ketan Vakil: No, no, this has definitely been a labor of love since the beginning. No, my background is not in food besides living to eat it. I have more of a digital marketing background and worked in agencies, startups, American Express for a while. So that's more of my background that's helped with this business, to help get the word out, through you know, certain digital channels, and that's really helped us out but no, I've had to learn a lot about food manufacturing, supply chain, that sort of stuff along the way. Learning every day!

Erin Judge: Interesting. And I know that there's so much more behind the scenes that you don't see and for Gourmend specifically, you know, whenever you did decide, okay, I'm gonna go in this route, like what did that look like at the start to take the scallions and turn them into a powder? Like, how did you kind of get to the place of okay, I see this need, now I'm going to create a product like what did that actually look like?

Ketan Vakil: It was crazy. So I knew originally that garlic scapes don't taste exactly like garlic, they're a little bit grassier, a little sweeter. But I thought my mind that was like the first idea I had like that is close enough to garlic and it's 100% natural. It's a really cool product, I wanted to do that. And then I thought you need garlic for cooking. And then broth was the other one I like pretty much everything you make, requires at least a chicken broth, if not other sorts of flavors and so I knew that had to be like a lead product as well.

As it turns out, it's two totally different worlds of people that can help you make those things. So it was a lot of false starts, it took about a year actually to find the right manufacturing partners that would play ball. It turns out it’s not that hard to source the ingredient, so we buy garlic scapes, I'll try to tell them in two parts, because they are different stories, but we sourced garlic scapes from organic farms. It's like, okay, what do you do with them now, you can't just like send it to a place to be turned into a powder, we had to actually, I wanted to freeze dry them because it locks in all the flavor. So you have to actually freeze them first. So we had to find a partner that would freeze them, then they get freeze dried, no one wants to work with you unless you're doing like a million pounds, which we're not doing. So it took a long time to find someone to like, take a bet on us and do small volumes to start. So that product goes through three steps freezing, freeze drying, and eventually powdering and bottling. So it took like it took about a year to find the right pieces. You thought you might have it and then oh, just kidding, we don't deal with glass like we can't, I really wanted glass for environmental reasons. Or no, we can’t freeze dry that for you because it's a garlic sort of product and we also freeze dry apples and it will ruin you know, the other stuff we're doing in the factory so we're not going to touch garlic, so some weird stuff like that. It look a while to find people that would help us out.

On the broth side, again, not that hard to find the ingredients but finding somebody who's willing to take the scallions that come in and cut them the bottoms off. Most manufacturers want to buy like frozen product off the shelf, they just throw in the tanks and most broths aren't even made that way. But we can't buy it that way. So we had to find someone willing to do that, and they only do that for us. I did it with them the first time we ran it like we cut all the stuff off, all that stuff goes in the tank, it's our formula, and it's made custom for us which is awesome. You know, most stuff, most commercial stuff, it's just really off the shelf, like powders and fillers and stuff. And it you know, I'm really happy that we found some great partners that are willing to play ball with us.

Erin Judge: That is so nice! And what was that like? Like explaining the goal of like garlic scape powder over just using garlic powder, which is already available? Or, you know, with the broth of like communicating to cut that off? Was that something that was pretty well received and understood easily or did you feel like you had to do a lot of education on why you needed it done a certain way?

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, there's definitely education along the way, I think actually the broth manufacturer used like they were usually going to pick up the phone for you and want to work on small volume stuff, ooh, that sounds really interesting. And they were like kind of jazzed about food scientists, they just took the project as something different from the norm and I think that helped. On the spice side, that conversation, well, it's an ongoing conversation, because every time we get a new sort of product we have to, like teach them all the staff how to cut the right way, and all this sort of stuff. We have to keep adding more people to the pie, like we are working on vegetable broth, and we're going to do a different partner for that for all sorts of interesting reasons.

Erin Judge: It’s kind of a big family of people involved in this, which is good to think about is that they as a consumer, especially in you know, the United States where, like, I wasn't raised on the methods of like, oh, we make everything from scratch, like I was raised, whenever you bought everything like you bought the beans are already canned, you didn't make them you know, from scratch, so you don't learn how to soak the beans and cook or, you know, broths especially, it's like, I remember learning how to make a vegetable broth for myself with like scraps as I'm cooking and low FODMAP and that was such a big thing to make for myself at you know, 25 years old, that I never thought that I would be able to make, you know, it’s just things that like we just never thought about and it's so easy to just see a product on the shelf like oh, yeah, I'm just gonna take that product but not think about like how things are really made or even where there may be issues of finding things. I think as a low FODMAP person, you know, trying to figure out well why do people have to put garlic and onion in everything and you know, how hard can it be just to make something without this in it. But when you think about these large scale production pieces like it just it is actually a big deal to take an ingredient out.

Ketan Vakil: Because yeah, that's the thing that we I really didn't want to take the ingredient out, I want to find ingredients that we could put back in that were similar enough. You can't buy you can't just, you know, most spice blends and you go to Whole Foods and get right there's just bulk providers of cinnamon or pepper like whatever it is. I can't go buy garlic chive powder from anybody, we have to make actually make it. Which is cool, but you know, it's a lot of work for a lot of different players. And we do it all here as well, it's United States farms and manufacturers that the whole nine yards, which is which I'm proud of, I think it's a good important thing.

Erin Judge: Do you get all of your ingredients, because you do garlic scapes, green onion stems, chives, and then you also use some other ingredients like the leek leaves in the broth. Is that correct?

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, exactly. So on the broth, everything is bought fresh so it has to all line up on the same day to come in the process. Which is cool, most products are made just like with frozen stuff or like concentrates, we use real stuff. Our manufacturer will source that from organic farms like near where they produce, it comes in really fresh. And then we personally manage the supply chain for the powders, the seasonings, so we work with three farms, one for garlic chives, one for green onion, and like a collective of farms or scapes. Although this season, we'll probably do some more cross pollination because we need more. We are toying with green garlic leaves, also, which I’m kind of excited about.

Erin Judge: Oh, I've never tasted a garlic leaf! But that leads me to my next question of, you know, you mentioned there are some differences, right. There's some differences in the way that garlic scapes tastes over garlic. There are some differences in how green onion stems really taste, even though they’re like the white part of the green onion, they have different flavor profiles. What was that like developing? Did you have to do any development in terms of how things turn into powder? Like their flavor profiles? Or like, what was that part like in bringing these ingredients in? So not just trying to mimic garlic, but also highlight garlic scape? What did that look like and what was that process like?

Ketan Vakil: I felt really strong, I wanted them. We tried to be careful, it's not exactly a duplicate, its own being, a crop, it might taste different when we pick it in May than it does in June, you know, so there is some of this variety and they're more mild, but they have the same vibe. I think at the end of the day, and you know, we're trying to teach us how to use them to like, you know, more people are learning how to cook from COVID and, you know, what's the right ratio to use, or maybe you should like bloom and heat them in oil or butter before or during the process.

I would say the powder side, they're 100% pure, so we're not mixing anything else in there. What we’ve practiced with is like, how much drying you do, and what's the right size to mesh it down so this is quite powdery, because you don't want them to be like, flaky, you want to act like a spice. So we mess with different things around those things and this year, hoping we'll do some blends, so it's like, okay, if you want to like mix those into like a taco blend or salt blend or something. Now, there'll be a lot of tests in there on the right ratios you know, but like, right now, they're pure. One bottle takes, I don't know, to green onion powder is like two pounds of the green tops to make bottles. When you dry it, it's like 15 to one ratio, 12 to one ratio.

Erin Judge: I’ve found that whenever I'm cooking, and this is what I usually educate my clients on, whatever we're cooking with alternatives, like the leaves don't taste the same as the bulb. They're just not going to have the same flavor profile. So I typically use more, right, I use a lot of the leaves than I would use of the bulb, or I don't, we don't get a lot of garlic scapes, where I am in Tennessee, like they come up usually as like the leftover part of the crop, they're never a main focus. Just where we are, which I think is so funny. I can find that maybe one week out of the year at the farmers market if I'm lucky. And so garlic chives are big but to me it takes a lot of chives, I’ll use like the whole thing of chives to get a really garlic flavor, so that is interesting of like how much you have to condense. But then also thinking about the flavor profiles, and I use the Gourmend blends and I just throw them in, I kind of just toss a bunch in and figure out what I like, it hasn't gone wrong, which is good. But that is interesting, I never thought about like, cooking within them may do a certain thing. Do you guys have like food scientists? Is that part of the partners that you have that are helping develop the product for the spices to try to figure out those things or is that more just within your own team or just with you and your kitchen?

Ketan Vakil: It's been a mix. I'd say the first few are mainly me, we were working with some food science team on our vegetable broth. I think getting a vegetable broth right, most special broths aren't that good, just in general. Getting one right that's low FODMAP and isn't, most of the good ones have like 1000 milligrams of salt in them, so they're just really good cuz they're like salt water. So we're trying to make like with our chicken broth, like a unsalted vegetable broth, and it's like a real deal. We're close with it, taking like a year to formulate that we've done, I don't know, 14 test runs. So it's good having a science team on that. And then every round, you've got a test with Monash for the FODMAP levels, so that's a lot of time as well for like the lab testing on this stuff, another layer, you know that other food brands that aren't FODMAP worried don't have to deal with.

Erin Judge: Yes, a lot of people don't understand what goes into that. It's like it's very specific, which it has to be right, it has to fit into qualifications to get that approval. With going into a low FODMAP space, there's a need for it. Right, the low FODMAP diet, it's gaining steam, even in the US, I think we're behind a bit from Australia and Canada. Even as a dietitian, like I'm seeing it on the background where low FODMAP is being studied and recommended for more conditions. And, you know, we use it a lot. And so products are finally coming out to make it easier, which is so helpful. But being in like the low FODMAP marketplace, but also being in the bigger marketplace of like food products, like what is that been like? Because that's a pretty competitive market to try to compete with on shelves. So what have you found has worked really well, or things that you've learned just about the marketplace in general?

Ketan Vakil: I'd say it's still early days for us. I think we've, in our first like year, a little over a year, we focused mainly on the low FODMAP because that's it's clearly made for that audience. We named it Gourmend because it wasn't supposed to only be about FODMAPS, its about gut health, gourmet quality stuff that makes you feel good and it's really and truly healthy for you, so we're trying to make stuff that anybody cares about what they're eating, it'll resonate with them. So I think we're going to be exploring retail, I hope later this year and those types of things. I think that's a major trend in having, yes, it's super competitive, but it's not as competitive for really clean label stuff. And you read our labels, there's there's literally nothing in them that you won't find your kitchen and most brands really aren't that way. And I think that's going to start to be, I think people are going to start to become more I mean, certainly a segment of the population really cares about that. I think it's going to get more and more on trend to be the case. Time will tell but my hypothesis is that will help us in that space. But we'll see. I guess the answer, to me, I want to go, it's broader gut health, really good quality food, low FODMAP or not, you know. I think it remains to be seen if low FODMAP is going to become, it probably should be I mean, like gluten free versus but people think that they're gluten sensitive, it's probably the fructans and so, you know, I think a lot of brands or peers are trying to educate people about this, because they're probably, you know, not eating a beautiful sourdough for the wrong reasons and stuff like that.

Erin Judge: Yes, I agree. We're learning so much about how FODMAPs react in the body, and I'm very big on like, obviously, FODMAPs are not bad things like FODMAPs are, garlic is great. Garlic isn't a bad ingredient and not everyone has to avoid garlic forever, you know, and so it's, we don't want to be like strict low FODMAP forever. But for those that, you know, FODMAPs do actually impact like, their gut, how they're digesting and the more we learn about FODMAPs, the more we learn that high, really, really high amounts of FODMAPs like probably is not the best way to go for most people. And, you know, being able to mix it in with other things. And the fact that FODMAPs are so heavily used and sauces and broths and packaged foods, you know, they're used everywhere, because that's what we know is that garlic and onion, their flavor, you know, aromatics, and so we use those for flavor base for everything. But if we're eating those all the time, you know, that does cause some issues for some people. And it's not that those are bad, but having alternatives and having options are really important.

But then in the low FODMAP space, you're right, there are some I think the trend is changing because I do think people who are developing products, like you care more about, okay, I don't just want to like make this a low FODMAP product because there's a difference in like a low FODMAP products that has like a high nutrient quality and we're replacing the ingredients that were used that had so much nutrition and value with other things that have nutrition and value, it's not just about oh, let's take it now and add, you know, a little sugar or extra salt, you know, just try to like balance it out that way, which is fine in some ways, but I think it's important to think about, well, if I'm losing the nutrient quality of onion, I really need to find some other nutrient quality that I can incorporate. Like, I don't want to just lose this piece, I want to make sure I'm adding value and the flavor too. I think that that is probably where it will go, so it's interesting to see companies doing that, like you and you know, there's some other brands that are doing a good job with that, which is exciting. Educating consumers is hard.

One thing that has come up and something that I notice with clients all the time when they start low FODMAP is this idea that like low FODMAP alternatives are less than, right? They're not flavorful. They're bland, even seeing like sensitive stomachs like, oh, well, that's not for me. You know, like, why would I eat that? I see a lot of people who go on low FODMAP and they won't cook the same meals for their family, which to me silly. It's like, oh, like, it's still good food, like you can make things that are flavorful and wonderful with products, like it seems like that could be almost a misconception, like, is that something that you've run into with educating consumers? Or I don't know, if you've had to bring in investors or you know, anything like that along the way, where there could be some misunderstanding about the quality being less than because it's considered this like low FODMAP alternative?

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, I think there is some of that stigma. I am I struggled a little bit actually with the right pathways. We’re planning to go through a packaging redesign this year, and thinking about what the right things to put like, I don't want us to be a medicinal product, right? It's an awesome flavorful product that's high end and well made and it happens to be low FODMAP, right. But it's got great flavor, and all those all those dimensions you want. So yeah, but I think people do have that. We try with our educational emails and recipes and stuff to really show like, your life's not over, you can cook like we cook pretty much most nights around here and it's the same stuff for the whole family. And it's really good stuff. There's so many options, but you have to you have to be willing to learn to cook a little bit. I think that's part of the thing.

Erin Judge: But that’s when products come into play and they're so helpful! Spice blends and sauces, you know, that's such a lifesaver to not have to chop everything.

Ketan Vakil: Well. Yeah, that's the thing. I've worked from home for lunch, like pre COVID. And I have time to like, watch a broth on the stove the most. You know, that's how we practice the major stuff, most people don't have time for that. So yeah, it's nice to get stuff to do that.

That's interesting about your patients, I’ve debated too, like gut friendly or sensitive formula, I'm not 100% sure what the right thing is, because if you walk by on a shelf, you need to understand the value of it immediately. But it also shouldn't feel like the less than thing.

Erin Judge: Yeah, or even feel like you know, some without IBS, or without, like, without any need to be on low FODMAP diet like that they couldn't use it. And I think that it is interesting, highlighting certain ingredients like garlic scapes and green onion and green chives, because they're not ingredients that we use daily. You know, green onion is a garnish for most people, right? It's not even a flavor profile, people don't even realize what they're doing, or it's a dip, green onion, which isn't, I don't even know what that has green onion in it. But, you know, garlic scapes, like I mentioned here, you know, no one cooks with garlic scapes. So that's just not, no one does that in the south. Like, it's not something that we use. And so it is interesting to highlight ingredients in their profiles and be able to pull you know, how those can mix and what they can do. And where are those? Because I haven't I haven't seen those resources yet, is that something that you share in your newsletter right now? Or is that something that you said that you're developing to try to give those resources out to your customers?

Ketan Vakil: On our site we have like an 8,000 word FODMAP 101 that we wrote with my personal dietitian and our advisor, Laura Manning, and it's an awesome piece of different parts about how to cook with different things, so that's up there. We have a bunch of recipes, we need a lot more takes a lot of time, it's easy to cook, but it's actually hard to make it look pretty and easy reproducible by somebody else, so we want to grow that library. But if you sign up for email, we send like a huge series of like educational content, because we want people to feel empowered, and not like oh, it's like the worst thing ever. I take that pretty seriously. And we try on social to like, show good stuff, cooking, repost stuff that people have cooked using our stuff or other people's stuff. Just good looking stuff, you know?

Erin Judge: Yeah. Developing recipes is way more challenging than you’d think it is,. I don't enjoy as a dietitian, I am not a recipe person I throw my food together, it's never the same other never the same. Like I mentioned, I don't know how much of even the product I use, I just put it in and taste it and put some more it and mix them together. Who knows like maybe it'll come out tasting a certain way or not. I don't know.

Ketan Vakil: I should have written down that version because I'm never going to be able to do it again.

Erin Judge: Yeah, yeah, it's like you don't realize it and I personally love spice blends for that reason because it's like I don't have to think about for tacos and I use like all my different taco ones, that goes for tacos, that also goes for my chili, that also goes for this you know, it's like I use it for all sorts of things because it's just so much easier to know that someone else put the thought into like the blend and how things pair together that I don't have to think about and I can just put it in and add a little bit more if I want to.

Whenever you're thinking about doing blends in the future, how are you going to be able to maintain the same quality of the ingredients, like is that gonna be you just source from a similar like farms, is that process similar for those types of ingredients? But once I'm thinking about are like I know there's like chilies, there are some interesting ingredients that can go into blends that are a little different in terms of how they how easily they freeze and stuff, right? Like is there more complexity there?

Ketan Vakil: We are not going to produce our own like, I don't know, salt and peppers and chili powder, we are working on some partnerships with other brands that we respect and are doing it the right way. They're also doing like single origin sourcing from domestic or international farms, but they buy direct. Like I love the company Burlap & Barrel, they make just awesome spices, they directly buy from farms, there's no like middleman and stuff sitting in warehouse for a million years. So we plan to bring our unique spice to the table like the onion, garlic powder, and then mix it with, you know, their cumin and like whatever it might be to make a blend, for example, that is up to the standards that we think are really important. I think that's definitely more flavorful too versus the more mass markets or spices. Our idea is to blend with stuff that already exists with the highest quality stuff we can find for a few different flavors, so I'm excited about those.

Erin Judge: Yeah, that makes sense of like being able to pull the powders and that's the issue with the powders that you have created is that those powders didn't exist anywhere, right? So that was the main concern is that garlic and onion did but you know, garlic scapes and all these other ones just didn't exist or existed at the quality that you wanted, so you had to start there to then be able to use those to build. Is that kind of how that works?

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, we haven't been able, I mean we keep selling out of the main like we have to have enough of the basics to make the blends so you know, we have to, it's a balance like we got to have enough so there's enough leftovers and mixed with other fun stuff to do you know TBD. Tacos have been on my list for a long time because that seems like a very popular one. But even salt versions of our stuff like some people just don't want to think about it just want to like you know, sprinkle the thing on there

Erin Judge: Yeah. Or like everything but the bagel like that's one that everyone wants an alternative but for low FODMAP it’s like that doesn't work at all. Garlic and I think it's like dried onion like on everything bagels.

Ketan Vakil: Everything spices. Yeah, I think it's an option too. I was thinking about like, I don't know if oyster mushrooms salt or say if you need like an umami sort of blast. You know, oyster mushrooms are really hard to find, but that could be kind of fun. There is a lot of cool things we could do!

Erin Judge: Yeah, yeah, that's so fun. That's a bit interesting to think about. That would be hard, like it's a fun space because there is a lot of creativity, it's just figuring out how to actually make it happen and then also keeping things in stock is something you don't think about. Has that been impacted? I know with like, you know COVID and supply chain and since you're working with such small farms, has that been an issue or has that actually not been too big of a deal

Ketan Vakil: The farms actually have been really wonderful to work with! A lot of specialty farms grow for restaurants and when restaurants had their dip, they had all this farmland and we were able to sort of get in and do some pre planning with them. I think that's was actually in our favor, but finding space in dehydration machines has been a little challenge or our broth is packed in tetrapack which is only printed in Hungary, the actual like boxes are printed in Hungary and they they print fast but they take like four months to come on the boat. We all know the ports are all jammed up. So we actually, before the packages came, if we have some early customers listening like hey, we were in these like weird pouches like thin pouches and they were bursting in the mail. It was such a nightmare, we really fast had to get out of those. We paid to airship a certain number just so we would pack them because we couldn't keep selling those. So now we're about to reorder for chicken broth and a beef broth and, you know, like, if I order today, we can't even put it in a box for four months, which is crazy. But well, you know, hopefully that starts to get better.

Erin Judge: Yeah, I hope so, too. It's like, we don't need things working against us for things that people need. And I know, at the start of everything, there was the fear of, you know, all these like foods, like the specialty foods that we buy, you know, are gonna disappear. And that didn't happen. I think things came out of all of that, but it is tough knowing like, it just takes getting this package that's out in the ocean somewhere, to be able to then ship the product, which hopefully by the time that people will listen to this episode, you know, there's a lot in stock to buy.

Ketan Vakil: The packaging glass bottles are made in China, tetrapack in Europe, it's like, you gotta wait for this stuff. It's so important when you’re manufacturing here.

Erin Judge: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. Hopefully, that'll grow. I know, I don't know, in the south it's interesting. I'm from Arkansas, so from like, a little food desert, it's just so interesting, seeing things from other perspectives being from, you know, the area that I grew up, but I grew up in manufacturing plant world, like there's logging and plants of all sorts, you know, and you see, like, all these things that people buy, you know, it's like, these big plants, because there's so much land, you know, in the south, and it's very rural. And so there's land and, you know, there's people who, who, you know, work and the job security is good, and that's just kind of the way of life is that you take up all this land, and they put these big plants on it and it's just out in the middle of nowhere. So it is interesting, but I wonder if we'll see that kind of increase, because the need is high. And I'm surprised it hasn't, but I guess the reason the need is high is because right now it's kind of hard to get those things going. But that's a different conversation.

Ketan Vakil: And all of us as Americans, you know, like, as it is, we're paying probably like 50 cents for a glass bottle, here it'd be $1 for instance. It's kind of sad.

Erin Judge: Yeah. Cost. Yeah, that makes a difference. And then by the time we get to the consumer, yeah, that's a big one. And I think that's something that does come up often is, you know, this whole idea of like, well, the cost of like, specialty products is higher, right. And, you know, one reason is because, like you mentioned, you're working on a small scale. And I think I've experienced that on such a small level of ordering T shirts, you know, where it's, if I ordered 1000 of these, like, the cost per unit is so much smaller, versus if I order 50 of these, but I can't like fund 1000 units, I can't buy that. So then you have to mark it up, to then make it you know, the cost of it is covered. And even with shipping, you know, you're shipping small things and small loads, like your price is not great compared to these people who are shipping in mass, they have better costs and margins and things to work from. But one thing that you mentioned is putting value on high quality ingredients that have a richer profile, which means that you know, if you have powder, a blend or whatever, broth even that has kind of a richer flavor profile, like you may actually need less of it then you would. I'd love to hear you speak to that a little bit because I think that is something that, you know, stands in the way sometimes where people don't want to buy, you know, an alternative or a certain product, it's like, well, the price is higher, why would I buy that if I could buy, you know, maybe this more cheaply made product that doesn't have this quality in it. So as someone who created a product because of high quality profile, like if someone is getting into that world, like how would you explain that or talk about that? Like if you're talking to a friend, you know, trying to explore that, of using the product and getting the most value out of it. What would that look like?

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, it's such a good question. You know, obviously, I know we're not for everybody that's why there's so many brands out there. I think you know, for the segment of the population that that doesn't want to eat preservatives, really what it comes down to you know, you might find something that tastes like garlic or you might find a broth, like a white you know, white label like storebrand broth without garlic or onion but if you really look at the ingredients, do you want to eat if you can't pronounce the thing, do you really want to eat that? So we've made a decision that we're not going to do that, and yea, it makes it more expensive, but I know the last thing I want to do is….I don't know…you’re going to eat low FODMAP but you're going to eat a product that maybe causes like your blood sugar to spike or like, you know, exacerbates the diabetes epidemic we have in this country like I think we want to, I want to be responsible to that first, having a really healthy product, so that's really important to me and on the broth side too like a lot of it, like you find like $1.99 broth at the store right? You read it's like made with chicken fat, chicken powder and like some concentrate x y&z and maltodextrin and yeast extract. Yeast extract is a super cheap ingredient that has this, like, it's not preservative, really, but sort of is, it's like, it just adds this nice fake salty flavor to it, you know, versus getting it from bones and vegetables and things like that. So I think that's a decision you get you have to make for yourself, but unfortunately, yeah, real ingredients are expensive, that's just what it is.

Erin Judge: Yeah, it's like you could weigh those options and in deciding what to buy.

Ketan Vakil: And not everybody can do it with everything. Maybe you know, you choose to spend it here and not here for example.

Erin Judge: Yeah, no, I agree. I think products aren't as expensive as sometimes we think when we consciously think of how we use them. Like, if you're, you know, buying green onions all the time, you know, but you use this instead, you know, they're, I think some things that you can weigh out, or, like, if you're trying to work around it so much, or, you know, if you find that you're never cooking, because you don't like your food and you're eating out, which I see happen often where it's like, you know, no one wants to cook or even, I think knowing how to like educating yourself on how to cook, and that's something I had to learn early on was that, you know, I wasted a lot of money whenever I didn't know how to cook, because I didn't know how to use ingredients. I didn't know how to use food, you know, in a way that would make it flavorful. And I don't know exactly what I'm saying there, nut there's something to that, that I feel like is important to talk about. But it's a hard thing to get around where it's like I think there is a bit of like education of it's not just about like, oh, you know, these seasonings that you use maybe as a kid you know that you just douse everything in even I think what I'm getting is maybe experiencing and actually understanding flavor profiles.

An example is we always talk about this with cheese, but our clients have you know, high lactose or low lactose. So if we're reducing cheese to be you know, within a lower lactose round, whether it be mild like medium lactose quantity cheese's or even lactose free, when we choose like a fatty like really good quality cheese, right? Like a really high quality aged cheddar, it's got its fat in it like, right where it's supposed to be, like you eat a slice of that cheese, and it's so much more satisfying than eating a low fat, skim cheddar cheese, right?

So then if we're thinking about the quantity you're using, it's like, let's say you're making a grilled cheese sandwich or something, you're going to use way less of this high quality flavorful cheese than what you're probably going to use of this like low fat, like not good quality cheese, because you're trying to get the flavor. I mean, you train yourself, even with salt that way, you know, you use less of it when you start actually training your tastebuds how to like feel and experience flavor. So I think that's where I was going!

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, like, our broth is, I’m going to get ahead of myself, like with the food science thing, but there's something called the Brix level of liquids of broth, like the amount of dissolved solids in the thing. So most like cheap, store bought you'll find or be like a one Brix or two Brix, ours is a five so it's like you're saying you can use a lot less if you're getting a lot more flavor, a lot more money out of it. You want to water it down, go get water, you know, water it down, do the one or two that most broth’s are at if you feel like doing that.

Erin Judge: You can spread it out by just adding water to it!

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, if you want to do it, I would never do that, bu if you’re making a risotto, right, you could do you know, the broth and some water and some wine. You're good to go! Yeah, now it doesn't have to be four boxes of expensive broth, you know. Talking about cheese, we do a great risotto using three different nice aged cheeses and the broth and then you’ve got like, you know, a restaurant quality thing in a half hour.

Erin Judge: Yeah, yeah, it's better than buying like just Hamburger Helper. It's like you can get flavors, knowing and just educating on why you're buying certain things and what they're being used for versus like maybe the carrot, you know, it's like your carrot might not be that different. I think obviously local carrots taste better, but you know, there are certain ingredients that aren't really that way where it's like maybe a potato, it's like it doesn't matter where you're buying your potato, but other ingredients like there are some differences and there's also a difference in like the ripeness and you hit on this where you said that you guys try to you freeze at like the peak ripeness to then be able to pull all the flavors. Is that what I understood from that?

Ketan Vakil: The garlic scapes powders are the only one that goes through this like freeze drying process. Dehydration would be much easier but freeze drying takes out more of the moisture actually so it lasts a little longer, but more importantly, at a serving size we found that dehydrating it for whatever scientific reason was still right in the line for FODMAP garlic scapes. So freeze dry gets you a little bit more volume wise for whatever crazy reason, before it gets into the higher FODMAP range or higher fructans which is good.

The other two powders, the chive and the green onions, those get a cut and like blanche, 30 seconds to get the dirt off and like kill anything and then they go on to dehydration machine like all night long. Garlic scapes are forgiving, you can pick them and they last a long time, so we do like, they're only available for a couple weeks. So we try to get everybody together, we get them in cold trucks, shipped to the freezer and they go down the chutes like that week. Whereas the other two garlic chives die in like a second. So they’re picked in New Jersey like the day and then early in the morning, they get driven to the dehydrator and we deal with them right away.

Erin Judge: Yeah. That's so impressive. It's impressive to think about that of oh, like, what you're eating like it's not something that was you know, grown in like, you know, another country and driven for weeks and put into the shelf and then get you know, it's like when you think about our food supply. It's like really thinking about like it was picked, cut, dehydrated all within, you know, the same day.

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, yeah. Some of these tricky ingredients. The scallion tops, those are more forgiving, we have a few more days. But the chives are rough.

Erin Judge: Yeah, well, I mean, anytime you buy chives in the grocery store, as soon as you get it, we can only buy them in our store you in a little plastic thing. And it's like by the time I get it home, they're mushy, like I can't even use it, which is why I love the powder. I've loved getting to use the garlic tried powder and the garlic escape powder at home because, you know, I can get green onion stems and that's nice. I hate cutting them. It's like cutting actually, like trying to chop it to get all the juices, you know, going

Ketan Vakil: And garlic chives are really hard to find unless you have like a cool Asian market. I mean, you're never going to find the fresh ones in like Whole Foods.

Erin Judge: Yeah. Yeah, we hardly see them here at farmer's markets either. And even like the good ones, like the ones you know, I see at the grocery store, like the little bitty, do you guys get some of like the bigger ones like? Because they can get pretty big.

Ketan Vakil: Oh, lengthwise. Yeah, yeah, the garlic chives are like the flat leaf version of the regular chive. Depending on like, early in the season, they’re kind of short but you’ll let them go and like by the fall, they’ll get a little longer, so we actually do a little better in our dry down ratio, like in the fall.

Erin Judge: It's interesting! Beyond, so more products like spice blends, maybe whatever may come next, like, do you guys have more in mind for Gourmend? Like, is there kind of a goal of where you guys are going or how you're involved in kind of the IBS low FODMAP space, like anything happening within this year, next year?

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, I think our goal is just to get some more products out there and explore retail as well this year which I'm excited about. Beef broth, people have been asking about for a long time, we’re really close on that. And vegetable broth, very close as well, although it's a really complicated product to make, requires so much fresh cutting and stuff and because vegetables are way more expensive than meat bones, which is unfortunate, so working through that.

We're excited to hopefully partner with more brands this year and do some fun stuff, we've launched a dietitian program, so we want to give our samples out to you and your colleagues and clients and patients and talking to our customers. I love it. You know, people call on the phone or they want like cooking advice, and we're always happy to do that kind of stuff. I think we're probably going to end up raising a serious funding round so we can really keep this going in a really strong way.

Erin Judge: That's so exciting! I talked with Katie earlier in the season, she is the founder of BelliWelli, I don’t know if you’ve connected them?

Ketan Vakil: Yes, we just talked the other day!

Erin Judge: Okay, yeah, we talked about fundraising and how all of the investors that got on board or her team we're invested, right because they have IBS or someone they know has IBS, or, you know, just seeing how companies are so closely knit of people who are in the space too of like, you know, I've been through it or I know the problem, and you know, excited to solve the problem, not just about how we can mass produce this to make money, it's like, not just about that, but about really providing high quality, you know, products and solve a real problem that's out there that people are experiencing. Which you don’t see in a lot of companies, you think about, like Shark Tank, you know, investors at that level, where it’s like, yeah, I think that they care a little bit, but they care about the bottom line more than anything, versus and always about, like, how do we cut? Right? How do we break costs out? How do we do this? How do we do that? So it is interesting to see that. So hopefully, you have that same experience!

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, we've held off on that for the time being because I was worried about that certain investors will want you to like change the mission in a certain way. I don't know if this is the business to go into if you have dreams of making tons of money, we really started to help people. If we have investors, they have to be people that are willing to come along for the ride on high quality stuff. And I'd like us to become a big corporation, a corporation really vested in, you know, not just the bottom line, but all the stakeholders, of the planet, employees, customers, all that stuff.

Erin Judge: I think that's really exciting. And where can people find you now? So I know your website they can buy from you directly there, correct?

Ketan Vakil: Yeah gourmendfoods.com. We're on Amazon as well, although the products go in and out on Amazon, just depending on how much we have left given time. But right now, everything's, everything's on Amazon, although usually, you'll get a better deal by buying straight from us. But good for getting the word out. Just people don't know these things, it's a good discovery place for people too.

Erin Judge: And if they buy from you, they get on your email list, so they'll actually get the tips!

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, they get the cooking tips and then we have like special bundles and discounts, you get more stuff and you know, and be part of the fun.

Erin Judge: Yeah, yeah, it's all about being in community, that's awesome. So I'll link all of that, I'll link that resource, you mentioned the low FODMAP resource on your website, I can link that in our show notes as well as where people can check out your products and buy, but is there anything else that you want to share anything else about Gourmend or your product or low FODMAP, being someone who's in this gut issue world that started a business, which is a feat! Like that's not always the easiest thing, so anything else that you want to share?

Ketan Vakil: I mean, I'm an open book. So if there's any of your listeners, like want to, like know more, or they want to, like talk about how to cook this stuff, or like, you know, I'll get on video with people, you know, I'm here for anybody who just wants because I know what it's like to go through it. I want our brand to be here to really help people. If you email, usually it's gonna be me writing back, which is fun, so feel free.

Erin Judge: That's fun! And is connecting through Instagram a great way for people you're gonna get in touch as well,

Ketan Vakil: Yeah, Instagram is great as well. absolutely, @gourmendfoods.

Erin Judge: Awesome. Thank you, Ketan! I really enjoyed it. It's nice to see behind the curtain a bit of production and talking through some of these things, so thank you so much.

Ketan Vakil: Thanks for inviting me on Erin. Super fun!