'Top Chef''s Tom Colicchio Has A Few Thoughts About 'Good Food'

0:10Hey folks, I'm Ray Lateef and you're listening to the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with renowned chef, restaurateur, and top chef judge Tom Colicchio, who spoke about the development and evolution of his namesake food brand, Colicchio Kitchen. We're also joined by Tom Macy, the co-founder of RTD cocktail brand Social Hour, and Nicole Austin, the general manager and distiller of George Dickel Whiskey, who discussed the synergistic partnership between the two brands. Tom Colicchio is a gastronomic icon. He also likes tomato sauce out of a jar.

0:54The lead judge and an executive producer of acclaimed TV reality competition Top Chef and the owner of award-winning restaurant group Crafted Hospitality, Tom is also a partner in Colicchio Kitchen, a premium brand of sauces and condiments that are positioned as high-quality and convenient products for home chefs. Recently rebranded from the Jersey Tomato Company, Colicchio Kitchen debuted at the 2023 Summer Fancy Food Show held from June 25th to 27th and showcased a broad range of products, including its Colicchio collection of ultra-premium cooking and pairing sauces. In the following interview, I spoke with Tom about his involvement in the brand and his role in the development of its products, how he defines, quote, good food, his perspective on adding an ethnic-themed line, and why he's less intimidating than you might think.

1:53Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. I'm at the 2023 Summer Fancy Food Show, and sitting with me right now is the one and only Tom Kokiyo. Tom, great to see you. Likewise, thank you. You said this is the second fancy food show you've ever been to? Well, it could be my third. I think I was here probably 30 years ago. It was much smaller. But I was here last year as well. Do you get to walk the floor or is that too difficult for you? Yeah, I haven't. Last year, I kind of walked through a little bit. This year, I'm going to try to walk around. But I'm kind of stuck here for a while. Yeah, you're here at the Colicchio Kitchen booth.

2:26Yes. At the Fancy Food Show. Recently renamed that from the Jersey Tomato Company. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, so I was approached a couple years ago. It's really funny because, you know, prior to this, you know, we'd make sauce at home. We'd make it in a restaurant as well. And never even contemplated doing a packaged product. And I got a phone call, and they said, hey, we want to send you some sauce to try. I was like, yeah, okay, fine. Send it to my house. And it just so happened that the weekend it was sent, I had my entire family over. And they saw it sitting on the counter. They said, what is this?

2:57I saw somebody sent me some tomato sauce. And they're like, open it up. Let's try it. And they all loved it. So it passed my family test. I figured it was okay. And then we modified the recipe a little bit. And that's how we started. And it was Jersey tomato. I'm from New Jersey. So, you know, I grew up, my grandfather would make, he had a small garden, and then he would jar all the tomatoes. And so the sauce really reminded me of that. It had a lot of texture to it. It wasn't overcooked. It wasn't like a long simmered sauce. Didn't have a lot of aromatics in there. Just a little bit of onion, a little bit of garlic, no sugar, salt and pepper.

3:29That was it. Really, really clean. So I got involved. We fiddle with the recipe a little bit, and then we moved into our Colicchio collection line, which was all based on some regional Italian flavorings. Well, I have to think, Tom, that you've been approached by a lot of brands and companies wanting to align with you, and probably brands that make really good products. But what made this partnership right? What made this partnership the right decision for you personally? Sure. I think the Jersey connection had a lot to do with it. Okay. You know, growing up in New Jersey, we're the garden state, although most people know of New Jersey on the 95 corridor where it's all industrial.

4:08And we always like to say in Jersey, we have the best tomatoes. And so, yeah, there was that connection. And then it just tastes fantastic. If it wasn't a good sauce, I would have politely refused and walked away. But it was so delicious. I use it at home. I have jars of it. In fact, last night I made eggplant parmesan and I used the arrabbiata sauce that we used to make. We don't make it anymore now. Now it's the collaborating chili sauce. I made it. It's fantastic. You recently expanded the line, too. You're into more than just pasta sauces. Talk about the expansion. Right. We moved into dressings.

4:39We're also in the process of looking to do an olive oil. And then we'll start adding some additional products as well. Who is the brand in the line for? Because there's a lot of premium products out there. There's a lot of premium tomato sauces. But yours is different. How? Well, our basic sauce, I think, is the consumer that buys either Rayo's or Carbone's. So the two big ones that we're up against right now, I'm partial to ours. So I think that's our comp set. And then from the flavoring sauces, I don't really know. I don't think we have one. I don't know of anybody else that has gone to do regional sauces that are more, we call them simmer sauces.

5:18So the idea creates a real shortcut. So if you're going to braise chicken legs, chicken thighs, you can just brown the chicken a little bit, add our sauce, put it in the oven, slow oven, let it cook, done. We've created all the flavors for you. So instead of making stocks and reductions and things like that, what I normally would do if I were braising meats or even fish, we have the flavor in here. So a simple fish stew. You can simply take any one of our sauces, maybe thin it out a little bit with some water, maybe some wine, add the seafood, let it simmer, done. All that labor of, you know, when I make a seafood stew, I start with fennel, onion, garlic, celery, cook it for two hours in a lot of olive oil.

6:02And when that's cooked down, then we add the tomato and then we add the seafood. So you can skip that whole process and just start with the sauce and the seafood. It's interesting you say that because I was reading a feature about you recently where someone described you as intimidating. And I assume that this is something you want to be the least intimidating kind of food and sauce and brand to consumers. Exactly, yeah. That article was interesting because it said it was intimidating, but it was nothing that I did. It's like, okay. So, yeah, exactly. A lot of people are intimidated, especially when it comes to, you know, creating those layers and layers of flavor.

6:40Right. And I think that's what a lot of home cooks miss out on. They don't know how to do that, so we've done it for you. That's exactly right. We're trying to take the intimidation out of this type of cooking. You're here at the Fancy Food Show. You're cooking up some food for attendees. And that's certainly one way to build interest and promote the brand. Another way is just to have your name on the label. and in some cases your photo on the label as well. How do you make those decisions? Are you deeply involved with what the label is going to look like and how your name is involved? Absolutely.

7:09In fact, this is an older label. We have a new label coming out for this as well. But this label, yeah, this label is new. So absolutely, in fact, this photo was taken from a photo shoot that we didn't even do for the sauce. It was another photo shoot, and I got the rights to that photo. I had to supply the picture of me when I was about 12, I think, right there. So absolutely, we're involved. In fact, that backdrop right there is my barn. Wow. There's a barn in the background there. So that's my barn. So absolutely, we're involved in every step of this. You know, there's a wide variety of ways that people who are well-known in the public promote and advertise.

7:43And some people are a little wary of using their names. Some people are a little wary of using their imagery. How do you think about that when you are promoting the brand and talking about Click Your Kitchen? Right. Well, for the most part, I haven't done it really anywhere with the exception of a few brands that I've actually invested money in that I'm not suggesting it's my food, but I'm an investor. But this is the only product line that I've actually endorsed with my name. So, yeah, over the years I've been offered a lot of different things, but I just haven't found anything that I really wanted to do.

8:12In fact, it's also a business that I don't know. Yes, it's food, but it's very different than the restaurant industry. And so I have great partners who really understand that, and they're getting me up to speed on it. But no, this was the first product that I really put my name on, with the exception of my restaurants. Well, that's not true. We did a very small line of a steak sauce that I did years ago, but it was a limited run. Okay. Yeah. What have you learned about the CPG business from that steak sauce to now? Well, you know, that was done with a retailer, and it was only for the retail store.

8:47And so it wasn't that we had to go out and place it. In fact, we couldn't place it anywhere. Right. It was a Father's Day special for grilling. It was a very limited run. But this is different. And I think it's really important to show up at events like this so people see that you are personally connected to it. You're not just slapping your name on it. What's the steepest part of the learning curve for you in learning about how to sell a consumer brand, how to market a consumer brand? You know, I'm still learning. For me, it's understanding that the buyers are the most important. So those are our customers, really.

9:14Yes, the customers are in the supermarket, but our first initial contact are the buyers that can get it into the supermarkets. And so that's just not something I'm used to. I'm used to, you know, your customer comes into the restaurant, you can interact with them directly. This is a little more arm's length. And so, again, I think showing up at shows like this are really important that the consumer sees that you're involved. Are you going out on retail visits as well? Are you meeting with some of the buyers? I've done some retail, not on visits. I will, but I've done a lot of Zooms and things like that.

9:43Also, we launched, it was kind of the tail end of the pandemic. So I've been doing some of that through Zoom. Tom, I've got to ask you because you have been a chef. You have been part of Top Chef now for 20 years. You've seen a lot. You've tasted a lot. And I think in our business, sometimes great taste gets forgotten. And I don't know why. Great taste gets forgotten in lieu of functional ingredients and, you know, better-for-you ingredients and things like that. So in this day and age, in 2023, how do you define good food? Well, I'm sure everyone here would say that their food tastes great. Sure.

10:16Yeah. I hope so. So, you know, good food, I think that if you look at what's gone on in the last 20 years in food, we've gone from farm to table exploding and people wanting to understand their ingredients, where they come from, who produces them, who's the people behind them. I think that's always important. We've also, at the same time, you saw the advent of molecular gastronomy. And at the same, you know, during this time, you see things that are a little more out there, people pushing the envelope, but also at the same time, people going back and doing more homey things. So there's room for everything.

10:44I think good taste starts with great ingredients, like the Jersey tomato, but then having an understanding of what you're going for. And my personal opinion is that I don't want food that is overtouched, overdone. I want the ingredients to speak for themselves. You still want a certain amount of craftsmanship that you see the chef's hand. But I think when you start torturing food to create shapes and to create an effect, for me that goes too far. Now, other chefs that do that do it really well, that's their signature. And I'm not saying that there's no place for that. There certainly is. It's just that's something I'm comfortable doing.

11:19You know, my pet peeve is like risotto. The risotto should spread on a plate. It shouldn't be molded into a ring mold so you can put something on top of it. You're torturing the risotto to get that effect. Not the best thing for the risotto. So that's an example that I can provide. You really just want to let food really speak for itself. And I think you see a lot of people going back to that now. The home consumer, I think that's a whole completely different thing. The home cook, and there are a lot of really good home cooks, and I've run into some home cooks that have every gadget better equipped than most restaurants.

11:49And they're really into that side, especially people that are in the tech world. But there's a certain understanding, if I'm going to cook sous vide, why I'm doing it, how it actually works, and the advantages of sous vide cooking versus conventional cooking. I don't think there's a right or wrong. I mean, I know I'm going around in circles here. No, no. But there's no right or wrong. There's a place for everything. And I don't think one is better than the other. A lot of it is personal preference. When I cook at home, it's very different than how I cook in restaurants. It's very simple, straightforward, you know, a protein and a couple sides.

12:22And that's how I eat at home. I mean, simple is usually the best. Simple is good. It's good. But, you know, if you go to a certain restaurant, you choose your restaurant based on what the expectations are. And so if you go into a restaurant and you're expecting a simple home meal, don't go into a restaurant where a chef is doing high-touch avant-garde food. You're not going to get that. And so you have to understand where you're going and what you're really looking for. But the great thing is that in a city like New York that we're in right now, you could find all of that. you know, going up to Queens, you could find probably within, you know, five blocks, probably, you know, 100 different ethnic cuisines.

13:06And so that's what's great about food. There's so much to offer. There's so much to explore. And it changes all the time. You mentioned ethnic cuisine. And I feel like that is really the next evolution of American cooking, American food in general. When you're thinking about ethnic cuisines, do they fit into the Colicchio Kitchen? Do they fit into the future of what you're doing? That's a good question. I mean, right now we're focused on Italian, but I could see it's branching out. The problem is, though, that somehow may not be authentic to me. True. And, you know, you certainly don't want to be accused of cultural appropriation.

13:40So be very careful. And I understand that, too. So I think we may stick to Italian, but we'll see. Outstanding. Well, the tagline is, the taste of summer. Taste of summer. Which seems quite appropriate for where we are now. And, Tom, this has been such a great conversation. And thank you so, so much for taking the time. You're welcome. Congratulations with the Cliqueo Kitchen and good luck with everything going forward. Thank you. Thank you. From tomato sauce in jars to cocktails in cans, our next interview highlights a remarkable partnership between an upstart beverage company and an iconic spirit brand.

14:16As mentioned at the top of the show, Tom Macy is the co-founder of Social Hour, which markets premium RTD craft cocktails. Developed based on his experience mixing libations at world-renowned bar, The Clover Club, Social Hour cocktails are made with high-quality ingredients and include a gin and tonic, whiskey mule, and a Yuzu Sunset Fizz. In 2021, Social Hour aligned with legacy whiskey brand George Dickel to launch the seasonally-inspired Harvest Whiskey Sour, an expression made with Dickel's 13-year-old Tennessee whiskey, and re-released the following year. The company has teamed up once again in 2023 to create the summer-themed Social Hour Bourbon Smash, which is made with Dickel Bourbon and introduced in late June.

15:02In this interview, I spoke with Tom and Nicole Austin, the general manager and distiller of George Dickel Whiskey, about the origins of the partnership, how the collaboration aligned the aims of both brands, and how the relationship may develop down the line.

15:20hey folks it's ray with taste radio right now i'm honored to be sitting down with tom macy of social hour and nicole austin of dickle tom great to see you likewise great to see you and nicole great to meet you happy to be here outstanding i say great to see you tom because we first met in december 2021 when you participated in our second cocktail showdown competition, BevNet's cocktail shoot on competition, that is, where you just had an amazing, amazing event. I think people were just blown away by the liquid, the positioning, the branding of what you brought to the market. And I still am. I think Social Hour is, you know, right at the top of the list in terms of best RTD cocktail brands out there.

16:08You know, what's been going on since 2021? one. Obviously, you know, the brand has grown quite a bit since then. But talk a bit about, you know, its origins and where you are today. Sure. Yeah, thank you. No, that was a that was an amazing event. And I was really putting myself on a limb. I usually don't do things like that. And I think it was also, you know, we launched in the summer of 2020. Great time to launch a company. Although for King Cocktails, actually, you know, kind of interesting. There still just was not a lot of in-person events, you know, at that point. So flying out to California and getting to present the brand, it still felt like it was very new, even though we'd been at it for a year and a half.

16:45At this point, I feel like I could already write a book about the canned cocktail industry, just because I've thought about it for so much for so long. And it's such an interesting moment, just in this segment of beverage in particular. I think mostly social hour is we're still very much working towards defining, you know, what the true craft cocktail experience is anywhere that's not inside a bar. And what's been really interesting about that is how rapidly the category and everybody's understanding of it, from the consumers to distributors to retailers, how rapidly that is changing and evolving and has been over the last two years.

17:21So I've resisted taking things too big, too fast. We've really been focused mostly in our hometown of New York, which is still a very difficult market to participate in. And, you know, I've just focused on doing a lot of tastings and really deepening relationships with, you know, I guess I'll say sort of high value accounts. So one we've been working very closely with is Walt Disney World. You may have heard of it. You know, they they reached out to us, I guess it was actually right before the BevNet event. And we're looking to elevate their RTD offerings. And so we've been working closely with them about how to slowly implement that and walk first before we can run.

18:04because these ingredients and these cocktails, you have to go about the right way. I suppose mainly, yeah, it's that we've been trying to walk before we run and figure out how to really give everyone's understanding, how to articulate our message for consumers and retailers and distributors as well. And that kind of keeps changing, as I said, month to month. And I think that's really what I've been able to learn so much from our collaboration with Nicole and George Dickel in that respect as well. It's so interesting to hear you talk about the importance of being focused in a category where there is chaos.

18:44I mean, there are so many entrants into the space. There are so many variations of what is described as a canned cocktail. You know, some things are hard seltzers. Some things or actual cocktails like a social hour. Some things are not even close to being a cocktail, but being called a cocktail. It's like the matrix goes in, like it's up, down, left, right, forward, backwards. I mean, is it malt-based? Is it spirit-based? Is it high ABV? Is it low ABV? Is there a fake sugar in there? Or is it full flavored? Then you get into terms of like complexity and serving size. And consumers, they don't understand.

19:22Like I, in my head, I have an idea of what a true cocktail is. But I was the beverage director at Clover Club, a well-known cocktail bar for eight years. And, you know, so I sort of had an epiphany only a few months ago because I was trying to figure out, you know, how do we communicate what's special about this to people and help them understand this is like a cocktail you get in a bar. And I kind of realized that my understanding of, you know, and why I feel like I am the right person to deliver them this product. I'm like, well, I'm an expert in this. I built my career on this. But I realized in my head, you know, I view myself as an expert from dealing with people who walked into Clover Club under their own free will over 10 years.

20:00That's the very narrow slice of the demographic, you know, whereas people at a liquor store that shelf full of products like a high noon and a social hour to them could be the same product, you know, whereas like there's not going to be anything a million years close to a high noon at Clover Club because that's just not where you are. I think that it's, again, really interesting, a moment of figuring out how people view these things, you know, as the liquor store democratizes everything. It's just sort of there on a shelf. And in some ways, I'm well positioned to do this. But also, you know, I have a million ideas.

20:38And it's required a lot of discipline to sort of try to stay focused and not do too much. And it's also at this moment where there's so much white space that hasn't been done. And you're like, oh, we could do this or we could do that. It's the gift and the curse of being an entrepreneur, for sure. Well, you do have a stamp of validation in that Dickel, our big fans, the company that is or the brand that is a big fan of what you guys are doing. Nicole, I know you can talk about that. You have quite a bit of experience in this industry, which makes me think that the collaboration with Social Hour is pretty remarkable in that you see this as being a brand, not only that fits the ethos of what you're doing at Dickel, but, you know, is first and foremost at the top of the list of what represents a canned cocktail.

21:35Yeah. I mean, you know, I came out of craft whiskey originally, right? That's actually how I met Tom years ago when I was trying to, you know, peddle craft Brooklyn whiskey in these like really beautiful high-end cocktail bars. And Tom and I had an incredibly, I would say memorable conversation about like Mezcal. Tom was one of the first, you know, folks who I like really deeply respected in the cocktail industry, who also sort of gave the time of day to some New York craft spirits producers. So, you know, know, I, I, I respected his work for a long time. And so that was kind of why he was like first on my mind.

22:14You know, when I came to Dickel, I felt like a lot of the work I had been doing was about getting people to see and appreciate the incredible high quality of the liquid that we had. And some of that was just, you know, kind of telling people about it, but a lot of that work was putting it in the right bottles at the right price, you know, like a lot of work around blending to, you know, really highlight what was special about the whiskeys that we're making. And, you know, I drink whiskey neat. I love to drink whiskey neat, but it's also, it's for cocktailing. You know, that's how most people drink whiskey.

22:47And that's how I think even as a deep whiskey lover, I think it is kind of the best way to drink and enjoy whiskey. So I wanted people to see these like beautiful whiskeys that I was making in the right context, which was like a beautiful, well-made cocktail. And, you know, in those pandemic times, right, like people weren't going into high-end cocktail bars. So you had to meet them where they were, which is at home. And, you know, I obviously like the RTG kind of canned cocktail space was really obvious. I took one crack at a recipe by myself. And then I was like, oh, that was really stupid. Like, this is really, really hard.

23:31Like I am making, just making a good cocktail in a bar is hard enough. But when you add the complexity of like, you know, putting in the can and trying to make it shelf stable and like, what possessed me even for the briefest moment to think that I could do that myself? I have no idea. But I really quickly realized that I could not. And, you know, I think Tom in social hour, you know, what they're doing, it just fits so closely with the ethos of what I was trying to do with Dickel, which is like show people something that they, they already know they love, you know, a beautiful whiskey, a great cocktail, and just in sort of a surprising way, you know, and maybe a place that they didn't expect or from, you know, from a context that they didn't expect.

24:18So it's just, it fit really, really nicely. And I knew that, you know, he brought all the skills because definitely Tom's being nice and he maybe won't say this, but the quality in the canned cocktails, it was like all over the map. And, you know, I tasted a bunch of them when I was doing research and like a lot of them were just not good, you know? And he said the stuff he was making, I just, I felt really, really confident that putting my whiskey into his hands, like he would make something really beautiful and, you know, worthy of the spirit because pretty big moves. We put a 13 year old whiskey in a canned cocktail, you know, so the whole thing better, better deliver.