234: Dan Frommer

25:45You know, everything has been very well thought out. It's a third place where you actually want to spend time. The challenge, you know, and we've seen in the last few weeks that, you know, the founding CEO has been replaced by a new CEO who's very, and I spoke with her for an article as well, who's very focused on what seems like basically fixing the business model. And it's really challenging because as a consumer, I would pick Foxtrot over 7-Eleven 11 times out of 10. Unless we're in Tokyo. Then I'll go to the 7-Eleven in Tokyo. But my guess is that the per-store unit economics of a 7-Eleven vastly surpassed those of a Foxtrot.

26:28So, you know, and some of that is because the user experience of a 7-Eleven isn't very great. Like there's a huge density of shelving and like there's nowhere to hang out. Unless you're into taquitos, which I super am, and I just love having those taquitos right there. It's true. That kind of stuff got me through high school. So, you know, thank you to the Slurpee machines of the world. So good, so good. And that's a tradeoff, right, is figuring out what is going to be a differentiated, awesome consumer experience, but can also make money. And this is where a lot of those stores have set their expectations too high.

27:03You know, Foxtrot has raised so much money, it cannot go back to being a boutique neighborhood store. And does that go back to the margin of the business? The margin is still very low for grocery. And even they sell alcohol there, which is a higher margin. But is it just because the business is low margin in general? There's a lot of different facets to it. I mean, obviously the margin of grocery, but also the mix of cafe business versus grocery business, the mix of delivery versus, you know, in-store purchases. That was another thing. Foxtrot has a very robust digital capability. But their new CEO is telling me that actually e-commerce is kind of down right now.

27:42Like people are back in the shop, which is great because people get to be out and about and back in the shop. But if you were counting on, you know, your store being also a very robust fulfillment center for e-commerce orders, that's trickier. So it's challenging. I I don't know the books of, you know, I haven't seen the books of, I mean, I haven't seen the books of Foxtrot or Pop-Up Grocer or Air One. It feels like Air One is very heavily weighted toward prepared food and being a restaurant. And then they have basically a small whole foods in the back with 25 % higher pricing. Oh, yeah. 25 to 50.

28:13I've been to the one. I went to the one, yeah, mid Hollywood. There's one, you know, West Hollywood maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a lot of prepared food doing that. But as I described, the beverage case is to me the most exciting 40 feet of retail in the world. Like there's nothing better than the – I think I counted 450 SKUs in the beverage case in Silver Lake. So it's cool. I like going there. I don't do my weekly shopping there. People never believed me when I said that Whole Foods is the cheapest of the grocery stores that I would go to when I lived in New York. Yeah, I know. It's kind of similar in L.A.

28:46too unless you're really going to a conventional – Since the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods is definitely going to be the best bang for your buck in a lot of communities, absolutely. So we'll see. Can digital provide even better pricing for more people online because they don't have certain aspects of a grocery store? So far, that hasn't happened. So far, a lot of the economies of scale or whatever you want to call it from tech has not made its way to the consumer yet. And then we had huge inflation in grocery pricing in the last year or so. I don't know. I think people want to actually see the stuff before they're buying it with this higher prices.

29:22I think it's just like a general like sense that I get that you just want to be in the space versus just hitting the click, click, click, click on the cart. Two things. It varies widely by category. There was actually a really great chart from Kroger the other day. It showed, you know, the percentage of people who prefer buying a category online versus offline. And it was like for paper towels and shelf stable stuff, it was like 80 percent of people preferred buying it online. Yeah. And then fresh fish on the other side of the spectrum, 80-20 the other way. Like no one wants to buy fresh fish over the computer.

29:54Good point, Dan. I think it definitely just really depends. Totally. Let me ask you a two-part question. What are you most optimistic about in food, retail, restaurants? And what are you most cynical about?

30:10Let's start with the cynical thing. I'm not a cynic. I'm a skeptic. I'm a realist. uh i'm you know sarcastic and um i like to parse the question i appreciate you yeah yeah uh so i'm not a cynic i am i'm not uh super enthusiastic about the explosion of virtual brands in ghost kitchens um because i think it's pretty clear that most of the time the food is not very good and inconsistent and not made with any soul or personality. We're talking about that realm? Yeah, but not just Mr. Beast. I think a lot of those virtual brands are profit-hungry, like people who don't actually care about what you're eating or how you're eating it.

31:00What's a virtual brand, just so our audience knows? Honestly, I don't know. wasn't there one that was like wing-splosion or something? And then they ran out of wings, so they became thigh-splosion. There's so many of them. I think of it as like these brands that just happen to pop up in the weirdest locations and they sell food via Seamless-ish. Right. There's Mr. Beast Burger, which is famous and has been, I would say, well, was successful on paper. I don't know how they're doing recently. But if you look, one of my favorite things to do on Twitter is look at the reply stream to their customer service account.

31:38It's great reporting there. There's a lot of raw beef being delivered and a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches that are basically not melted Kraft Single on a piece of Wonder Bread or something like that. So it feels to me like there's definitely an opportunity to use a kitchen for more than it was intended and to have more food coming out of it than just the restaurant that it was created to be. But I think a lot of it is done in a very haphazard way. I think it's hard to build a culture around cooking food that is just so random and so all over the place. It's literally out of a box. It's like a starter kit of a restaurant.

32:17And I think it says a lot about the power of the franchise fee. And franchises have training and they actually want consistency over scale. Totally, yeah. And there's a lot of problems with these virtual restaurants because they don't give a shit about quality, right, as you just said. By the way, sidebar, there's a YouTube stream of a guy who works at McDonald's and just posts, like, point-of-view videos of him making different things at McDonald's. Those are kitchen tools that I've never seen in my life, like the fry grabber. Oh, my God, this is an amazing custom piece of machinery. Oh, fast food TikTok, fast food worker TikTok is amazing.

32:56um so uh so yeah i'm i'm not super enthusiastic about it people are um you know people a lot of investors see it as a big part of the future of restaurants and i think that the consumer will ultimately say no the quality is not here for most of this stuff some of it will work and by the way so what am i excited about when it works it's awesome and by the way um this is a a very yuppie thing to say but like goop kitchen is really good that's gwyneth paltrow's virtual ghost kitchen brand. I'm a gluten intolerant. And then she does a gluten-free pizza that you would never know it's from a DoorDash ghost kitchen.

33:31It's really good. And so - What makes it good? Is it cauliflower? What are we doing in the crust? I haven't looked up the recipes, but are the nutritional info, but it feels like it's maybe almond flour or something. It has a nuttiness to it and a, and a, um, like a substance to it that makes me think it's more than just, you know, the typical rice flour tapioca blend. um so uh it's funny and they've grown very slowly they only have a few locations but i really like goop kitchen i would love to go to a goop kitchen i wish they had restaurants and not just ghost kitchen operations um so that's interesting to me though it always comes back to creative people who really care making artful food that is not overthought or overproduced but just like the best, this is such a cliche, but like the best representation of the ingredients served in a way that is not pretentious.

34:23Like I'm not a foams and jellies guy. Like just give me some. You're from Chicago. Come on. Although that's where Linnea was invented. So it's true. Yeah. Yeah. Ironically. I went to high school on the same street where, um, what's it? Uh, Charlie Trotters was, and I would walk by there every evening and see some cool people waiting. Uh, some of our, my classmates actually got to eat there cause they would like feed the local kids as part of some, you know, we got some leftover foie gras. Not bad. I never got to eat there, unfortunately. Let me ask you a couple categories. Can we go over some categories?

34:55Because I feel like there's a couple categories that I'm really interested in just as a consumer myself. One is wellness soda. It just seems like Olipop is one brand that always pops in the brain, but there's many there. What are you seeing with the future of this category? Is it oversaturated or on the flip, is it just getting started? Both. It seems like it's a generational thing. Like, I stopped drinking sugary soda, I don't know, 15 years ago or something like that. I'm a problem LaCroix drinker. Like, I have like six to eight sparkling waters a day. Do you like the plum? Do you ever get the plum?

35:30I do. It reminds me of Capri Sun. Absolutely agree. I love the plum. That's my guy right now. Big fan of beach plum. It's an afternoon flavor. I have morning flavors and evening flavors, too. I think you're going more like yellow for mornings. Uh, uh, apricot and pamplemousse are morning flavors to me. Passion fruit at nighttime. Like that, Dan. Good choices. Tangerine afternoon. Anyway, um, so I, obviously people, we did a survey recently. The number one thing people want to eat less of is sugar. Um, and so there's definitely a, a huge march away from sugar. So a lot of these newer categories are either no sugar or very low sugar, or sometimes it's, It's like sketchy fake sugar that, you know, some people are down to drink and other people are not.

36:14But, you know, the grocers who are ultimately the ones distributing and selling the stuff want differentiation. They have communicated to brands that they must have some sort of, quote, unquote, scare quotes, functional benefit. You could argue that caffeine, which is a drug, is a functional benefit. 100%. But, you know, now it's like probiotics, prebiotics. some of that is because certain elements are shelf stable more than others so interesting so that's like the actual math there it's not just like i think so yeah um but some of them you know they have all kinds of stuff in them and by the way this is not also this is not super new remember the old blue bottle uh ginseng lemon iced tea from from arizona iced tea back in the 90s like that was functional beverage yeah i guess josta this this was the first energy drink from the 90s.

37:03Oh, nice. That was a good one. Yeah. So anyway, I find some of them to be delicious. I actually really love the poppy raspberry rose flavor. I think it's great. I had some of the Olipop stuff just doesn't work for me. And I think what I'm told is like, yeah, kids just think that tastes normal, you know. But I had one the other night that was like a banana cream. That's a new one. Yeah. It was crazy. Bananas good. That's a new release for them. It was crazy. Let's move on to the bar, the meal replacement bars are just like that. That area is always the interest, I think, to our listeners because we're all busy and we need something to hold us over.

37:39And it's like, am I going I'm going to a bar? Yeah. What have you seen in that space? I had I had a kind bar phase like everyone, I think, especially when I was traveling a lot. The frozen kind bar is way better than it should be. I don't know if you've ever tried. No, I haven't. It's like basically not ice cream, but kind of ice cream. Cool. I don't eat bars anymore. I think it's because I have like obnoxious, like I prioritize cooking and so I just cook a lot. So I don't seek out bars. But I was just thinking, what happened to that savory bar company? Was it called Slow Up or something like that?

38:11Yeah, sounds right. It was a little tricky because you had to refrigerate it. But I want more savory stuff in the world. I think so. I think the switch to savory and bitter is something that's interesting in the taste of us. Totally, yeah. Okay, the last category is plant-based meat. I feel like with all the VC money and all the, I mean, publicly traded money going, I mean, going into this category and seeming like it kind of is like burned on entry. A lot of these, a lot of these brands are, you know, not really doing it on Wall Street as they promised. And also for us, like we've all had the Burger King meatless burger and maybe we had it once, but I don't think we've had it three times.

38:47What do you think about that category? Yeah, the narrative is definitely in the toilet right now. Yeah, bad news for those guys. So two things. One is in our survey work, the consumer interest in plant-based alternative meats has not collapsed and is actually up over the last year among certain age groups. Now, those are surveys. So who knows? Like, we'll see what happens. But I think there's a lot hinging on this kind of next crop that are doing like beyond and impossible. We're very focused on kind of like replacing the burger, the crumbly meat. There are companies like Meaty, which is making a mushroom-based steak and a cutlet and that kind of stuff.

39:29It's more higher protein, less – hopefully less processed crap. It is still fake food, but it is actually based on, you know, an actual mushroom root and not, I don't know, whatever else. Stabilizers, unstabilizers. So we'll see. and there's a lot of money that's been invested in meaty. It's a very risky bet because they're building, you know, a facility to make their own stuff. And we'll have to see. So far I've tried it. It's not for me. I love just good chicken and good beef and good fish. But the key for me is can eventually, can technology make that stuff so that people can get protein for less money than they would a, you know, and be able to avoid eating crappy, you know, mass, mass, mass production chicken and beef and get sustenance for less money.

40:15because that's always, to me, the promise of where technology can actually be really helpful in food is making good things accessible to more people. So we don't know about that, but we definitely have seen interest, especially among younger people, if they could save money by switching to meat alternatives. I feel like the fake meat that bleeds kind of narrative is done. We're good with that. Yeah. And the other thing is like all the lab-grown meat. Like we'll really have to see what that comes into. That is years away. I think maybe there'll be an environmental situation where we have to have lab-grown meat, and maybe they're the first mover in that situation.

40:49And this is where I just don't know. Like, I don't know. How screwed are we from a just production? Like, how much good, quote-unquote, good beef and chicken can we actually make as an industrial society? Are we capping out on that, and are we just really going to have to switch to other things? Possibly. The plant-based investors hope so in many ways. Yeah, that's true. You know what I mean? But along those lines, like, people just want to eat more vegetables. That's what they tell me. They just want more good vegetables. And so that's great. Let's talk about QSR and chain restaurants. I feel like you are tapped into that world as well, which I think is great about why the new consumer is at Must Read.

41:23I feel you're tapping to many interests of ours, restaurants and shopping and cooking. So what is there a brand or chain that we should know about that you're interested in? Ooh. I'm fascinated by, I think Chipotle has, everyone here has heard of Chipotle. Yeah. I was like, that's a name I've heard of. I've not been excited by Chipotle. So what's fascinating to me is that Chipotle has orchestrated a turnaround in their business, which is very, very rare that companies can actually do a turnaround the way they have. And if you remember before they had their whole, was it E. coli? Like they had some really bad stuff happen.

41:57Very bad food safety issues. Yeah. They were in the business of starting new fast casual restaurants. They had ShopHouse, which was like a Southeast Asian concept that everyone hated except me. I really liked it. Dude, Nate Appelman was behind that. Yeah. He was from New York, and ShopHouse was dope. He's a great chef, and he was head of R &D for ShopHouse, I believe. It was way too salty, but it was great. And so now they're starting new restaurants again, which I think is cool. They have a new concept in Santa Monica that's kind of like Dig In, or like Goop Kitchen. It's funny because it's so straightforward, but it's still very hard to just find clean, real food that's not too overpriced, that's just like simply made and conveniently available.

42:40It's actually still way too hard to find that, which is also another thing where I think grocery prepared food, like if you want to talk about the future of the grocery store, just make us a better restaurant inside that grocery store. People are going to buy all kinds of stuff there. So that's one. Anything that I've had recently? We think about salad bar restaurants. It was an overcrowded market and now it's gotten less crowded. It seems some have gone away. Something weird. And I'm going to say this not for its food, but for kind of its business, one of its interesting business practices. I went to I went finally got to go back to Tokyo at the end of last year.

43:17And there's a sweet green knockoff there called Crisp. And what is interesting about Crisp is not anything about the food they serve. It's like, you know, kind of like a B plus sweet green, maybe B minus. But they actually publish all of their operational data in real time on their Web site, which is fascinating. Real time, like daily dumps of data? Yes, like you can go on there. You have to read it in Japanese or in Google Translate, but you can see which stores are doing well against their kind of targets, which menu items are selling in each store. Super fascinating. Wow, radical transparency.

43:51Like truly over the top transparency. It's kind of interesting. That's an interesting quirk about that. I feel like if we saw that in America, it would be fascinating for obviously folks like us who write about food, but also consumers. is like what's hot, what's popping. I mean, I'd love to know what's trending at certain restaurants like Taco Bell or Sweetgreen. I would be so curious. Just so like, am I missing out on a trend right here? Very much so. And obviously investors would love that too. Yeah, absolutely. So Dan, I saw your piece on Hay Day and I was fascinated because I've also picked up some cans of Hay Day canning, I think it's the name of the brand officially.

44:28And I was like, wow, this is really new and fresh to me. I linked up with the founder, and I think she's going to be on the show at some point. What interests you in Hay Day? And let's can food, man. That's a pretty big opportunity there for the right brand. Totally. I think it's cool. It's, you know, there are several things going right there. One is, and for those who don't know, although you've talked about it on previous shows, it's beans that come in their own sauce. And there's like a, I believe, an enchilada sauce or fajita sauce one. There's kimchi sesame. I love that one. There's a harissa one.

45:03With chickpeas, really good. There's a coconut curry one. So it's basically, you know, depending on your level of ambition, it could be a full meal or it could be part of a meal that's ready for you just to heat up and eat. Or you probably don't even need to heat it up. You could probably just eat it room temp if you wanted to. Absolutely. I mean, like, listen, I love a good room temp canned food. I mean, I'm a kid of the Midwest as well, and I think SpaghettiOs right out the can. Definitely one of those guys back in the day. Chef Boyardee, actually. That's my guy. Yeah. So it's well done. The flavors I've had are nice.

45:41Like it's good. It tastes good. The beans are good. The concept of, hey, we've made a hard part of your dinner or lunch or whatever for you already. Just, you know, pop this thing open is smart. I think it fits where, you know, if I were to zoom out on home cooking in general, like we had three, two years where people were putting way more effort than ever before into cooking every day at home because they had nothing else to do. I think there's still a carryover and that people still want to cook more at home. And especially, you know, in economic uncertainty, like a lot of restaurant spending is going to go back to grocery, but have higher standards for their own home cooking than they did before.

46:22So if Heyday can elevate your dinner or lunch that you're making for your family at home, I think that's awesome. And to me, as I wrote, like the canned bean section is still one of the few sections of the store that feels very antiquated. It's very private label focused. There's not a lot of flavored beans. There are some other ones. There's a dozen cousins. There's obviously been refried beans, you know, for a long time. Amy's has a bunch of those flavors. There's Somos and some other folks are doing more Mexican-flavored bean products. And Goya, I'm sure, has a bean and sauce askew, I would think, at some point.

47:01I would assume they have many, yeah. And it's an interesting category because it is dominated nationally by Goya and Bushes and then private label. So there's definitely opportunity. I think it's one of those categories where the grocery buyer at Whole Foods or any grocery store is like, oh cool finally someone's got something for me like we're gonna take you national right away we got the branding too from you know the the venice outline yeah outline does yeah we got a couple great charleston charleston based outline they do some really good stuff yeah i i like those guys i definitely want to reach out to them yeah yeah they're they're really cool yeah i talked to them before uh so i'm into it i think it's cool i it's the tricky part to me is um it's not super cheap.

47:45You know, you think a can of beans is like a dollar or a dollar 50. It's, it's four, four 50 or something like that. Um, so the real bargain buyer is going to maybe look a couple of times, but for a, you know, healthy protein packed dinner, it's pretty affordable. So yeah. Especially if you're cooking for a few people or, or whatever. So it's, it's interesting. Um, and beans are heavy, so they're not the kind of thing you're really going to buy direct consumer, but it is really a grocery play. As a new consumer, though, to use your great branding, I love that name of your publication. How do I get excited about the canned food aisle?

48:24I feel like that's the biggest challenge for anyone, right? Like getting people to go there and think you can actually get healthy food here. That was the beauty of Tin Fish, right? Like it was so profoundly uncool. And then you see a couple brands pop up like Scout and Fish Wife and a few others that are patagonia patagonia yeah i love that have like innovative products great branding are really good at building community online boom and now you have something interesting and you know you get someone creative is to make a t-shirt that says hot girls love tin fish or whatever it is and all of a sudden there's a movement you know um i don't know if that's going to happen with canned beans so readily like it is it is another kind of uncool product i think beans beans i don't know maybe people have uh bean ptsd from uh three years ago where i think a lot of people still have a lot of rancho gordo sitting in the pantry granted those take a lot longer steve sandu bless that guy man he he really rolled with a lot of demand for that bean club my god totally i mean but it's still this is different because i think yeah the rancho gordo model is like very cool and like that but that requires a lot of work right we needed to start cooking those beans yesterday, whereas payday, you know, okay, in four minutes, we could be eating some stuff.

49:38So I think it's cool. I love that sort of thing. It's grocery. It's a hard business. It's going to be a tough slog, like raising money, getting inventory. I guess the good news is it doesn't spoil very quickly, but it's going to be tricky. But again, a great niche that is ready for reinvention. So I'm excited about something like that. It's exciting. What are you cooking at home. You've said you're one of the driving force of your home's food and cooking. What are you doing? I'm not a huge recipe guy. Wow. Okay. Shout. I like that. Which is not, you know, not What does that mean? I mean, listen, I love that statement, but what does it mean?

50:19So I read recipes more for inspiration than for direction. You know, a lot of times I will do it my way, but with kind of the idea. An example is we've been making, we've made like probably four times in the last few months, this really great, I'm guessing Melissa Clark or something from the New York Times cooking app of basically just like a sheet pan chicken, but with a Castle Votrano olive, I don't know if they call it a relish or whatever on top. I'm sure I'm not cooking it the way I'm supposed to in the recipe, but it is damn good. So you finish it with the relish or do you cook it with the?

50:55You finish it with room temper. Like a tamponade with like olive oil, olives, herbs. It's so good. Acid, yeah. Yeah, it's really delicious. You know, I try to make food that is recognizable. Yeah. That is like just – It's cool. I try to buy good meats and fish and serve vegetables. You know, one of the nice things about living in L.A. is really just access to great produce. And I try not to screw it up. I'm gluten intolerant So it's very hard for me to eat in Japanese restaurants Sushi obviously I can eat But like Chinese restaurants So I do try to cook that stuff at home Where I have control over the process It's nice when you can control it Are you a bonza guy?

51:37Are you on team bonza? Oh yeah, yes, absolutely Mac and cheese It's really good, honestly My son loves it too He doesn't even have to eat it He doesn't even have to eat it. It's for you too. Okay. That's cool. I like to get the insight because, you know, we could definitely be talking as like writers of food. And certainly I know plenty of food writers who don't cook that much and that's totally fine. But it's cool to know that you actually have some skills. I try to – well, so I learned from watching Alton Brown. Like I'm not as food science-y. I'm not like a Kenji level. Like I'm checking the temperature every two seconds.

52:12But I did try to learn technique in, you know, in cooking and just apply that to whatever is in front of me. I also have an irresponsible spice collection. Like I just buy one, you know, all kinds of stuff. I love an irresponsible. It's great. I mean, it's nice that when you have spices falling on top of you when you open the drawers. When we moved last year, I had to get rid of a bunch. Oh, man. Yeah, it was just like I so I love trying spices and I have probably 15 vinegars in the fridge right now. I love playing with ingredients and seeing what happens. Yeah. Now you're in New York. Where are you dining out?

52:44I have to ask where you're used to live here for 18 years. You said, and you moved to LA a few years ago. Yeah. Uh, I had a really nice meal at rule of thirds last night. I'm going to try to go to King if I can. That's like my kind of like, especially if I'm by myself, just go have a steak and a cocktail. Great call. You can't, can't do better than that. Yep. Um, you know what? I love Inde. I try to get Inde for lunch at least once a trip. Um, not, this trip has been very work focused. So less like dining out. But every time I'm here, you know, we try to go back to Four Horsemen. We love Four Horsemen.

53:19I love, I love wine bars that serve simple food. Simple but creative and interesting. Yeah. Just like the olives. Every single thing, like the, the, the tuna there, the, the, the carpaccio or the, even the salads. Stellar restaurant. Boom. Um, yeah. Great. Dan, we asked all guests in the Taste podcast. If you could write a cookbook or food culture book without the burden of time, meaning you have no deadline, or the burden of budget, meaning you have all the money in the world to execute this book, what would that be? So I came close to pitching a savory cocktail book at some point. My wife actually wrote out the recipes on our honeymoon.

53:53I love you guys. We're like, we're at a bar. We're like, let's come up with some savory cocktails. So that's actually plausible. Not just the Bloody Mary, though? No, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, it's not the Bloody Mary. I have the file somewhere. No, not a Bloody Mary. Oh, wow. You're a Midwest guy. You're not a Bloody Mary fan? I, no. Yeah, fair. Yeah. I don't know. Fair. Yeah. I'm like a weird wine guy or a whiskey cocktail. A savory cocktail if you were thinking that. Give me a cocktail, yeah. You know, I grew up reading a lot of these books where people would start a job and do like a weird job for a year and then write a book about it.

54:30And so, you know, if budget were truly unlimited and I could move my family and let them have a nice life, I would love to do heat, but I would love to be like Jiro's intern or something like that. Like really understand sushi cooking in Tokyo or in Japan or something like that. Probably someone has done that. Maybe. I don't know. Well, for a book. I know like there are obviously chefs who've done that. Yeah, but like the immersive Bill Buford style for Jiro from like being super out of the, I mean, I think like Rice Noodle Fish, Roads and Kingdoms book on Japan, Matt Golding covered that. Yeah.

55:08I mean, but obviously there's room for more. I'd love to see that. It may not be commercially successful, but in terms of like how I would love to invest a period of time in my life, I think that could be really interesting. Dan, I hope, I mean, you're an ambitious guy. Hey, well, there's probably some cookbook folks listening to this. Probably. I think we definitely have a few tuned in. Dan Frommer, thank you so much for joining the Taste Podcast. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

55:34The Taste Podcast is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumber. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening. Thank you.