MATTHEW BEAUDIN: I ALMOST DIED TELLING THIS STORY / THE POWER OF ONE / STORIES FROM THE FIELD
Fell Into Food PodcastShow Notes
Most people talk about sustainability from a conference stage. Chef Matthew Beaudin talks about it from a trash beach in Ghana where someone just threatened to stab him.
Matthew is a VP of Culinary for Higher Education, and he's spent the last decade logging 250 to 280 days a year on the road — Vietnam, Ghana, the Mekong Delta, a barbecue joint in Texas where he got the last two sandwiches because he happened to be wearing his chef coat. He didn't set out to become a food journalist or a culinary advocate. He set out to see it for himself. And somewhere between going blind in a hotel room in Vietnam, coughing up blood, and making a connecting flight through South Korea while running a full-body infection — he decided that's exactly where he belongs.
This conversation goes everywhere. We talk about why he went all-in on higher ed dining, what a room full of CIA chef students taught him about Gen Z, and why sustainability isn't expensive — your restaurant is just greedy. We also get into the Cocoa Research Institute in Ghana, the first one ever built, and what it means that a group of scientists are racing to preserve the integrity of cocoa before we engineer it into something unrecognizable — the same way we did with corn and tomatoes.
Two small-town kids who had the same itch to get out. This one goes deep.
Socials Matthew Beaudin Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-beaudin-83424b14/
Time Stamps 0:00 — Intro: Why Matthew Beaudin's Work Hits Different 0:47 — Two Small Town Kids: Kansas, IL and Lincoln, NH 2:52 — VP Culinary Higher Ed — Why Now 7:10 — The CIA Speech He Thought Was Bombing (It Wasn't) 10:05 — Why Gen Z Actually Wants to Make a Difference 13:35 — How to Inject Real Change Through Contract Management 16:53 — Surge, Red Dye #40, and What We Actually Ate Growing Up 18:47 — The Last Brisket Sandwich in Texas 19:35 — LinkedIn and the Art of Sharing Real Moments 22:42 — AI Saturation and Betting on Being Real 24:31 — The Mekong Delta Boat That Almost Capsized 26:43 — Going Blind and Coughing Blood in a Vietnam Hotel at 3AM 28:12 — The Trash Beach in Ghana and Nearly Getting Stabbed 32:08 — Why He Uses His Platform for Voices That Can't Get Out 32:42 — "There's Something Broken in Me" 37:29 — Inside Ghana's Cocoa Research Institute with Cho Chocolate 42:09 — Sustainability Isn't Expensive — Your Restaurant Is Just Greedy 43:10 — Jeff's University Beef Program: What Actually Worked 45:32 — How Do You Actually Tell the Story to Diners? 48:15 — Fear of Doing Nothing 50:42 — What Matthew Eats When No One's Watching 52:40 — Advice for the Next Generation: Believe in the Power of One 54:19 — Where to Find Chef Matthew Beaudin
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