[00:00.780 --> 00:07.900]  So, I wasn't really sure if I was, like, in over my head speaking at a thing like this, because I didn't really know what the hell this is.
[00:09.460 --> 00:28.600]  I have, like, a food blog, and one of my... I have a nice army of, like, recipe testers and proofreaders who work with me, and one of them, I won't tell you who it is, was like, you should speak at this thing, because you did this weird shit that people would like.
[00:29.280 --> 00:31.480]  And I was like, okay, I'll do it.
[00:31.800 --> 00:31.920]  Whatever.
[00:32.140 --> 00:33.240]  I don't even know what it is.
[00:33.340 --> 00:34.460]  I'm just gonna go do it.
[00:35.580 --> 00:40.240]  And until last night, I didn't have a chance to, like, check out exactly what this is.
[00:41.240 --> 00:45.400]  And, like, I can barely do CSS.
[00:45.880 --> 00:50.580]  I'm not very tech savvy as much as I make a living online.
[00:50.580 --> 01:05.800]  And then I saw, like, all the other panels here are like, how to dox Ronald McDonald, how to, you know, dismember a cop with a laser printer.
[01:05.800 --> 01:10.420]  And I was like, all right, this is, this is perfect for me.
[01:10.780 --> 01:11.720]  I got this.
[01:11.860 --> 01:19.820]  So, I had a... Oh, by the way, I know this is, like, maybe gonna be a fire hazard or something.
[01:19.980 --> 01:23.360]  But I brought donuts for you guys if you guys want to eat.
[01:23.500 --> 01:26.000]  I made some vegan donuts early this morning.
[01:26.540 --> 01:27.720]  And they're there.
[01:27.940 --> 01:31.240]  And you can run up and grab one as long as he doesn't stop you.
[01:31.420 --> 01:36.940]  So, I probably didn't bring enough for everybody because I didn't know, like, what to expect.
[01:37.260 --> 01:44.200]  So, you may have to, like, do Lady and the Tramp style.
[01:45.520 --> 01:46.620]  Share the donuts.
[01:46.840 --> 01:47.120]  I don't know.
[01:47.260 --> 01:48.060]  Do whatever you want.
[01:49.060 --> 01:54.040]  So, I had this pretty popular food business before the pandemic.
[01:54.960 --> 01:57.200]  It was like a food truck business.
[01:57.200 --> 01:59.300]  We had a couple brick-and-mortar locations.
[01:59.520 --> 02:00.580]  It's all vegan food.
[02:03.020 --> 02:07.600]  And then the pandemic happened and I had to close everything down.
[02:07.620 --> 02:12.980]  And it was really perfect for me because that was crazy stressful.
[02:13.260 --> 02:19.460]  I had, like, 65 full-time employees and I'm not, like, a boss type of guy.
[02:20.400 --> 02:25.560]  I barely crawled my way out of high school with, like, a C average.
[02:26.580 --> 02:35.760]  And I was just really trying to make an impact in helping people to not eat animals by, like, presenting very yummy vegan food to them.
[02:37.360 --> 02:53.640]  And so, when I closed everything down and had, like, the first time in my adult life where I didn't have to be working because I had a kid really young, I had this, like, year where I could just go on really long walks with my elderly dog every day.
[02:54.020 --> 03:10.560]  And think about, like, how can I have that effect on society of moving people towards non-violence without putting myself in, like, an early grave from the stress of managing a lot of human beings and stuff.
[03:10.560 --> 03:23.400]  So, after my dog passed away, which was very sad, I was like, you know, I was teaching at culinary schools before the pandemic a little bit.
[03:23.540 --> 03:27.560]  And maybe I can start teaching online a little bit, which I've done.
[03:28.560 --> 03:34.960]  But I really missed, like, actually cooking for people in real life because it just makes me really happy.
[03:34.960 --> 03:38.600]  It's, like, it's stressful, but it's the most fun job.
[03:38.740 --> 03:43.740]  Like, people come up to you and you make them something yummy and they get really happy and they go away.
[03:43.840 --> 03:45.820]  And then you, like, do that over and over again.
[03:45.820 --> 03:48.140]  It's, like, the best thing to be addicted to.
[03:48.660 --> 03:50.600]  So, I really missed that.
[03:50.600 --> 04:06.180]  But I was like, man, modern food service has all these things about the way generally people market food now that really just didn't resonate with me personally.
[04:06.540 --> 04:10.140]  Like, first of all, like, I always feel like it's really weird.
[04:11.360 --> 04:14.580]  The idea of people, like, hyping their own food up.
[04:14.720 --> 04:16.460]  I feel like it's really...
[04:16.460 --> 04:18.880]  Like, it feels very dishonest to me.
[04:19.060 --> 04:22.740]  Like, me telling you, like, I got the best burger in town.
[04:23.120 --> 04:29.140]  And all that type of shit that goes along with modern social media marketing for food.
[04:29.140 --> 04:45.000]  And additionally, like, I also felt it's really encouraging a relationship with food in the modern world that I think is really unhealthy for society.
[04:45.000 --> 04:50.120]  Like, the objectification of food and how everything is like food porn.
[04:50.120 --> 04:55.380]  And it's just, the whole thing, I think it's very corny.
[04:55.580 --> 04:56.100]  You know?
[04:56.280 --> 05:08.020]  And at the height of my food truck and food business before the pandemic, you know, it was, like, really the height of all this, like, extra corny level of food service stuff.
[05:08.020 --> 05:12.800]  Like, oh, don't forget to check in on Foursquare that you were here.
[05:12.800 --> 05:17.640]  And don't forget to give us five stars on Yelp and all this stuff.
[05:17.780 --> 05:20.560]  And I just felt this is, like, so lame.
[05:21.020 --> 05:39.280]  Like, not only is it lame for the consumer, but it's so lame for, like, people who are in food service who are extra psyched about making yummy food to, like, divert their attention away from that to focusing on this, like, really trash flavor of marketing.
[05:40.700 --> 05:45.960]  So, I wanted to make food, but I also, I didn't want to make that much food.
[05:46.500 --> 05:53.800]  Like, I didn't want to be back in the position where I'd have to be managing 65 full-time employees.
[05:53.800 --> 05:55.480]  Because it's really no fun.
[05:55.680 --> 06:00.540]  Like, the more you're in that position, the less you're actually getting to cook for people.
[06:00.540 --> 06:06.520]  The more you're, like, having meetings with people and doing all this whack shit.
[06:08.200 --> 06:11.180]  And so I knew I wanted to keep it really small.
[06:11.340 --> 06:14.120]  And actually, so I have two very sweet kids.
[06:14.640 --> 06:18.600]  They're both, like, homeschooled, home-birthed kids.
[06:18.600 --> 06:26.520]  And they were really raised, you know, involved in our business, in our family's livelihood.
[06:27.540 --> 06:31.760]  And I thought, you know, my younger daughter's getting, she's, like, a teenager now.
[06:31.920 --> 06:33.820]  And I thought, she's so sweet.
[06:33.820 --> 06:39.580]  I'd love to spend our weekends doing this, like, part-time food service-y thing together.
[06:40.640 --> 06:43.720]  And not have it, like, fully take over my life.
[06:43.900 --> 06:48.080]  Where I'm, you know, it's, like, just something I'm doing because I want to be doing it.
[06:48.080 --> 06:56.180]  And because I think it's fun for other people and it's good for animals and encourages people to not eat animals.
[06:56.880 --> 07:02.300]  And so I intentionally was, like, I got to find a way to market this.
[07:02.580 --> 07:10.120]  But, like, just enough so that it's busy enough that me and my younger daughter can keep up with it.
[07:10.120 --> 07:14.220]  But it's not so busy that, like, I've got to start hiring employees.
[07:14.220 --> 07:16.060]  Because I'm just, I'm really over that.
[07:16.280 --> 07:20.140]  I don't know if I'm ever going to have another employee again in my life.
[07:22.720 --> 07:25.500]  So, I had lots of time to think about this.
[07:25.920 --> 07:33.060]  And I built, I started building out this, like, custom trailer thing to serve the food out of.
[07:33.140 --> 07:35.300]  Because I really like mobile food service.
[07:35.300 --> 07:36.360]  I think it's really fun.
[07:36.820 --> 07:41.140]  I like to make things as complicated for myself as possible.
[07:41.280 --> 07:45.660]  And mobile food service has, like, every fucking problem a restaurant has.
[07:45.800 --> 07:49.000]  But it gets a flat tire and you get parking.
[07:49.200 --> 07:54.060]  Like, so, the more, like, chaos I can give myself, it just really lights me up.
[07:54.140 --> 07:56.880]  So, I was putting this trailer together.
[07:57.000 --> 08:03.240]  And first of all, I knew I wanted it to, like, look very different from what I had created previously.
[08:04.300 --> 08:06.100]  Which was, like, very colorful.
[08:06.460 --> 08:10.380]  And this one I wanted to make, like, much more refined.
[08:10.380 --> 08:16.180]  Like, I designed all these laser cut steel panels that I clad the outside of it in.
[08:16.600 --> 08:23.400]  And my idea was to run it more like a pop-up outdoor restaurant than, like, any kind of food truck.
[08:23.400 --> 08:30.380]  So, I built these nice wooden counters on it where people could sit and eat while I cooked for them.
[08:30.600 --> 08:34.100]  And we would bring out, like, tables and chairs and all this sort of stuff.
[08:35.640 --> 08:44.860]  And I, like with my food truck project, like, I didn't really plan exactly what the fuck I was going to do with it until it was, like, time to go.
[08:44.860 --> 08:52.360]  But I knew I wanted to do much more beautiful, refined food and make it really super affordable.
[08:52.600 --> 09:07.100]  In fact, I really wanted to use this project to do everything differently from not just what I was doing previously, but from, like, all the kind of current trends I see in modern retail food service.
[09:07.100 --> 09:13.660]  You know, like, I really didn't want to build a thing where you come up to order and there's just, like, somebody staring at an iPad.
[09:14.020 --> 09:18.940]  And there's this, like, barrier between you and the person who's cooking for you.
[09:19.020 --> 09:25.740]  I wanted it to be really personable and hospitable and just, like, alive.
[09:26.480 --> 09:32.320]  So, I knew there were, like, certain pieces of tech, in fact, that, like, I knew I wanted to cut out of this project.
[09:32.320 --> 09:34.620]  I didn't want to accept credit cards.
[09:34.820 --> 09:40.480]  That would mean I wouldn't need to have a mobile router on this thing to process transactions.
[09:41.640 --> 09:45.020]  And I wouldn't need to even have a point of sale system at all.
[09:45.160 --> 09:48.040]  We could just, like, go back to old school, like, writing tickets.
[09:48.040 --> 10:01.600]  And it's just me and my daughter, so I'm not worrying about, like, money going missing from the drawer or any of these headaches that are kind of, like, presented to people in the restaurant industry as the reasons to adopt that kind of technology.
[10:03.300 --> 10:07.280]  So, I knew I didn't want to do social media for this.
[10:07.420 --> 10:14.980]  I knew I wanted to intentionally keep it small and very, like, live and lively.
[10:16.100 --> 10:24.600]  And so, and this, I'll get in a minute, I'll get to, like, what the heck I was actually doing with the food.
[10:24.700 --> 10:27.700]  Because to me, that's, like, the most fun, interesting part of this whole thing.
[10:27.700 --> 10:35.060]  But first, I had to figure out, like, how am I going to let, like, some people know about this, but not everybody know about this?
[10:35.140 --> 10:36.760]  Because I had, like, a pretty big following.
[10:36.900 --> 10:45.920]  In fact, just before I came here today, I was meeting with, like, a really close friend of mine who had a big vegan business in New York.
[10:47.580 --> 10:55.280]  And she didn't even know I had launched this, which was, like, it made me so happy to know that, like, people kind of close to me didn't even know this was going on.
[10:58.100 --> 11:07.780]  So, and then at the same time, like, I didn't want to be so elusive with it that, like, random people couldn't just, like, stumble upon it and find it out that way.
[11:07.780 --> 11:14.540]  Like, I was kind of down with it being, like, really hard to find it, but also very easy to find it at the same time.
[11:15.920 --> 11:18.100]  Sorry, I'm, like, really complicated.
[11:18.680 --> 11:23.780]  Anyway, so, my idea was that, you know, I live out in New Jersey.
[11:24.340 --> 11:34.180]  It's the only way I can live near New York with a wallaby, because we do, like, a lot of animal rescue stuff, and we live with a wallaby in our house.
[11:34.720 --> 11:36.960]  Which I don't recommend, by the way.
[11:36.960 --> 11:40.060]  If you're thinking about it, just stop right now.
[11:40.060 --> 11:40.960]  This sucks.
[11:41.260 --> 11:45.180]  He's really cute, but, like, they will shit up your house.
[11:45.820 --> 11:47.280]  And they won't stop.
[11:47.540 --> 11:50.800]  Like, he's never going to know his own name and come when you call him.
[11:50.800 --> 11:53.680]  He's just, like, on that wallaby level.
[11:53.980 --> 11:56.080]  Anyway, we live out in New Jersey.
[11:56.080 --> 12:01.000]  And I was like, man, New Jersey Transit is really good about one thing.
[12:01.260 --> 12:07.760]  They just let any person advertise who will give them money, you know?
[12:08.320 --> 12:19.880]  And because of that, the platforms of the New Jersey Transit coastline are just rife with, like, the most poorly designed billboards.
[12:19.880 --> 12:28.780]  You know, like, local realtors who's, like, probably, like, their son did the graphic design in Canva.
[12:28.780 --> 12:31.220]  And it looks like hot garbage.
[12:31.640 --> 12:42.280]  And, you know, I went out with, like, a pretty good camera and took, like, very high resolution photos of the worst billboards I could find.
[12:43.020 --> 12:50.300]  And then I scrubbed out all the intelligible language from them.
[12:50.420 --> 12:53.580]  So it was just, like, the picture and the background and stuff.
[12:54.200 --> 13:02.960]  And I put together this, like, special custom font where every letter was just, like, a different geometric symbol.
[13:04.040 --> 13:12.020]  And I had the idea, like, alright, I'm gonna rewrite these billboards in this shit nobody can read, like, alien hieroglyphics.
[13:12.900 --> 13:19.120]  But I want, like, some people to be able to figure out what this says so they can, like, find my food thing, of course.
[13:19.320 --> 13:21.300]  You know, like, I'm an expert marketer.
[13:21.300 --> 13:32.860]  So I set up a little, like, key in different parts of these billboards, like a little, like a grid, right?
[13:33.060 --> 13:35.860]  So there'd be, like, rows and columns or whatever.
[13:36.080 --> 13:42.860]  And then the only thing that I made legible on the billboard was a phone number.
[13:43.620 --> 13:47.020]  And the phone number went to, like, a Google Voice mailbox.
[13:49.540 --> 13:53.700]  Before I was in food service, I used to do, like, a lot of audio engineering.
[13:54.220 --> 14:01.080]  I used to make this music for people to, like, eat a lot of LSD and dance to all night.
[14:02.840 --> 14:05.000]  And not that I did that.
[14:05.520 --> 14:07.200]  Just, like, for other people.
[14:10.400 --> 14:16.900]  But, so I was really adept at manipulating audio and making it sound fucked up.
[14:18.180 --> 14:29.800]  So the voicemail recording, if you called the hotline, was this, like, really crazy sounding synthetic voice that was being, like, fucked with.
[14:30.060 --> 14:34.660]  You know, like, all kinds of manipulation of the audio going on.
[14:34.660 --> 14:38.920]  And it read out this, like, way of decoding the key.
[14:39.200 --> 14:50.700]  Like, it would give you, like, the numbered row and the lettered column, followed by, like, a word that started with the letter that that symbol would represent.
[14:50.700 --> 14:55.240]  Like, I'm sure you could come up with crazier, more complicated, more fun ways to do it.
[14:55.320 --> 14:57.780]  But I wanted to make this, like, doable.
[14:58.200 --> 15:03.140]  You know, like, I didn't... I was making it hard enough for the average person who just wants to eat food.
[15:05.620 --> 15:19.820]  And then, if you looked at the billboard and, like, decoded it, it would give you this address for a website, which, unfortunately, is no longer up because it was really cool.
[15:19.820 --> 15:25.120]  It looked a lot like a kid's MySpace page from back in the day.
[15:25.260 --> 15:30.620]  Like, all this, like, glittering, spinning letters and, like, really distracting.
[15:30.640 --> 15:35.660]  And it was very unclear that you would reach the website of a food business at all.
[15:35.680 --> 15:40.940]  Because this food business, as you can read, like, this is the logo for this food business.
[15:40.940 --> 15:44.320]  It's called Galactic Mega Stallion.
[15:44.420 --> 15:49.940]  And it's, like, got a... it's got a spooky cosmic pony aesthetic.
[15:50.680 --> 16:03.620]  So, naturally, I gave this website, like, while it was really, like, glittery and spinning letters vibe, it was also very clear you had reached some kind of equestrian website.
[16:04.200 --> 16:08.720]  Like, and there was a lot of stuff on the screen that was not true.
[16:08.720 --> 16:10.300]  I'm gonna tell you now.
[16:10.500 --> 16:17.120]  Like, there was a banner ad saying that we've been selected as one of...
[16:17.120 --> 16:20.020]  on Britney's top horse sites.
[16:20.340 --> 16:21.560]  It said that.
[16:21.940 --> 16:28.000]  It also announced very proudly that we were on social media, which we were not on.
[16:28.160 --> 16:33.460]  And there was also a thing you could try to click to email us, and that didn't work.
[16:33.460 --> 16:48.620]  But had you transcribed the billboard, you also got, like, login credentials to, like, the backside of this site, which I made as scary-looking as I could.
[16:48.740 --> 16:59.020]  And it just had, like, the GPS coordinates for where you could find this food cart thing and some other, like, basic information on time that we would be there.
[17:00.520 --> 17:04.540]  What was nice is, like, some of... some people just, like, found us.
[17:04.620 --> 17:08.660]  And I knew, like, word-of-mouth thing would happen, and that's fine with me, too.
[17:09.500 --> 17:26.580]  But then, you know, when I was much younger, part of the reason I was, like, a C average student in high school was I spent a lot of time getting kicked out of school for doing various types of vandalism.
[17:27.520 --> 17:35.640]  One of the schools I got kicked out of was the school's office looked out the window and saw me graffitiing a cop car.
[17:36.000 --> 17:37.680]  I was... it was, like, really bad.
[17:37.900 --> 17:42.040]  Like, I tried to make my kids not do that sort of stuff.
[17:44.640 --> 18:00.060]  But when I was, like, all right, I'm gonna put up these billboards now, the first night I went out, I was, like, re-pasting these right up over the identical billboards that they were, like, rewritten versions of so that, you know, commuters in the morning would come in and see that same,
[18:00.120 --> 18:07.540]  like, shitty designed billboard that they see every day, but, like, now it's written in, like, you know, symbols and stuff.
[18:08.560 --> 18:10.320]  And it was, like, sketchy.
[18:10.460 --> 18:14.980]  Like, my town in New Jersey, there's, like, a lot of police presence out three, four in the morning.
[18:15.920 --> 18:23.520]  And, like, you stand out like a sore thumb, like, gluing shit up on the New Jersey transit platform at that hour.
[18:25.100 --> 18:29.640]  So, I was, like, man, I already printed, like, hundreds of these billboards.
[18:30.160 --> 18:31.820]  Like, what am I gonna do now?
[18:31.940 --> 18:32.280]  I don't know.
[18:32.420 --> 18:35.980]  I, like, I really can't afford to get arrested at this stage in my life.
[18:35.980 --> 18:50.800]  Like, I, my older daughter's in college, you know, like, I'm trying to, like, you know, put my, put my parents into, like, be able to buy, like, a mother-daughter so one of them can move in with us if the other one passes away eventually.
[18:51.000 --> 18:54.340]  Like, I can't be, like, going to jail, getting fines, you know?
[18:55.120 --> 19:00.060]  So, I was, like, you know, the easiest way for me to put these all up is just...
[19:00.060 --> 19:02.920]  I ordered up, like, some khaki pants.
[19:03.760 --> 19:06.840]  I got a vest and a hard hat.
[19:07.300 --> 19:11.840]  And I just, like, started doing this shit in broad daylight, like, midday.
[19:12.060 --> 19:14.960]  Like, I'd wave to the cops going onto the platform.
[19:14.960 --> 19:18.160]  Like, I'm all, like, dressed in my security-looking shit.
[19:19.060 --> 19:25.300]  And I just all summer was, like, going up and down the New Jersey coastline, like, putting up these billboards.
[19:25.420 --> 19:33.780]  And, you know, like, sometimes, like, I would do, like, a whole side of the, you know, like, the whole northbound side or the whole southbound side of a station.
[19:34.900 --> 19:36.880]  And, like, I'd be there for a long time.
[19:37.000 --> 19:37.660]  It takes a while.
[19:37.800 --> 19:40.780]  Like, you've got to put these things up in pieces because they're big billboards.
[19:40.780 --> 19:45.360]  So, you know, each one maybe is, like, four giant prints you're pasting up.
[19:46.660 --> 19:48.880]  And so, like, I'd be there for a while.
[19:48.880 --> 19:55.120]  And, like, you know, people would come on and, like, ask me questions about when the next train is coming and all this shit.
[19:55.120 --> 19:55.780]  I don't know.
[19:56.300 --> 19:56.740]  Like...
[19:58.600 --> 20:01.580]  So, yeah, like, I spent a while doing that.
[20:01.600 --> 20:02.500]  And it was really fun.
[20:02.640 --> 20:10.420]  It was, like, so much more fun than, like, posting on, you know, Instagram, come eat my food because my food's so good or whatever.
[20:12.160 --> 20:15.340]  And so then, a few years ago, I launched this thing.
[20:15.520 --> 20:19.020]  And what it is, like, I think is really fun.
[20:19.140 --> 20:25.720]  Because part of what I also wanted to do something different then is I'd grown this food business before the pandemic.
[20:25.840 --> 20:27.260]  And people really loved it.
[20:27.480 --> 20:30.220]  Like, I kind of can't relate to it.
[20:30.240 --> 20:33.400]  Like, I never want to stand on a line for food.
[20:33.400 --> 20:42.300]  But we had, like, every day just about in New York City, our food truck had, like, an over block long line at some point during the day.
[20:42.400 --> 20:47.840]  Some spots it would be, like, from the minute we opened, it would be, like, a full city block long line for our food.
[20:48.920 --> 20:51.180]  Which, like, I can't really get.
[20:51.340 --> 21:03.380]  And one of the things that was, like, a double-edged sword of that popularity was it really made it difficult to do, like, whatever I wanted all the time with it.
[21:03.500 --> 21:07.640]  You know, like, I couldn't keep, like, drastically changing up the menu regularly.
[21:07.940 --> 21:10.080]  I would do, like, little seasonal changes.
[21:10.080 --> 21:20.740]  But there were certain things, like, if I took off the menu, there would be people with, like, pitchforks and, you know, torches, like, ready to get me that I took their favorite thing off.
[21:20.740 --> 21:30.600]  And it really became very stifling for me, creatively, to, like, basically have to, like, work within the same motif all the time.
[21:31.220 --> 21:36.360]  So, one of the things with this new food business I wanted to do was, like, fuck that.
[21:36.580 --> 21:48.160]  Like, A, I really like the creative freedom that sometimes working within, like, a structure or some kind of, like, creative confines forces you to do, right?
[21:48.160 --> 21:51.460]  Like, graffiti art is, like, a perfect example.
[21:51.660 --> 22:01.020]  You know, like, working with letters and stylizing letters, you can go into so many cool creative flavors of those letters and styles, right?
[22:01.180 --> 22:04.980]  But you're still, like, working within that framework of imagery.
[22:05.160 --> 22:12.760]  And so I wanted to have, like, a similar confines to work in, but, like, something that I could go really deep into.
[22:12.760 --> 22:18.100]  And so what I decided to do was, every season that I would operate this thing...
[22:18.100 --> 22:21.300]  Hold on a sec, I gotta get that sip.
[22:23.860 --> 22:31.780]  Every season that I would operate this thing, I was gonna do, like, a completely different, like, style or theme with it, right?
[22:31.920 --> 22:35.800]  So, like, the first year I did all, like, Turkish and Middle Eastern things.
[22:36.780 --> 22:43.400]  The second year I was doing all, like, Malaysian and Indonesian cuisine, because I spend a lot of time in both of those places.
[22:44.260 --> 22:44.700]  And...
[22:45.400 --> 22:59.460]  But within that year's theme, I wanted, like, every single week that I'd be out doing it, I wanted it to have, like, a 100% different menu, like, riffing off of that theme, and kind of exploring different nuances.
[22:59.460 --> 23:06.380]  The other thing, and this is probably, like, the number one thing that is gonna make people walk out of my talk now.
[23:06.920 --> 23:09.360]  Like, I'm a kind of religious person.
[23:09.660 --> 23:11.100]  Sorry about that.
[23:11.660 --> 23:12.220]  Bye!
[23:14.500 --> 23:15.060]  And...
[23:15.060 --> 23:24.940]  So, I also wanted to, like, cook in a way that, like, aligns with my flavor of spirituality, which my wife and I practice.
[23:24.940 --> 23:28.220]  And we're, like, Hare Krishnas.
[23:28.460 --> 23:30.680]  And so, we don't cook with onions and garlic.
[23:31.040 --> 23:35.620]  We also, like, eat food that's sanctified, that's, like, offered to deities.
[23:35.620 --> 23:41.280]  And I get it if you guys, like, don't know why somebody would do that.
[23:41.340 --> 23:41.780]  We can...
[23:41.780 --> 23:46.660]  If you guys want to ask me questions about that at the end of the talk, it's radical stuff.
[23:46.660 --> 23:55.980]  I was blown away when I, like, started to dip my toe into, like, radical personalism and the relationship with...
[23:56.300 --> 23:56.500]  Anyway.
[23:56.980 --> 24:01.800]  So, I installed these really beautiful deities on the food cart.
[24:01.800 --> 24:03.520]  Like, I have, like, an altar on there.
[24:03.660 --> 24:16.780]  And they're really very special deities carved from the wood of the Siddha Bakula tree in Puri, which is, like, a place of spiritual pilgrimage in South India.
[24:17.860 --> 24:18.400]  Anyway.
[24:18.600 --> 24:32.600]  So, in addition to the challenge of making the menu 100% different every single week, I was also trying to make this food, like, hyper, hyper flavorful without having to rely on onions and garlic.
[24:33.060 --> 24:36.060]  Which, to me, is, like, such a fun culinary challenge.
[24:36.060 --> 24:38.060]  Because that's an easy way out.
[24:38.220 --> 24:38.620]  You know?
[24:38.720 --> 24:43.160]  You put onions and garlic in, like, fucking anything and it's tasty, you know?
[24:43.160 --> 24:55.840]  So, to cook without those things, you really have to, like, find all these interesting other nuances and pungency from other things that you can use in the food.
[24:55.900 --> 25:01.320]  I mean, especially, like, Southeast Asian food is, like, super, like, shalloty and garlicky.
[25:01.380 --> 25:12.560]  So, making sambals and stuff like that that's involved in Southeast Asian cuisine, you really gotta get creative to, like, find other ways to present intense flavor without those.
[25:12.560 --> 25:14.560]  So, yeah.
[25:15.220 --> 25:18.960]  So, that was, like, kind of my plan.
[25:20.020 --> 25:26.060]  And part of the freedom it gave me is to be, like, very flexible with it.
[25:26.140 --> 25:33.100]  Like, for instance, this summer, my younger daughter, who normally does this thing with me, is out of the country.
[25:33.100 --> 25:37.500]  She's, like, traveling on her own in Europe right now, which is super cool.
[25:37.500 --> 25:41.380]  She's, like, working as an au pair for somebody in Spain.
[25:41.400 --> 25:44.540]  And, like, I didn't want to do it with somebody else.
[25:44.720 --> 25:48.760]  Like, it's so nice to get to, like, work with my daughter every weekend.
[25:48.760 --> 25:59.620]  And we both really look forward to it in a way that wasn't like that when I was, like, operating a food business with employees who are, like, just there because they gotta get paid for the most part.
[26:01.040 --> 26:06.540]  So, like, that's how I can be here right now is, like, I'm not doing it tomorrow, which I normally would be.
[26:07.400 --> 26:21.240]  And doing it all myself means, like, dude, that's, like, 50 hours of work a week to do this, like, one pop-up if I'm gonna make a 100% different menu every time and prep all the different little components.
[26:21.240 --> 26:31.680]  So, the food itself, if any of you are interested, maybe none of you guys give a shit about that, but the food itself, like, A, I wanted to make it really, really affordable.
[26:31.680 --> 26:38.700]  Because that's the other thing, like, I'm not about in modern food service, which is an understandable issue.
[26:39.540 --> 26:48.480]  Like, it's very hard for businesses, particularly brick-and-mortar food businesses who have, like, so much overhead to be profitable.
[26:48.480 --> 27:03.780]  Like, you know, with the rising cost of ingredients and the rising cost of labor and the fact that coming to the end of the pandemic, like, a lot of the population had been out of work and didn't have the resources to be dining out as much.
[27:04.160 --> 27:11.960]  So, a lot of food businesses, which you probably noticed, were able to, like, rise to that challenge by, like, cutting more and more corners.
[27:12.160 --> 27:22.800]  You know, portion sizes getting really, really small, prices going up, the quality of, like, the oil they're cooking going down, all these kinds of ways people find to be more profitable.
[27:22.800 --> 27:35.240]  And what was cool for me about this project, and this is, like, totally a privilege to be in this position, was, you know, this is something I was doing exclusively because I wanted to.
[27:37.100 --> 27:39.660]  I maybe break even on it.
[27:39.700 --> 27:42.260]  It's a lot of work to maybe break even on.
[27:42.260 --> 27:46.380]  But, you know, like, I do culinary consulting for other people's food businesses.
[27:46.660 --> 27:50.140]  I do five or six very, like, high-ticket weddings a year.
[27:50.380 --> 27:58.440]  I have this food blog that brings me in ad revenue and, like, a membership thing where people take classes I teach on cooking.
[27:58.960 --> 28:03.540]  And so, this was something that, like, I didn't need it to be particularly profitable.
[28:03.740 --> 28:11.440]  In fact, like, if I lost, like, a hundred bucks a week doing this, but, like, I got to make the dopest food I could imagine, and that's great.
[28:11.440 --> 28:14.640]  That's, like, a small price for me to pay to get to share that with people.
[28:14.920 --> 28:25.380]  So, the food was, like, like, I wanted to make it really defy people's expectations of what they would get from a mobile food service-y thing.
[28:26.780 --> 28:32.340]  So, everything was served in, you know, those, like, red and white french fry boats?
[28:32.760 --> 28:34.080]  You know, those little paper ones?
[28:34.220 --> 28:35.680]  They come in, like, all different sizes.
[28:35.700 --> 28:45.320]  So, I would get, like, little ones and do these, like, really beautiful little, like, stacked-up entree things with all kinds of crazy garnishes and make it look extra pretty.
[28:46.400 --> 28:52.980]  And, you know, for the last few years doing this, like, I never had a single menu item I had to charge more than ten bucks for.
[28:53.080 --> 28:56.360]  Like, most of the stuff is, like, between four and eight dollars.
[28:56.540 --> 28:58.240]  So, you could get, like, a few different things.
[28:59.260 --> 29:00.600]  And that's what people do.
[29:00.720 --> 29:06.240]  Like, they come out and it's, like, almost like a really affordable, very beautiful vegan-tasting menu.
[29:06.240 --> 29:08.920]  And every week it's, like, totally different shit.
[29:09.180 --> 29:10.860]  So, it's fun for me.
[29:11.060 --> 29:13.620]  And hopefully fun for other people.
[29:13.700 --> 29:14.840]  I have no clue.
[29:15.160 --> 29:16.300]  Maybe people hate it.
[29:16.360 --> 29:17.540]  I really don't know.
[29:17.680 --> 29:21.820]  But it's, I think it's been working out okay so far.
[29:23.280 --> 29:27.360]  I don't know if there was other stuff I wanted to talk about about this.
[29:28.600 --> 29:29.540]  Maybe not.
[29:30.380 --> 29:33.520]  So, I'm happy to take any questions.
[29:33.940 --> 29:35.340]  And it can be anything.
[29:35.340 --> 29:37.840]  If you want to talk to me about wallabies.
[29:38.280 --> 29:41.700]  If you want to pick my brains about vegan cooking.
[29:43.900 --> 29:44.860]  If you...
[29:44.860 --> 29:45.800]  Whatever.
[29:46.280 --> 29:46.760]  Whatever.
[29:47.460 --> 29:48.280]  It's okay.
[29:49.220 --> 29:50.180]  Let's do it.
[29:50.560 --> 29:52.040]  Thank you for doing it.
[29:52.140 --> 29:52.460]  Oh!
[29:52.800 --> 29:54.040]  Thanks for eating the doughnut.
[29:59.300 --> 29:59.880]  All right.
[30:01.580 --> 30:02.340]  Thank you, Adam.
[30:02.620 --> 30:04.800]  We're going to have a Q&A period.
[30:05.020 --> 30:09.240]  If you are on Matrix, please make sure you at tag ManChicken and I will ask the question on your behalf.
[30:09.480 --> 30:12.540]  And I will intersperse Matrix questions with audience questions.
[30:13.320 --> 30:14.320]  We have two mics.
[30:15.300 --> 30:16.820]  And I will...
[30:16.820 --> 30:19.160]  I'll call on people to ask their question.
[30:20.980 --> 30:21.860]  Thank you much.
[30:22.760 --> 30:23.800]  Delicious doughnut.
[30:24.220 --> 30:24.620]  Thank you.
[30:25.300 --> 30:25.620]  Yeah.
[30:25.740 --> 30:26.060]  I loved it.
[30:26.800 --> 30:27.780]  Two questions.
[30:27.920 --> 30:28.280]  Quick ones.
[30:28.520 --> 30:28.640]  Okay.
[30:28.840 --> 30:32.560]  Would you be willing to share what the restaurant pre-pandemic was?
[30:32.760 --> 30:33.240]  Oh, yeah.
[30:33.380 --> 30:35.420]  It was called the Cinnamon Snail.
[30:35.600 --> 30:35.880]  Okay.
[30:36.200 --> 30:42.480]  And like that's my website still that I use for my food blog and for my classes and stuff.
[30:43.280 --> 30:48.500]  I'm sorry I'm not that good about like remembering to self-promote.
[30:48.620 --> 30:48.640]  No, no.
[30:48.640 --> 30:48.960]  But yeah, yeah.
[30:49.060 --> 30:51.860]  It's called Cinnamon Snail.
[30:52.060 --> 30:52.360]  Cool.
[30:52.900 --> 31:00.660]  The other one, what is like the reason Hari Krishna don't use onions or garlic?
[31:00.660 --> 31:01.520]  Okay.
[31:01.780 --> 31:05.360]  So, it's kind of a multi-faceted question.
[31:06.800 --> 31:17.480]  The like probably less relatable answer for that is because we offer all of our food to like to God.
[31:17.480 --> 31:33.060]  And in our system of faith, we believe that God, because God is unlimited, like one of the facets of being unlimited is that God also has to be unlimitedly limited, right?
[31:33.280 --> 31:42.980]  Like this is actually, this is going to be like such a bag of worms, but you know, like I grew up in like a loosely jewish-y family.
[31:42.980 --> 32:03.340]  And one of the things that always turned me off from that system of faith was there's this real rejection of like a personal connection to God in that like there's no representations of God or real like discussion of God being a person like with specific preferences and form and name.
[32:04.160 --> 32:29.120]  And in the Hari Krishna faith and in various like sects of Hinduism, the idea is that like that's one true aspect of the Supreme, but like the higher reality is that God is also a person and God has like unlimited possible forms.
[32:29.640 --> 32:33.400]  And that's what makes like devotion possible.
[32:33.540 --> 32:47.280]  Like for instance, like if you're coming over to my house and I want to serve you, but I like pretend you don't have any preferences and like I don't know that you're gluten free or whatever and I just make you what I want.
[32:47.560 --> 32:52.940]  Like I'm kind of like just being devoted to myself and like I hope you like what I made for me.
[32:53.220 --> 32:59.440]  But if I really want to serve you, like I want to get to know who you are and what you actually love and don't love.
[32:59.440 --> 33:09.680]  So, like according to the Vedas and the Puranas, Krishna is described as having various preferences and forms.
[33:09.880 --> 33:13.060]  And one of them is that he doesn't accept onions and garlic.
[33:13.300 --> 33:17.500]  But that's the like super less relatable answer.
[33:17.640 --> 33:40.740]  I mean there's other, like if you are really serious about meditation and like focusing on particularly mantra meditation, which is like also a form of concentration, like foods that make your senses like more enlivened and more like bewildered, make it harder to focus on that eternal thing that is
[33:40.740 --> 33:41.500]  unmoving.
[33:41.820 --> 33:42.400]  Cool.
[33:42.680 --> 33:42.800]  Yeah.
[33:43.020 --> 33:43.400]  Thank you.
[33:43.640 --> 33:43.820]  Yeah.
[33:46.200 --> 33:48.300]  I have one question from Matrix for you.
[33:49.320 --> 33:51.980]  What was the response to your gorilla advertising?
[33:53.220 --> 34:14.380]  So, you know, one thing I didn't mention is that in addition to putting up these billboards, I also did send out press releases which were just like a similar kind of like print out of like these symbols as like, and it's something they could have figured out.
[34:14.540 --> 34:20.260]  But it was like really beautifully printed, like a really high-end wedding invitation or something.
[34:20.260 --> 34:29.580]  Um, and I don't really have the sense of which people figured it out and which people just stumbled upon me.
[34:29.660 --> 34:37.740]  But a good handful of people did come to our thing and had like shown me how they like figured out the whole code and all this stuff.
[34:37.940 --> 34:41.380]  And I was like, wow, you're a lot smarter than me.
[34:41.380 --> 34:44.380]  Um, so some people really liked it.
[34:44.960 --> 34:54.860]  Um, I think with everything about like criminal-flavored artwork, there's always like a contingent of people who like find it to be very offensive.
[34:56.300 --> 34:58.800]  And I don't know, fuck those people.
[34:58.920 --> 34:59.280]  I don't know.
[34:59.460 --> 35:01.620]  It's not, I think that's really lame.
[35:01.620 --> 35:05.820]  You want like some corporate-ass billboard instead of like my crazy shit.
[35:06.000 --> 35:07.580]  But I don't know.
[35:07.720 --> 35:08.600]  It's, it's okay.
[35:09.320 --> 35:11.100]  I don't know if that answers the question.
[35:11.500 --> 35:11.960]  Hopefully.
[35:13.780 --> 35:14.240]  Hi.
[35:14.620 --> 35:16.460]  Um, thank you for the donuts and the talk.
[35:16.460 --> 35:16.960]  Yeah.
[35:17.240 --> 35:22.480]  Um, I'm curious if over time you watched like the marketing change kind of out of your control.
[35:22.780 --> 35:29.860]  Like I'm imagining that, you know, initially some of these people are coming in through these billboards, you know, and solving these, you know, these puzzles.
[35:30.320 --> 35:40.300]  But, you know, eventually there's just word of mouth or people have like unverified, um, like Google, you know, uh, Google or like Yelp things that you can put in like the businesses.
[35:40.560 --> 35:45.720]  So I'm kind of curious if you like ever saw a shift where different volume or more volume came in.
[35:46.460 --> 35:46.580]  All right.
[35:46.780 --> 35:54.000]  Um, well, first of all, I don't continue to put these up and New Jersey transit somewhat vigilant about taking the shit down.
[35:54.100 --> 36:11.960]  I did put these up like in other non New Jersey transit related places, but they're not trying to have like, I mean, the fact that they looked very much like the original billboards that should have been there gave them a little more shelf life, but I'd have to like make this my new job putting
[36:11.960 --> 36:17.280]  those things up forever if I wanted it to continue to be like the way people found out about this.
[36:17.440 --> 36:21.660]  And I knew going into this, like there would be that natural word of mouth.
[36:21.660 --> 36:24.600]  And I was really okay with that.
[36:24.620 --> 36:30.800]  And I haven't obsessively like paid that much attention to how people find it.
[36:30.920 --> 36:43.620]  Cause I like the whole idea of this, um, aside to make it fun for me, was also to like alleviate a lot of that like marketing legwork out from under me.
[36:43.720 --> 36:58.360]  So I could really focus like exclusively on the food and the hospitality end of it, which like lights me up so much more than like focusing on how people find it or if people find it or any of that.
[36:58.580 --> 37:06.780]  So, but yeah, definitely there was a natural progression towards more people like finding it in more normal boring ways.
[37:07.400 --> 37:11.840]  Um, but it's been really nice to not participate in it.
[37:11.980 --> 37:19.340]  You know, like it just, it always felt so icky to me, you know, like trying to tell people like they better come get the new thing.
[37:19.340 --> 37:24.100]  It's like, I don't, I don't share the menu in advance with anybody, any of that.
[37:24.220 --> 37:24.840]  And it's great.
[37:24.860 --> 37:29.880]  Cause where I operate it from is from a farmer's market now in New Jersey.
[37:30.140 --> 37:38.000]  And so my menu, because it's so fluid, like I can find out what the farmers have that morning and integrate certain things into the menu.
[37:38.140 --> 37:39.700]  It's given me so much more freedom.
[37:40.120 --> 37:45.500]  You know, it's like having the jet ski instead of the cruise liner or whatever.
[37:46.040 --> 37:46.120]  Yeah.
[37:46.180 --> 37:46.660]  Yeah.
[37:49.120 --> 37:52.520]  I have a question from matrix and I'm very excited to ask this one.
[37:52.520 --> 37:53.340]  I can't wait.
[37:54.100 --> 37:54.920]  All right, here we go.
[37:55.660 --> 38:01.440]  Did you have any other fun ideas that you decided not to use for any reason?
[38:07.550 --> 38:13.110]  Um, no, I guess not.
[38:13.670 --> 38:15.530]  I love that answer so much.
[38:15.830 --> 38:16.230]  Okay.
[38:19.070 --> 38:21.230]  Thank you for the talk.
[38:21.490 --> 38:21.670]  Yeah.
[38:21.850 --> 38:30.510]  Could you give a, like just more specifically a specific example of the menu for a week or SF you can remember?
[38:31.530 --> 38:31.570]  Sure.
[38:31.570 --> 38:31.750]  Okay.
[38:32.050 --> 38:34.090]  I mean, I can probably find some...
[38:34.090 --> 38:35.230]  Give me one second.
[38:35.230 --> 38:39.050]  Cause I do have a file with like a lot of my ideas in it.
[38:39.710 --> 38:41.350]  Um, okay.
[38:45.680 --> 38:46.740]  Ah, okay.
[38:49.140 --> 38:49.740]  All right.
[38:49.940 --> 38:55.960]  So like, this is just a random one from last season when I was doing like Malaysian and Indonesian stuff.
[38:56.620 --> 39:01.680]  Um, cause you know, one of the things also about doing this is this thing is like mad tiny.
[39:01.920 --> 39:07.940]  It's like a full sized industrial kitchen in like half the size of an elevator.
[39:08.060 --> 39:15.620]  So I have to be very crafty with like having just a few things that, you know, I can fit into everything.
[39:15.800 --> 39:24.980]  So, uh, so this one had Malaysian spiced peanut French toast with clove ganache, whipped pandan butter, lemon grass, palm sugar syrup.
[39:25.440 --> 39:33.680]  It had, uh, chili paste roasted seitan with calamansi pickled daikon and cucumbers and Szechuan chili oil noodles.
[39:34.020 --> 39:44.860]  It had, uh, roasted plum hoisin tofu with macrut lime leaves, uh, crispy potatoes and pickled young green peppercorns.
[39:44.860 --> 39:47.920]  It had char-grilled coconut sticky rice.
[39:47.920 --> 39:48.660]  I'm about that.
[39:48.860 --> 39:52.200]  With green papaya sambal and fried curry leaves.
[39:52.380 --> 40:02.840]  It had lemongrass grilled yuba bao with smoked bird's eye chili jicama and bean sprouts with, um, white pepper roast cashews.
[40:03.260 --> 40:14.560]  It had, uh, crispy mushroom, oyster mushroom bao with, um, five spice aioli, yuzu sesame pickled cabbage, uh, mint and Thai basil.
[40:14.920 --> 40:23.140]  And then we did, like, a roasted blackberry lemonade, uh, iced watermelon galangal juice and calamansi ginger ale.
[40:23.260 --> 40:25.520]  So that was, like, well, did, could you hear any of that?
[40:25.620 --> 40:27.300]  Or was I just, like, talking into my shirt?
[40:27.720 --> 40:30.140]  Um, so, yeah, that was, like, one week.
[40:30.480 --> 40:33.640]  Um, so, like, every week it would be, like, a menu kind of like that.
[40:33.840 --> 40:38.220]  Maybe seven or eight food items and, like, a few different beverages.
[40:38.220 --> 40:40.780]  We didn't do any, like, bottled drinks or anything like that.
[40:41.300 --> 40:41.720]  So, yeah.
[40:42.020 --> 40:43.600]  It was, like, all kinds of stuff like that.
[40:46.680 --> 40:47.080]  Hi.
[40:47.420 --> 40:49.580]  Um, oh, I forgot.
[40:49.740 --> 40:49.900]  No.
[40:51.300 --> 41:05.560]  I'm not against Hare Krishna or for it in any ways, but I have to say that when I was a student, an art student in Sydney in Australia back, back in the 1900s, um, I used to love their food because they would always serve it on Sunday for free.
[41:05.740 --> 41:06.080]  Yeah.
[41:06.260 --> 41:07.200]  Which was great and it was so delicious.
[41:07.320 --> 41:08.100]  Yeah, they still do that.
[41:08.100 --> 41:12.840]  But the other thing I wanted to ask you, um, are you ever aware of a movement called Bugger Up?
[41:13.080 --> 41:14.220]  Also from Sydney?
[41:14.540 --> 41:15.220]  What is it called?
[41:15.340 --> 41:16.720]  It's called Bugger Up.
[41:17.280 --> 41:19.780]  B-U-G-A-U-P.
[41:20.220 --> 41:26.080]  And it stands for Billboard Utilizing Graffiti Artists Against Unhealthy Promotion.
[41:26.600 --> 41:26.980]  Oh!
[41:27.320 --> 41:28.420]  And it was very strong.
[41:28.820 --> 41:37.760]  Yeah, they would go out at night and they would change a billboard, like, uh, Marlboro billboard or something like that, into saying, you know, what it was really about.
[41:37.980 --> 41:38.000]  Yeah.
[41:38.000 --> 41:40.700]  So you're, what you were doing with the billboards are very similar.
[41:40.880 --> 41:41.360]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[41:41.360 --> 41:41.420]  To that.
[41:41.560 --> 41:43.980]  Yeah, I mean, we have, you know, in the U.S.
[41:44.040 --> 41:47.960]  there's like the Billboard Liberation Front, which is kind of similar sounding movement.
[41:48.660 --> 41:57.000]  Um, I really liked doing something that, like, didn't have that, that much rhyme and reason to it, because I'm kind of, like, against rhyme and reason.
[41:57.500 --> 42:05.540]  Um, like, that's really, like, like, I don't have, like, super strong opinions about, like, all the shit everybody else is doing.
[42:05.600 --> 42:08.460]  I just wanted to do my own little weird thing.
[42:08.460 --> 42:20.600]  Um, I'm, that's been, like, a guiding my North Star in this whole, I guess, my whole adult life of doing creative stuff.
[42:21.100 --> 42:34.480]  Um, so I mentioned earlier in the talk, and this is, like, not that related to the baga thing you just mentioned, but I mentioned earlier in my talk that I used to do, like, all this music for people to eat acid to.
[42:34.480 --> 42:49.680]  So, back when I was, like, 14 and 15 and eating, like, a lot of acid, um, I, I, like, kind of stopped doing that by the time I became, like, 17 or 18, because I became a parent and I had to, like, buckle down and, like, not be crazy.
[42:50.440 --> 42:51.640]  That, that crazy.
[42:51.940 --> 43:13.920]  Um, but I had this one summer where I got, like, really into this idea of not just communicating with people, but, like, really reclaiming sort of, like, the forgotten spaces in our, like, the, the space we inhabit.
[43:14.160 --> 43:23.980]  Like, like, I wanted to write shit that made no sense, but I wanted to write it on, like, the tops of the doors where, like, somebody wasn't gonna see it for a long time.
[43:23.980 --> 43:27.020]  And then when they did, they'd be like, what the fuck is this?
[43:27.460 --> 43:39.960]  And so, I, like, got really into, like, doing all these, like, diagrams that, like, my whole train of thought about this was, like, I really want this to look like it's supposed to mean something.
[43:39.960 --> 43:43.780]  And, like, I really want people to be like, oh, yeah, I get it.
[43:43.940 --> 43:48.280]  But, like, have it, like, truly not make any kind of fucking sense.
[43:48.780 --> 43:50.900]  And so, like, that's kind of my approach.
[43:50.980 --> 44:04.740]  Like, I do appreciate that whole Billboard Liberation Front-y approach of, like, being really, like, intentional about, like, oh, we're gonna, like, show how this thing is dumb or what I like this product is bullshit.
[44:05.560 --> 44:11.480]  But I don't really have, like, I guess I just, I just want people to have fun.
[44:11.660 --> 44:13.720]  So, that's what, that's what I do.
[44:16.320 --> 44:16.880]  Hello.
[44:17.600 --> 44:18.000]  Hi.
[44:18.520 --> 44:39.800]  When you were speaking about not wanting to manage people and not wanting to grow the business so large that you had to get taken away from cooking and doing what you love, it reminded me of software and how people have their baby but then when it becomes increasingly relied upon then they get taken
[44:39.800 --> 44:43.720]  away from actually coding it and then they start having to manage people.
[44:44.060 --> 44:57.860]  And a lot of what you're speaking about actually reminds me of, like, software and how people want to kind of sometimes want to keep it more small and original and, like, not have it actually scale.
[44:58.380 --> 45:06.680]  But, and I'm just curious if you could comment on the parallels between your, the way you're seeing cooking and, like, software development.
[45:06.960 --> 45:11.000]  Well, you know, I don't know if it's even really just software.
[45:11.240 --> 45:27.760]  Like, I think anything that becomes a commodity, like, anything that becomes commercialized, you know, there's this real pressure in our society that bigger is always better and you should have more and more, you know, locations and users and, you know, the thing has to serve everybody.
[45:30.780 --> 45:35.160]  And, dude, we're living in this world of, like, 9 billion people.
[45:35.160 --> 45:36.860]  You can't serve everybody.
[45:36.860 --> 45:38.780]  You don't want to serve everybody.
[45:39.880 --> 45:57.460]  And it's not, you know, certainly it's the case with software, but anything that you love and create and put out there into the world, like, there's a certain point which if you keep growing it and trying to, like, commercialize it more and more, there's,
[45:57.460 --> 46:04.540]  there's a disconnect between the, the creator and the consumer, right?
[46:06.480 --> 46:10.360]  Like, a lot of times it's what you would call the medium, right?
[46:10.680 --> 46:14.420]  Like, the, the medium of publishing, for instance, right?
[46:14.820 --> 46:22.060]  Writing books becomes, like, the divide between the person communicating what they want in the book and the person reading the book, right?
[46:22.060 --> 46:29.440]  And the language, like, on the page manipulates the message and it becomes this barrier between people.
[46:29.600 --> 46:38.360]  And I, I think, like, I don't know, but I think, like, creativity is like play, you know?
[46:38.460 --> 46:40.920]  Like, we, we're trying to play with each other.
[46:41.060 --> 46:45.920]  We're trying to do all this, like, fun stuff together in the world, whether it's through food or music or whatever.
[46:45.920 --> 46:58.480]  And the further that divide becomes between people, that the bigger the medium becomes the object of concentration, rather than the relationship between people.
[47:00.400 --> 47:05.020]  I mean, essentially, like, the medium creates mediation.
[47:05.020 --> 47:13.700]  It creates this, like, distance between, both between the people who are trying to engage in whatever that form of play is.
[47:15.780 --> 47:18.820]  And the actual message being communicated, right?
[47:19.140 --> 47:22.320]  And it, it's the same with software, it's the same with music.
[47:22.600 --> 47:39.620]  I mean, like, look how unplayful the way, like, people are consuming music in today's day and age, like, through Spotify or whatever, like, versus going to, like, see your favorite band at, like, a local thing, where you can, like, talk to them and dance with them and be with them.
[47:39.620 --> 47:41.400]  There's this huge divide.
[47:41.640 --> 47:53.200]  And I think, you know, technology has created, like, it's this double-edged sword where it creates this, like, vastly wide ocean between people, rather than really connecting them.
[47:53.360 --> 48:06.460]  There's this real, like, predominance of that mediation through the medium of technology, where, like, it disconnects the people who are trying to, like, play together and collaborate together.
[48:06.460 --> 48:08.760]  At least that's, like, how I perceive it.
[48:08.900 --> 48:14.540]  So I don't know if that super answers your question or not, but that's what I've got to say about it.
[48:15.080 --> 48:15.380]  I don't know.
[48:17.000 --> 48:17.760]  All right.
[48:18.140 --> 48:20.020]  Anybody else got a thing?
[48:21.500 --> 48:23.380]  Friends, last call for questions.
[48:23.380 --> 48:25.320]  We've got about a minute left.
[48:28.920 --> 48:37.400]  I'm curious about the logistics of blessing the food in the half-size elevator in the farmer's market.
[48:37.720 --> 48:53.760]  So offering, like, the process of offering boga, boga, like, etymologically, like, it's connected to the word bhagavan and the word enjoyment, right?
[48:53.760 --> 48:56.280]  Bhaga is, in Sanskrit, it's enjoyment.
[48:56.280 --> 48:59.440]  And you offer that, like, pleasure to the Supreme.
[48:59.760 --> 49:10.380]  And then humans who eat that food that's offered consume the prasadam, the mercy or the contact of the Supreme through that food.
[49:12.020 --> 49:21.180]  It doesn't necessarily mean that every single bite that you're serving human beings has to be, like, individually offered over and over again all day.
[49:22.440 --> 49:38.160]  But you, like, take out a portion before the beginning of service, like, before the beginning of serving human beings that food, and you put it on an offering plate, and you, like, place tulsi leaves on it and offer it that way.
[49:38.240 --> 49:43.920]  And that way, like, by its connection, like, all of it is sanctified.
[49:43.920 --> 49:45.740]  I know it sounds really far out.
[49:46.200 --> 49:56.220]  If anybody wants to talk more deeply about, like, the particularities of that, I'm happy to chat with it, but probably most people will be not interested in such a thing.
[49:56.800 --> 50:00.400]  And could you share the URL you used for your website?
[50:01.480 --> 50:05.100]  Yeah, um, so the one that's no longer around?
[50:05.460 --> 50:09.260]  I think it was galacticmegastallion.com.
[50:09.380 --> 50:10.960]  I'm pretty sure that's what it was.
[50:11.120 --> 50:21.080]  And, I mean, if any of you, like, I don't know if it's, like, on the way back machine or how that all works, but if any of you guys, like, know about doing shit with computers, you could probably find it.
[50:22.580 --> 50:23.880]  I think you might be out of luck.
[50:23.920 --> 50:25.680]  I don't think anybody here knows anything about computers.
[50:25.680 --> 50:28.720]  This is the, like, for just farmers.
[50:29.360 --> 50:30.200]  That's it.
[50:30.660 --> 50:30.720]  Yeah.
[50:31.900 --> 50:33.600]  Thank you so much, Chef Adam.
[50:33.660 --> 50:33.840]  Yeah.