In this episode, I am conversing with Matthew Jozwiak, Founder and CEO of Rethink Food, about the importance of rethinking how we live, work, and play. We discuss the challenges in our system that lead to over food production, excess food wastage, and the immense food security crisis we are facing on a global scale.
Matt shares unique ways we can be conscious to prevent food wastage, collective ways we can repurpose food, and the importance of looking at restaurants as the best non-profits that exist. We wind down hearing his most charming story of him sharing a rich nutritious meal with his beloved dog when he started with very little. Inspiration to do good is born from such instances where we place others before ourselves and deep dive into entrepreneurship to be a force of good.
About:
Matt Jozwiak has been in the food industry for almost all his life. He started as a dishwasher in Kansas and made his way up in the kitchens. He then completed his professional culinary training with Pierre Orsi in Lyon, France, and worked on the
culinary teams of a number of notable restaurants around the world, including Auberge de L’ile Barbe in Lyon, Noma in Copenhagen, The NoMad in New
York and Eleven Madison Park, where he served as chef de partie at age 27.
After seeing firsthand how much good food from restaurants goes underutilized for about a decade, Matt founded Rethink Food in 2017 with the objective of transforming excess food from restaurants, corporate kitchens, and grocery stores
into nutritious meals for communities impacted by food insecurity.
Matt was recognized in Business Insider’s 100 Coolest People in food (2019), Hunter College NYC Food Policy’s 40 Under 40 (2019) and more recently Crain's New York 2021 class of 40 under Forty (2021) and 50 Next Class of 2021 as a Trailblazing
Activists pushing for equality, diversity and positive action in gastronomy.
About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research.
Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward.