How I Built This with Guy Raz - A climate-resilient ancient grain with Pierre Thiam of Yolélé (2022)

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

Pierre Thiam is a renowned chef, restaurant owner, cookbook author, and co-founder of Yolélé – a company working to introduce the world to fonio, an ancient West African grain built for climate change.But it hasn't been all sunshine and good harvests for Pierre. In fact, he was robbed just days after he first arrived in New York City from Senegal.It was 1989, and he had just traveled to the U.S. to study chemistry and physics. This chance incident, however, set Pierre’s life on an entirely different course.This week on How I Built This Lab, Pierre talks with Guy about his company’s work circulating fonio, a nutrient-dense and drought-resistant food source. Pierre also shares how he overcame cultural norms to embrace his cooking career, and his take on the connection between colonization and the vulnerability of our global food systems.This episode was produced by Katherine Sypher and edited by John Isabella, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineer was Gilly Moon.You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.ca. Okay, on to the show. And this week, we're rerunning an interview from last fall with chef Pierre Chiam. His company, Yolele, is betting big on phonio. It's a nutritious and drought-resistant African grain that could feed

billions of people on our warming planet. Hope you enjoy. Hello and welcome to how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. So one of my favorite things to do is to wander the aisles of grocery stores. I'm always in the lookout for weird and new products. Recently, I came across some mushroom jerky, cassava cheese puffs with plant-based cheese, a Mexican fermented kombucha-type drink. Anyway, I always worked to find at least one new thing in the store. to try each week. And about a year ago, I came across a grain that looked really interesting.

It was high in protein, gluten-free, and most intriguingly, it was an ancient grain from Africa. It's called Phonio and immediately grabbed a bag and cooked it up with some chicken thighs later that night. Not only was it great, but also totally different from other grains like quinoa or faro or rice. The man who is most responsible for bringing phonio to the U.S. is a Senegalese chef named Pierre Chiam. He's the founder of a West African restaurant in New York called Teranga, and Pierre's on a mission to get people to discover phonio. Why?

Well, not only is it a nutrient-dense plant, but it requires very little water to grow. In fact, it thrives in drought-stricken areas. In other words, phonio could be a major source of food as climate change continues to ravage the planet. In 2017, Pierre co-founded his company, Yolele, to bring Fonio to the U.S. and eventually to the world. Besides Fonio, Yolele now sells Fonio flour

and even snacks made from the grain, and their products are available in thousands of stores across the U.S. Pierre Chiam joins us. Welcome to the show. Thank you, guys. It's a pleasure. So you are originally from Senegal, And you grew up, I think, in Dakar, right, in the capital or around the capital? Yes. Yes. I grew up in Dakar in a neighborhood called Pointe. And you were not, from what I understand as a kid or even as a young man, you were not necessarily food focused, right?

I mean, you were as a student, you were into science and mathematics. Is that right? Yes, I had a math baccalaurea and then I went to university for physics and chemistry. But growing up in Dakar, obviously food is a big part of the country. culture. But, you know, it's a gender-based activity. So kitchen is for women. And food was not an option as a profession. I never thought food could be a career. Yeah. But it's interesting. I know you've talked about this before you've given a wonderful TED Talk. Anyone listening should go check it out. Dakar, because of where it is, its location and its history, it has a blend of

cultures, obviously many different West African cultures, but also there's like French influence within the food and Lebanese influence and Vietnamese influence. Tell me a little bit about the foods that you grew up eating. Yeah, like you said, Dakar is like a melting pot, really, because of its location, you know, it's the most western coast of Africa. Yeah. So it became a natural port of entrance. For centuries, it was the place where mariners would come before going anywhere in Africa. And over time, the French colonized Senegal, so we still have a strong French community there. and the Lebanese community has been there for generations now, and they brought their food culture.

And you have obviously the West African community and the Vietnamese, because the Senegalese and the Vietnamese had the same colonial past with the French. Yes, yes. So, yeah, I had all those flavors growing up. I was exposed to that, not to mention the local cuisine, which is also very, very interesting because my mom was from the south of Senegal, which is a part very more lush, as opposed to the north of Senegal, Senegal, that's south of the Sahara and dry and arid.

So that part of Senegal has a different type of cuisine with lots of seafood, which you see everywhere in Senegal, but also lots of citrus. Fermentation also is a big part of our cuisine. So my upbringing was full of flavors. Wow. I know that you decided to, at a certain point, to go to the United States to continue your studies. You studied physics and chemistry in Dakar, but there was a nationwide student strike.

I guess you couldn't continue your study. So you ended up getting a visa to the United States. And you were supposed to study in Ohio, right? Uh-huh, in Cleveland. In a small college, yeah, in a town called Bari, actually, near Cleveland. I came here in 1989. And I knew a friend who lived in New York. So I had to land in New York and then take a bus from New York to Ohio. That was the plan. So he insisted that I stay in New York a couple weeks. And, you know, that was a great opportunity. everyone wants to see in New York at least once. And that changed everything. I'm still on my way to Ohio. I never made it there. I stayed in New York.

And three days after I arrived, I got robbed. And I lost every single penny that I had. What, you got three days after you arrived to New York in 1989, you were robbed? Three days. My friend lived in a place on 50th Street right near Times Square. And I'm not sure if you knew New York in 1980. Oh, yes. That was a different place.

It really was a scary place. And I was horrified by it. A car is like a peaceful seaside city. And now I'm here in New York. That was completely different than what I expected to see. You know, it wasn't what I saw on TV. And I'm broke now. And it's getting cold because I arrived in the beginning of fall.

So I had never seen winter before. And I'm like, I'm out of here. I had my return ticket. A friend of mine happened to be working in a restaurant. And they were looking for a busboy, the only job that required no particular qualification or experience. And I applied. I came. And the boss, Richard, who is still a good friend, just took me.

He saw this desperate young kid, and he gave me the job. And that changed everything. It's amazing. I mean, you were coming to the United States to study physics and chemistry in Ohio. You get robbed in New York. And that's it. it's all gone. And it's amazing because it's a,

I mean, you laugh about it now, but it's, I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time and very scary. Oh, boy. But it's, it's crazy when you think about something like that happening.

That horrible thing had to happen in order for your life to completely change. I mean, you didn't obviously go and pursue physics and chemistry. You got a job as a bus boy. And you would then go on to pursue a life and career and food. Yes. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And it had to have happened. Now I look back and I'm like connecting the dots and I'm like, without that incident, my life would have been completely different. I would have hugged that guy who robbed me. I mean, you know, he changed my life for the best, I believe.

From what I understand, you really got interested in cooking. I mean, you know, you could again have been, become a bus boy and maybe risen to eventually to an assistant manager and a manager of the restaurant. But you really were interested in what was being prepared in the kitchen. and I guess wanted to learn about that. Yeah, yes, it was ingrained in me without knowing it. My mom at an early age, I remember she had this collection of cookbooks. And as a kid, I remember that was a La Rousse Culinary, a French collection. And I used to look at the photos of her cookbook collection. And I had no design. I just liked the pictures.

It looked delicious. And now I'm here in New York City. You know, as a busboy, I'm taking the dirty plates into the kitchen. and I'm looking at these food that looks so much like the pictures of my mom's La Rousse Culinar. And I'm like, wow. What kind of restaurant was it, by the way? The restaurant was French-slash-American cuisine. So the food was beautiful, you know, more beautiful than what I've ever seen before.

And the fact that the chef was French trained, too, he spoke a little French, and he loved whenever I was in the kitchen, he loved to practice his French with me. So there's so many things that got me. You know, it's very lucky, really. And that chef offered to, you know, he knew my story over time. He knew that I wanted to make extra money because I was still hoping to save money and go to Ohio. I was like New York is not for me. This city is crazy.

And he said, okay, so why don't you come and do extra shifts in the kitchen? You know, you could be a dishwasher. And I'm like, sure, I'll do the extra shift for the money, but I don't intend to stay in this. You know, this is too hard. And I hate it washing dishes. You know, I hated it so much. I hated it, but it was a necessary first step. And from dishwasher, I went to, you know, when the prep guy is missing, they always

called the dishwasher and give you the knife and you start chopping. Prepping. And that's how you learn your knife skills and how over time you become a prep cook and then you're no longer a dishwasher. And then the Gar-de-Manger is missing. And then they take you to the Garder-Manger station and you start learning how to make the dressings and how to clean the leaves and the salads and stuff. And that's where everything changed for me because when I started to make dressings,

and I realized that I was making an emulsion of acid and lipid. It was vinegar and oil. You're a chemist. And I'm a chemist. And I'm like, hey. This is chemistry. That's going on here. And I started to look at every reaction in the kitchen from a different angle now.

Because I knew the theory of it. I knew what was happening. So it was really something of like, I dig this. I like this. I like the kitchen atmosphere. I like the camaraderie. This became my family. Within just a few years of arriving to New York,

you actually became the head chef at this restaurant, boom, in Soho. Yeah. It's remarkable. I'm trying to like get, I wish I could be a fly on the wall for like, those long-distance calls you had with family back in Dakar or maybe the letters you write. Dear family, I am not studying chemistry and physics. I'm actually the head chef at a restaurant in Soho. It took me a while to do that.

It took me a while. I mean, I was still very embarrassed, you know. It was cultural. You know, you come from a culture where cooking is really a women activity. So this cultural thing was stuck with me, even though. So I was very interested, but I knew I was in New York and everyone in the kitchen were men like me. So it was in this world, it was fine. And I was loving what I was doing.

I really loved it. I was passionate about it. But it was still difficult to tell my parents about it for a little while. And since I knew that it wouldn't be long until my mom find out and I had to tell them. So that's when I mustered all my courage and went to call and say, hey, by the way, way, you know, I am not going to school, okay, and I am cooking and I love this. And my mom just, you could see, I mean, she was very reserved, but you could see she had this relief. She was smiling. I could feel that. And then she said, wow, that's great. What kind of cooking are you doing?

And she was curious about the food that I was doing. And she started asking me questions. And then she wanted me to give her some recipes. And I was like, wow, that wasn't bad. And she told my dad, and my dad came to, also, you could feel the smile. But they were both amused, but you could see that they were really relieved parents who knew that their son had found something that he enjoyed doing. And they were encouraging. And I was like, wow, I didn't think my parents were cool like that. Yeah.

But it turns out there's nothing to be cool about. I was just doing a job that I like doing. But now I was free. I was free to become a cook and led her a chef. Pierre, from what I've read, you were trained in a sort of European cooking styles, French, Italian, but in many chefs who are trained in European traditions but don't have European backgrounds, go on to open restaurants that reflect their own identities and their own backgrounds. When were you able to start exploring that culinary side of your world?

Well, it started really, it came organically. First of all, you know, when I moved to New York, I was always craving for that food, the food I grew up eating. There was no restaurants, really, that's serving that food, you know. So at the restaurant, at boom, the chef is interesting because he's doing a cuisine that's different. He's inspired by Southeast Asian cuisine, you know, and that's new in New York. We're like in the early 90s, mid-90s, and that cuisine has flavors that's somehow taking me back home. There's lots of fermentation.

There's lots of acidity. You know, there's that freshness, you know, and the grains and all that. And at times when that was my turn to cook family meal, I would cook food from memory. Dishes that my mom used to prepare. I mean, peanut sauce. Family meal, of course, is what the kitchen staff eats before they serve the customers. Yeah, four, five o'clock, family meal. Someone from the line is the one in charge of family meal.

And when that's my turn, everyone was looking forward to it now because I got them used to this. caramelized onion and lime sauce with chili over rice. I had them peanut sauce with cassava. I mean, I'm bringing those flavors now, eggplants and okra and all that. And they're like, wow, this is different. This is cool. And then, like, this should come as specials.

You know, that's how the idea started to come into me now. New York is calling itself the food capital of the world, but Africa is not in this world. I'm like, hey, you know, this is going to be my mission. I'm going to start finding inspiration from that cuisine and bringing it and that I never looked back. Eventually, the restaurant was doing so well. We opened a new branch in South Beach, Miami, and guess what? They decided to send me to run that kitchen.

And I'm like, wow, this is amazing. I mean, I'm like completely, you know, shocked, but so excited because in addition to sending me to run the kitchen, I was told to even add some of the family meal specials into the menu. Into the menu. Into the menu. These were dishes like you were using like sweet potatoes and cassava and plantains and peanuts and chilies and. Exactly. Exactly.

You said the right words. Sweet potato cassava peanut sauce became my first dish and an okra. And that one was so well received. I mean, there was a food reviewer who came to the restaurant. and wrote an article about the restaurant that mentioned this one dish. I was like, wow. Wow, this is a note to me. It was like the top of everything.

I mean, being mentioned in a paper here in the U.S. So that was really the thing that confirmed to me that I had to stick to this mission. So when I came back to New York, I decided to start a catering business. And eventually in early 2000, this catering became my very first restaurant. You lele. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from chef Pierre Chiam about his journey from chef and restaurant owner to founding the company he oversees today. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

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And you'd begin this journey as a restaurant owner and then eventually a cookbook author. And from what I understand, for your first cookbook, you went to Senegal to research ideas for the book. And I guess during one of those trips, you rediscovered this grain called phonio, which you had eaten kind of rarely as a child, right? Yeah, so I had eaten phonyo on rare occasions when my parents would take me to visit my grandparents in the south of Senegal. So phonyo is grown in that region in the south, in Casamas and Kedougou. those are like the phonyo areas of senegal but in dakar where i grew up there was no phonyo so i never had phonyo growing up so i'm now writing this book many years later and we spent time with the women of

my family really that was where you know i was getting the inspiration and i wanted the book to be about that and as i'm traveling in the south and i'm tasting all these different flavors and the phonyo came back And it hit me, and I'm like, oh, wow, this grain is so delicate. And in that part of Senegal, they still consider it. They call it the most delicious grain of all grains. That's like how they see phonia. So I was like, I need to write about this grain. I need to bring this grain.

I need to even include it in my menu. We should promote just stop and describe phonia because I've, I said this before we start recording that I have made it. It's a little bit like, and help me out here, like, it's a cross between, like kus-k-cus, like the fluffy lightness of kus-k-k-k-k-s and sort of a nutty, there's a nuttiness. But it's none of those things. It's not kinawa. It's not kus-k-k-k-s, it's not a wheat, but it has that lightness.

Is that fair to say? Yeah, it's fair to say it has the size of kuskis. It's tiny like kusk and fluffy. It's even lighter than kusk-k-k-k-k-k-you kind of feel heavy after. But with phonyo, it's really, I mean, you can eat phonyo and. just go for a run right after. It digestes really easily. And it has nuttiness, you're right? It's slightly nutty. And the other particularity of phonia, which is really great, is very neutral flavor. So that makes it very versatile. You cook phonyo with so many different flavors,

it adapts to so many different sauces. My last cookbook was dedicated to phonyo, so I have lots of recipes from the whole journey of phoio, from desserts to baking, to savory, dishes to, I mean, Fonio sushi, you know, I mean, there's like so many ways to use Fonio. Before we talked about the business that grew around this because that would eventually happen, I want to ask you a few more questions about Fonio because it is this grain that is, I guess it's really high in protein and amino acids and also doesn't require a whole lot of water to grow, right? No, Fonio grows in an area called the Sahel, you know, Senegal is south of the Sahara.

Yeah. And it's dry and arid. But Fonio grows so easily there. You know, it's like one of the fastest maturing grain that requires very little water. It's rain fat, but it, you know, it just requires the first rain. And after that, even if there was no other rain coming or the rain is inconsistent, like it's the case right now with climate change. Yeah. Fonio is guaranteed to grow.

There's a nickname for Fonio. They call it the lazy farmer's crop for that reason. Because what the farmers do is when the first rain comes, they just throw the seed. They don't even till the soil. They don't really do any work to the soil. They just throw the seeds like broadcasting it. And then they can just go and sleep for two months and come back and harvest the phonyo. That's how easy it is to grow.

And in addition to that, the most important part is the agriculture of phonyo help to regenerate the soil. Because it has deep roots that add nutrients to the soil. So they create erration. in the soil essentially. Exactly. Exactly. And you don't have to churn it up with tractors or, you know, which releases carbon, right? You can just, those deep roots errate the soil. Exactly. And when they harvest it, they just cut the top. The roots stay in the soil. And eventually, it adds nutrients to the soil. And not only that, for you know, it's a nutrition powerhouse. Like you mentioned, it's gluten-free and has so many properties. One of them being very important is it

has, it's caused a low glycemic index. Good for diabetics. Exactly. So there's like, I mean, there's so much going for that grain. And I was like, I have to figure out a way to introduce it to my readers. Yeah. And because my cookbook was incomplete. I always had to think of substitutions for certain ingredients.

And that's when the idea of your lily, the business of bringing those crops to the market came to be really. That's when that seed was planted. All right, so the seed is planted, and you're starting to think this could potentially be the next quinoa, because quinoa was introduced to the U.S. maybe in the 70s, but really didn't take off until the 2000s, right? But we know there are challenges with quinoa. It's hard to grow. It's very resource intensive, and there's a shortage of it in some places. And so as the climate is changing, it would make sense to look for a more sort of robust and resilient crop. And here you go. Here you have one. From what I understand, Even in Africa, phonia was much more widely eaten 100, 200 years ago than it is today. So what happened? Why is that the case? We got colonized.

Colonization came and then there was a mindset that came with it. Crops like phonyu, millet, sorghum, which was our traditional crops, became the country people crop. We were branded with. is crops like wheat, you know, in Senegal, for instance, we love eating our baguette bread. We eat baguette bread every single day. We don't grow wheat in Senegal. We don't grow wheat in Codivore in many of those countries. But Africa now is like importing, bringing wheat. I mean, and it's interesting that you ask this question, because today with the Ukraine crisis, there is a serious shortage of wheat.

Serious. And by the way, it's reverberating around the world, including in places like Sri Lanka. They're all connected to these shortages of wheat. We're seeing these crises happening around the world. And that tells you how foolish we are to rely on crops like wheat. I mean, first of all, the limited number of crops we rely on our food system is wheat, rice, soy, and corn. And we're ignoring crops that are much more not only resilient, like phonyo, and we need to integrate them. But the most crazy is, you. thing is continents like Africa, which have such a diversity of plant crops. And now because one part of the world is in crisis and the whole continent is suffering from it, because the concentration of

the supply is coming from Ukraine and Russia. It is mind-boggling. So it's urgent that we rethink it and we start integrating crops like phonyo. And not only it makes sense, because for our food security, we need to make sure we have that. But also because, because we think of it. those crops are so much more adapted to the environment, they're resilient, they're drought resistant. There's a lot of reason why we need to rethink it. But to answer your question, that's what happened. After we got colonized, we started importing wheat, we started importing rice. We even had a rice culture in Senegal, but because of our connection with the French, we started importing broken rice from Vietnam so that Senegalese farmers would focus on growing

peanuts that we need for our industries. Colonization was a business. So the French made peanut a cash crop in Senegal. So the farmers started growing peanuts. It was a monoculture and it became a monoculture. And as a result, phonio stopped being produced. People stopped growing it. And people stopped growing phonyo. You had to go to Kedugu and Kazamast. That's the only places where you would see phonyo. That's an amazing story, right? You are a chef in the United States and now have a platform with a book and you come across this grain and you're thinking, I got to get this in the hands of American cooks. When do you start to think, okay, I'm going to create a business and I'm going to start a business around this grain. I'm going to start to bring this grain to the

U.S. Because it doesn't happen right away. It took you a few years before you did that. But what was the impetus? Well, the impetus was one was my naivety, first of all. Which is always important, very important. Very important. I'm like thinking, I'm a chef in New York. I've seen how quinoa did it. It was not this, I mean, a non-grain and then today everyone is kinore. If pha can do it, you know, if can do it, phonyo can do it. And all I'm going to do is take the grain and introduce it to my fellow chefs because they're all looking for new products, new food, new flavors, and they'll embrace it, and then they'll serve it on their menus, and then the customers would ask for it. And then the,

supermarkets would require. I mean, that was my thinking, very naive, like I said, right? But really, the impetus was when I, one of my travels in this part of Senegal called Kedugu, where Fonio is king. And there, you realize the level of poverty. The people in Kedugu, I mean, it's only pretty much all people living there. You know, the youth, they left pretty much. They're all trying to make it to the city or to Europe. They're looking for jobs. They're able, they're willing to work. They're risking their lives. go find a better life. And I'm like, if this grain can become a world-class crop like Kinoa has become, this will change the situation here. So this really was my thing. I felt like

I could bring something. It could be my contribution. I thought I was uniquely positioned being a chef from this part of the world in the food capital of the world. And if this plan works, It wasn't much of a plan, but if this plan works, you know, this is going to bring jobs. People are not going to live because they're going to stay and grow phonyo and make money from it because New Yorkers and everywhere else. Even people in the city, Dakar, will start warning it because all we need to do is create a chain of value. And to me, there's one thing I got right was I knew it needed to be branded. Those French, they branded their baguettes. That's how we're still eating it.

They branded this broken rice to us. And now I'm going to brand phonyo and I'm going to make it sexy. And this is going to work. And these guys are going to have a dignified living with something that grows in their land. That's been growing in their land for 5,000 years. And that was just the way I was thinking. And I just went for it. Let's do it.

We're going to take another quick break coming up more from Chef Pierre Chiam, founder and president of Yo Lele. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this lab. Hey, welcome back to how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and I'm speaking with chef Pierre Chiam, who's building a food company based around an ancient West African grain called phonio. Okay, so Pierre, your initial idea was, you know, hey, if we can produce phonio, if we can get people harvesting phonium, processing it, and then creating a pipeline to the U.S., we could create an industry here in Senegal that would help the local economy. but I guess at the same time you were also thinking, let's market phonia because it's also really nutritious, right? It's an efficient and nutrient-dense product.

Is that more or less right? I was thinking both. I knew it was nutritious, and I knew that there was a demand for that here, ancient grains, nutritious, gluten-free. Phonia was checking all the boxes. So I was like, this is what we could do. Let's brand it. Let's brand it and create a demand for it.

I knew I needed a partner. and I looked into someone who also had an experience in actually doing it, really. And Philip Tevereaux, who's a veteran in the food industry, who actually had worked with Bringing Kinawai in the 80s. Philip Tevro, I think at the time he worked at Dian Daluca, right, for many years? That's right. That's right. He worked at Dena D'Luca. So if you remember Dina DeLucah, they used to bring all these interesting flavors.

And me, when I was working in Soho, we oftentimes shop at Dina Deluca. Yeah. It was a groundbreaking store that one in Manhattan. And really, all kinds of cool, amazing things came in through Dean and Deluca. That's correct. That's correct. And a lot of the food we were serving, we couldn't be doing it at Boom without the ingredients, the access of Dean and Deluca. So he had eaten, because I didn't mention, he had eaten. You had to open a second restaurant in New York. He'd eaten there. This is called La Grande Car. And you kind of, or somehow you started to talk to him about, about Fonio, and it intrigued him. he thought, hey, there's something here.

Yeah, yeah. And actually, we have two versions of the story, but he remembered reading an article where I was talking about for New York. The article was really a call really for, I was so distraught by the stories of these young people. It really is a tragedy if you heard of, may not have heard about it. But there's for a decade now, their kids who are dying in the ocean because they're taking dugout boats, man, the guard boat, trying to travel from Dakar to Barcelona. Yes.

And thousands are drowning. And many make it. That's just amazing. Just imagine the journey. Many of them make it, but thousands are drowning every single year. To me, it was, you know, something needed to be done. And we shouldn't expect help to come from anywhere, but from ourselves. And I was like, Phonio is actually the thing.

It's growing here and this could be desired and bring income. And that would just help. So this was the thing I was talking about in that paper. And Philip read it and he reached out. And we met and we talked. And I was like, yeah, actually, you know, let's do it. You and Philip decide to form a business called Yulele. And how did you initially, I mean, did you go out and raise money for the company?

No, no. Actually, we didn't. It started with friends and family, really. Yeah. So we did one thing. We knew the logistic of it was going to be something we didn't have the means for. So we reached out to a company called Woodlands, who have been importing food from 60 plus countries around the world, interesting flavors. And we knew they would get that.

And they were intrigued enough to decide to send a few executives from the company to, Kedugu, Senegal, with us, for them to see what we're talking about. And they came. And those guys are like these Chicago executives and never been to Africa. And now they're going into not only Dakar, but like in this deep south, you know, six, seven hours drives through like dirt road and stuff. So it was quite a trip. But once they got there, they were all transformed. And they felt so at home and welcome.

And they ate so well as well. And they came back and they're like, yeah, we got to do it. it. Let's figure out a way to do it. And that's how we did it. We started working with group of women, cooperatives. They were getting the phonyo processed for us, and we would ship it by containers to woodlands, and woodlands would package it under our Yolele brand. You managed to broker an agreement with Whole Foods initially, that Whole Foods would carry this product, because they like interesting, new, unique products, and it's a great platform to get this out there. But one of the challenges from what I've read about,

Fonio, is the processing of it, right? Because it's, it has a very thick hull that is inedible and it has to be like ground out of it. So how did you solve the challenge of like processing it? Because to get to the grain is a lot. It's very labor intensive, right? Yeah. And for no, that's the only challenge. You see, it's easy to grow, but it's hard to process. it has a skin that's inedible. And that's also one of the reasons why phonyo didn't make it big until now, because the processing was so, at the time, it used to be a mortar and pestle. Mortar and pestle, a person literally grinding each.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You see the African mortar and pestle, though, they like the big ones carved out of a trunk tree and with a big pillow and they pound it and they pounded the big pestle. And it takes about two hours to just have. have one kilo of phonyos, that was the time. And eventually, it became mechanized, you know, and actually a Senegalese engineer came up with a technique and phonyo was mechanized, which is the phonyo we're getting right now. There's a mechanized aspect, but it's still some manual parts of it. And we knew we had to fix it at some point. We knew we can now identify some great

cooperative that are doing a much better job than others to get us a good quality for you. But we knew there's a moment as a demand growth that we had to figure out the solution for the processing of phonyo. So what did you do? Yeah, how'd you do that? So we went to a company that makes actually the best of the milling processing equipment in the world, actually. And we told them, hey, we have this grain and we need to figure out how to process it and it has to be all automated and it has to efficient. And they took a while to come up. We had to send tons and tons of phonyo party for them to do the testing. And now we figured out we have this machine that completely revolutionized everything. Now we not only eliminated the waste because at this stage of

phonyo processing, we still had close to 50% of waste, which is crazy. And now with the machine, they design a machine that not only eliminates that waste, but it really is also processing at a much faster capacity. We have like two tons per hour as opposed to one tonne per day. It really changes everything. Remove the bottleneck that was really slowing everything. And now we can access phonyo to not only the growing demand in the market here, but there's also the food industry that couldn't have access to phonyo

because the processing wasn't at the standard, standard called GFSI that like you can sell to Big Food now. So now Big Food is looking to meet the sustainable development goals. And Fonio is offering all of that and now we have access to it. So that's opened a whole other set of perspective. We can have Fonio flour for bakers. We can have Fonio pilafs now. We have phonyo chips. That's a whole other different category we just entered now.

It's awesome. I mean, it's amazing because you've expanded, as you say, you've expanded your product line from originally phonio grain to flowers and chips and other things. I think your products are now available in like 2,000 stores in the U.S. The Whole Foods and some Target stores as well. And obviously online, tell me how you are you, you know, doing copying conversations like this. How are you getting the word out? Like it's still, you know, you are right now. Phonio right now is where Kinawa was, let's say, in the 80s, right? Where there's very little awareness. It's actually a very easy grain to cook. It cooks very quickly. It absorbs flavors really well. You can cook it in chicken stock or vegetable stock if you want to. Or water. But it's still not a lot of people know about it. So, like, how do you make this into Kinoa?

Do you start with restaurants? Do you start with, like, are there sort of influential places where you really want to get this, you know, get this made? So yeah, it really, it started again. You remember when you mentioned Whole Foods, there was one Whole Foods that gave us a chance, right? It was next to my restaurant in Harlem. And that Whole Foods, I had to go in the place itself and do some cooking demos and people taste. You know, like I made some phonyos salad, phonyos salad and kind of thing. And people would taste.

And every time I would do that, every time I would do a demo, the phonyo bags would fly off the shelves. Yeah. So that's really when it started. And Whole Foods, people noticed that this grain is doing really well. Let's give it a chance on a second store. And then they gave us shelves on Union Square and then on Times Square and then in Brooklyn. And then next thing, we were in all the Whole Foods in the northeastern region. And it kept growing like this.

We also started to grow with a community of influencers who connected with the food in different ways. Some were connecting with it because of the heritage aspect. of it, you know, so you have the African diaspora who could connect with this grain, who is considered as the oldest cultivated grain in Africa. Others, because of the nutrition aspect, you know, we have this strong gluten-free community who just embraced phonyo, and they are posting it on social media. We're using a lot of social media as well, our platform, Instagram and TikTok now. I mean, all of that is being part of it. And there's these collaborations we're doing with other brands that are also.

similar to ours in terms of mission of like bringing, you know, diversified food products into the market. So there's all these guerrilla type of approach that we are using to spread the world. In addition to, you know, I've been fortunate to get media attention through the restaurant or through my books. And so all of those are creating awareness and more and more the world is coming out. But a lot of it is organic. And you have a restaurant.

Two locations in New York, Taranga. And where you do serve phonio, you've got delicious. I mean, I haven't eaten there, but I'm just looking at the menu, like the chicken grilled chicken bowls and the vegan bowls and all this. And joloff, you do joloff, but you also have many dishes with phonio as a side. As a side, there's been a series of circumstances that did help to spread the word. I think the timing also is good. People are more aware that we need to diversify our diet. We need to bring products that are not only good for you, but good for the planet and delicious.

And Fonio was all of that. And again, it cooks in five minutes, so you can't beat that. Awesome. Let's do it. Let's eat it. Let's eat some Bonio. Let's make some bonio right now. It takes five minutes.

Or you can even do it even faster. You get the chips, you know, so it's a snack. So you just open a bag and you are changing the world, your own contribution. I love it. Pierre Shiam is founder of Yole. Pierre, thanks so much. Thank you, Guy. It was a pleasure. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week.

Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode. And as always, it's totally free. This episode was produced by Catherine Seifer with editing by John Isabella. Our music was composed by Routin Arablewe. Our audio engineer was Gilly Moon. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Rommel Wood, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. Neva Grant is our supervising editor.

Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.