How I Built This with Guy Raz - Chez Panisse: Alice Waters

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

In the 1960s, Alice Waters studied abroad in France – and discovered a culinary world far from the processed food popular in America. When she returned to California, she tried to find restaurants to recreate her experiences abroad, but she couldn't. In 1971, she opened a small restaurant in Berkeley called Chez Panisse, where she focused on serving fresh, local ingredients. Just a few years later, Chez Panisse was named one of the best restaurants in America, and became one of the hottest locations for fine dining in the Bay Area. Despite her success, Alice chose not to turn Chez Panisse into a restaurant empire. Instead, she continued to insist on cooking with food raised locally, sustainably, and ethically. Today, most chefs agree Alice Waters and Chez Panisse sparked the farm-to-table movement in the restaurant industry. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," how Piersten Gaines took the trauma out of salon visits for women with highly textured hair. See 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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And I couldn't have enough of them. And I wondered where they came from. And they told me you have to go out in the woods and pick them. From NPR, it's how I built this. A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Alice Waters created the farm-to-table movement from her California restaurant and sparked a global revolution in the food industry.

So if you open up the latest edition of the famous Michelin Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area, you will find 57 restaurants in and around San Francisco that have been granted one, two, or three stars by the notoriously fussy Michelin reviewers. Getting a Michelin star can turn a sleepy little bistro into the kind of restaurant that takes reservations six months out, the kind of place that is essentially impossible to get into. These are considered to be the most innovative and inspiring palaces of food in the world. But one restaurant, perhaps one of the most famous in America that does not appear on Michelin's list, is located in a converted old house in Berkeley, California.

It's called Chez Panisse, and today it's the kind of place, well-to-do Berkeley parents might take their children during a visit, or the kind of restaurant food tourists will seek out, mainly because of its contribution to modern cooking. Chapinise is a great restaurant, but you're not going to find, say, frozen orbs of aged balsamic vinegar suspended in Yuzhou Jolay on your plate. What you will get is extremely fresh, extremely local farm-to-table food, a perfectly ripe peach with a scoop of crem fresh, or a roasted quail with some blackberry jam. made with just-picked blackberries grown a few miles away.

And the person behind that restaurant, Alice Waters, isn't just notable for her cooking, but actually, she's probably much better known for the impact she's had on American cuisine, because Alice Waters was really one of the first American chefs to promote the idea that food should be local, fresh, and seasonal. Today, almost every good restaurant in America pays homage to farm-to-table cooking. They tell you the name of the farm where the chicken came from, and sometimes even the farmer who grew the crops. And Alice Waters is largely the reason why. But when she opened Chez Panisse in 1971 in that old run-down Berkeley house, she wasn't necessarily trying to start a movement.

She really just wanted a nice, cozy place where she could invite friends to share a meal. Alice didn't actually grow up intending to be a chef. In fact, as a kid in New Jersey, she ate a pretty typical American table. diet of that era. Her mom wasn't exactly the greatest cook, and she focused instead on efficiency. She wanted something healthy for us, but she didn't know how to do that. She knew, you know, meat, potatoes, vegetable, salad, fruit cup for dessert. But most of it was from a can or frozen. She wanted brown bread. So my sandwiches were very. very dry and spread with peanut butter and bananas.

I didn't like food very much. I was a very picky eater. I mean, this was a time of a food revolution, in a sense. I mean, not the way we think about it today, but the food revolution of the late 40s and 50s was canned and frozen and then eventually microwavable ready to eat meals. Exactly. Right.

I remember when that frozen meal came in. all prepared. You just stuck it in the oven. And people saw that as this wonderful innovation. Nobody thought, oh, this is processed food, right? They thought, amazing. Look at what we can actually, we actually have more time now. Well, I always thought we were a country that didn't have deep roots in agriculture, growing food for taste.

We always grew it for quantity and shipability, but never flavor. And we never had a strong sense of the table as a place of conversation and pleasure. It was much more that sort of puritanical just were here to eat and fuel up. And so when the fast food industry came in, it just pulled us up by the ruts. Sure. It just pulled us up. Yeah. And we went with it.

We went with the idea that it was easier to do this. It was fast, cheap, and easy. And even, you know, my parents who had a garden in the backyard, they at one point stopped canning applesauce and bought the applesauce. Yeah. So you, I guess, by the time you hit your teens, the family moved a bit, right? You moved to the Midwest and then to California. Was this for your dad's job? Yes, it was. He was transferred to Chicago, and then he was further transferred to Los Angeles. So you went to, so you decided when you graduated high school, you went to the University of California in Santa Barbara. and this is in the early 60s. And what was your impression of the place?

Well, that was a party place then, right by the water on the beach. And I decided to transfer to UC Berkeley in the fall of 1964. So the fall of 1964, you end up at UC Berkeley, a junior in college or a sophomore in college? A sophomore college. And that really, I have to imagine me, you're getting there at the time when this is like right as the Berkeley free speech movement is starting out. It's starting up. And were you, I mean, you get to Berkeley. Were you in any way politicized at that time or were you totally like naive and, you know, was it not part of your world?

Well, I certainly was naive. And I was really shocked by what was going on, but very attractive. to it. Yeah. And my friends were sort of in the same place, but we all were drawn in on the outside of the demonstrations, listening and curious and inspired, ultimately. Do you remember seeing any of those leaders speak? Oh, yes, Mario Savi.

He was sort of the student leader of the movement. He was a student leader. And his words just touched me in a very deep way. And he talked about how we could change the world and how we had to work together. And when things are so wrong, we have to stop, stop the gears and put yourself on the line. Demonstrate.

I mean, be willing to take a risk. That was it. Be willing to take a risk. I mean, you had grown up in this very sort of cloistered, secluded kind of 50s world. And now you were in the middle of 1960s Berkeley. I mean, sort of the center of college radicalism, certainly in the United States. There was the war. There was the free speech movement, the sexual revolution, drugs. I mean, all these things, right.

It must have been an exciting time. It was. I mean, it really was. And I think I must have had some of my mother's genes in me. Because when I think back, I mean, at the end of her life, she said to me, you're living the life I always wanted to live. Wow. So in 1965, you are a student and you had, I guess, an opportunity to study abroad and you went to France. What struck you about France when you got there? What did you discover that you didn't quite realize until you got there? Well, I had never been out of the country before. So it was a revelation on all fronts to arrive in Paris, that beautiful, beautiful city.

I don't know. It was every part of that experience. It just was an awakening for me. It was really an awakening. When do you remember thinking there's something different about food and the connection to food here that I have never experienced before? Was it almost instantly after you arrived? It was almost instantly because we stood in line to get a hot bag kit. And you waited and then you got it.

And it was warm. And we raced back to our little rooming house. and we had some apricot jam and some butter, and we ate it on the hot bread, and I wanted to eat it every morning like that. I wanted a bowl of cafe au lait. I wanted to see what was inside of these little restaurants that were all over Paris at that time.

They were very small and had pink tablecloths and candlelight. and, you know, big bowls of food sitting on the tables as you walked in. It was a feast, and I just really fell for it. Did you start to explore the food markets? Well, I went through one of those markets, the really old market street, on my way to school. Was it just like shockingly different to what you had seen in the U.S.? It was shockingly different because it was kind of the U.S. was the supermarket.

Yeah. And this was, you know, live fish, you know, really alive, beautiful, beautiful vegetables that just said, look at me, buy me. And they didn't call them farmer's markets. This was just the market. It was just Marcus, that's right. And all the food was really from that area in and around Paris. Would you walk to the markets in Paris and see produce that you had never seen before? Oh, indeed.

You know, I had never had a wild strawberry. And I talk about that a lot as being the moment when I said, oh, you know. What was different about it? I need to eat these. They were tiny. and they were so intensely flavored and you were served a big plate of them with a little picture of cream on the side

and a bowl of sugar if you needed it. And I couldn't have enough of them. And I wondered where they came from and they told me you have to go out in the woods and pick them. And I didn't know that I was being imprinted in that way. in terms of seasonality and aliveness. Because you went around with your French friends, and they were so picky about what restaurant to eat in.

And you weren't used to that. I wasn't used to that at all. And I was hungry. And they would not allow us to go into the place until they had examined the various menus to see who had the food. that was the tastiest. And did they have those clams? Where did they come from?

But it wasn't just about food. It was the discourse at the table. We would sit there maybe two hours, talking politics, talking about life. And I was fascinated with that conversation at the table. So that year, obviously, was going to be a turning point in your life, which you didn't yet probably know. Did that year change what you thought you wanted to do with your life?

Did you think, you know, I want to be a chef, I want to be a cook, I want to study cooking, or did you go back to Berkeley and just think, all right, I did my year in France and now I'm back? It was more I did my year in France and now I'm back. But all the time I was cooking. I wanted to eat like the French and live like the French. So that pushed me to explore the markets and try and find the taste. And I couldn't find it. You know, I wanted to eat in French restaurants in the city.

I saved all my money so I could eat in the fancy French restaurants. But it didn't taste like that. So you sort of finished up at, at you see, Berkeley, you're cooking this French food at home. And what was your plan at that point? What were you going to do with your life? Well, I had a friend who was teaching Montessori's school. And she told me all about Montessori's philosophy of teaching. And I said, oh, my goodness, she is really thinking about the world in the same way I am. the idea of opening your senses, because those are the pathways into our minds, that you're touching, you're tasting, you're smelling, you're listening, you're seeing. And that's what happened to me in France. I had awakening of my senses. And I thought, well, maybe I could teach in a Montessori school, and there happened to be one right down the street.

In Berkeley. In Berkeley. So you got a job there as a preschool teacher? Yes. Yeah. And you know, you must have enjoyed it. I mean, did you think that, you know, this is maybe what I'll do? It was like that.

Although I was very challenged by the three to six-year-old children. I had never been around them before. Did you ever at a certain point say, you know, I think I want to take cooking classes. I want to sort of formally learn how to do this. No. I was intimidated by that. I thought it was, you know, complicated and that I would be exposed for my, you know, ignorance in the way that Julia Child felt at the beginning of her cooking classes, you know. But I wasn't as determined as she was to go home and chop a pile of.

of onions properly so that I could excel at the class. I wanted to experiment at home and just do what I thought I could do well. So it's the late 60s. You're teaching at a preschool and enjoying cooking at home. How did you start to come to this idea that maybe you wanted to open a restaurant? Well, I was cooking for a lot of my friends at our house. I was living with a printer, and he was very political, and he would invite all of his friends over for dinner, and a group was producing a magazine called The San Francisco Express Times.

and so they would gather at the table, and I started cooking for them all. In fact, so much so that they liked it. And I started doing a little cooking column called Alice's Restaurant. In that paper. For that paper. And in total, we did 30 of those. But I was kind of going broke, buying the ingredients, and I was. very naively said, well, maybe I could open a little place. And then my friends would pay to come and eat there.

And I had the encouragement of this other extraordinary friend that I lived with Tom Luddie, who was running the Telegraph Repertory Cinema. And he had dinner parties for all of his filmmaker friends. Any ones that we would know? Oh, I think so. John Lugudar. Wow. And Francis Coppola. And you were just cooking for them.

I was just cooking for them. There were dinner parties and you were. It's crazy. So I'm trying to kind of recreate this moment. And oftentimes on the show, when we get to this moment, you know, there's a business plan and there's a, you know, very methodical kind of process. And is it, was it just like, yeah, let's just do this? Let's just see if we could do this. In a way, it was, because Tom is a pretty extraordinary person,

and he saw that I had that inclination. He said, let's just go and eat in all the little French restaurants and restaurants in San Francisco, so we could get an idea of what it is that you're looking for. And we had gone to a very special restaurant out in Bolinas that was in a house. I was very struck by that. Maybe it could be a restaurant in a house

because then it could feel like I was cooking at home. And then I saw this place in North Berkeley. This is where Chapinises today on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. What was that play? It was just a house for rent? It was a plumbing shop that was in a house. and all pipes in all were out in front in sort of the courtyard in front. And it was a very plain stucco house, two floors.

And I love the location. And it was commercially available. Yeah. So this is where I'm sort of one. Like you were broke because you were spending all your money doing these dinner parties. So just a business question for a moment. I mean, did you, how did you even have the money to sign a lease or to make a commitment or to refurbish the place? Did you have to go and ask friends to ship in?

Yes, absolutely. And my parents mortgaged their house. Wow. They had always believed in me. They believed in all of their kids. But I guess, I guess we should acknowledge that you also did borrow money from some other sorts. Like, there's this, I don't know if it's apocryphal or it's a story that you got some money from, like, pot dealers in Berkeley? It's true.

Okay, so you get this lease. And by the way, do you remember how much money you had to raise from family and drug dealers, whoever, like, to act, whoever you did to actually have the confidence to, like, sign this lease agreement? Well, I don't remember exactly. but one of the people who gave me some money is still on the board of directors of Shea Fennies and he was a friend of Tom Luddies Tom, he found the people

that had the confidence that I didn't have and he says, I think you need to get connected with Paul Arato because he has cooking skills and he's got all these copper pots and he knows how to make a risotto. I'm sure he could be a partner for you. Was it, I mean, were these people who were investing in you and the restaurant, did they think that they were investing and that they were going to get a return on their investment? Or was it just like, hey, this is a cool idea, Alice, like, this is groovy.

Let's have a place where we could all leave. Hey, this was the 70s, the early 70s. And I would have been ashamed. If I had been looking to make money, nobody who was involved with this project expected to make money. We hoped to, but we didn't expect it. Why? It was a labor of love. Yeah.

And we were doing it in this very non-professional way, if you will. I thought I had a little bit of experience because I had waited. on tables in a couple of places to make money in high school. So when you really kind of start to ramp up to open up the restaurant, I mean, you'd never run a restaurant. And running a restaurant is a really challenging business. Most restaurants eventually fail. Were you in any way intimidated or nervous about all of those people who are putting their faith in this thing working or not? Well, I knew. that if the food was really good, that people would come.

I knew that. Absolutely, I knew that. But I was too intimidated to cook at the beginning. And Victoria Croir was the first cook at the restaurant. We practiced at home, and we read about food, really deeply read about it. And so we thought, We could do one menu a day. So this was not ambitious, we didn't think.

So when were you able to actually open the restaurant? August 28, 1971. And this was a French traditional or sort of traditional French restaurant, right? Yes. It was very French. And what did the inside of the restaurant look like? Did you have an idea of how you wanted it to be? Oh, absolutely.

Well, I had help from my French friend, my team and she was an artist and she had lots of ideas about how we could find things at the flea market in Alameda so I would go with her and find silverware mismatched silverware. This is a giant flea market in Alameda that they still have right at the old base right? Same market yeah and we had red and white checker tablecloths I wanted flowers on the table I wanted a candle and Martine designed the very first poster

that we had for the restaurant that we put in a frame and put out in front that night and I greeted people at the door. And what did you serve in that first meal? That first night we served a paté on crout, cornichens on the side

and then we had duck with the auld And I think that was Victoria. She felt really confident in putting those trays of ducks in the oven. There was duck fat everywhere, I remember. And with olives and with some sort of potato celery root puree, I think. And Lindsay, the pastry shop, made a palm tar. And how much was that that set meal?

I think it was $3.95. When we come back. in just a moment, how that $4 meal turned into one of America's best restaurants and eventually inspired a revolution in the restaurant industry. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's 1971, and Alice Waters has just opened up Chez Panisse, and she's trying to capture some of the magic she felt eating at restaurants in Paris. And pretty soon, the tables are starting to fill up. And Alice, she has to figure out how to run a company.

I was out in the dining room trying to make a work. And I know that everybody who worked there was passionate about the same idea. I decided that we couldn't run the restaurant without these people who were critical to taste and to the way that the place, looked in the way that the cafe run was running and so we we formed a corporation and we had people

that brought money bought stock in this and that helped us to run the restaurant but I also gave shares to the people that were

instrumental and we had this group of people of people that believed in the project and invested in it. Were you, I mean, it sounds like you were getting your own business education as this was happening, right? Because you hadn't gone to business school. And I mean, as you say, you didn't go into this thinking you wanted to make money. In fact, that was anathema to you in some ways. But you still had to run a business because there were people whose livelihoods were depending on this in part.

Is that what was happening? Were you kind of learning as you went along about shares and about a corporation and about how to structure these things? I was absolutely learning by doing, which is a big, mondessori idea, that actually doing that works, that you're learning about its value and what is critical and what it really means to clean up the restaurant after hours. and what those people needed to be paid, what a dishwasher should be paid. I remember I got a very powerful lesson about garbage from one of, it was a guy who brought fish to the restaurant really early on,

this guy, political friend of mine from way back, who collected muscles along the coast, and he would bring them into the restaurant. And he said to me one day, I want you to come out and see the dumpster. And I went out and he pulled it open and it didn't smell very good. And he said, I want you to get in the dumpster. I want you to know what it feels like to be not careful about the way you put garbage in this container. And it was a big way. up call for me.

You were the center of this hubbens spoke and still are, but at that time, I mean, it strikes me that, and I hope I'm not sort of extrapolating, but you wanted to do this because you loved to do it and you wanted to be around people you liked and you wanted people to be happy. but a business, inevitably, you're going to run into challenges with personnel, with people who just are not working out. Did you, in those early days, you know, what if you had to fire people? Was it hard for you? What if you had to discipline people? Did you just avoid that?

I tried to avoid that. I did. But I avoided it in a very different way. I tried to hire friends. that really helped me to solve the problems. When you're working in a business and you're working, you know, 15 hours a day or whatever you're doing,

I wanted to be with people I liked and that I shared the values with. And so I was willing to take the risk of it not working out. And fortunately, there were a very, few times where that became an issue. What was it that was driving you at that time that was really motivating you because you weren't making money and you weren't going to make any money for a long time? And it seems like money wasn't really a source of tension, right?

I mean, is that – was that the secret at least at the beginning? Because everyone says, don't hire your friends. Don't work with your friends. But if I guess if money is not really this thing that everyone's chasing, then there's no, there's no, I mean, because money is really the center of conflicts in business. Yes, it is. And I wanted a place and always have wanted a place that I wanted to be in and that it was constantly growing and changing. And that happened when different people brought ideas into the restaurant. And I think what really has created this long life for the restaurant is the fact that we don't have one person who is the main chef of the restaurant. We have two people, and they share their job.

They work three days, and then they're paid for five. and it allows them time to recover and have ideas. And what about you, though? I mean, this business was your baby at that point. I mean, I have to imagine that you were working like crazy. I was working all of the time. Like seven days a week? Like just about seven days a week.

We were closed on Sundays. And I just threw myself into it. What was the thing that just kept, was it? I mean, some people, describe the fear of failure. Some people describe, you know, the bottom line. Some people describe this sort of intangible passion. Like what was it that kept you showing up for 15 hours a day, seven days a week? When you have only one menu and it's different every day, you have to find those ingredients. You have to put them together differently. People have to want to,

want to come there and taste that. So maybe I was pushed more quickly into finding ingredients. And I really believed that that sort of search led me to the doorsteps of the local organic farmers and ranchers. But it was that that gave a kind of life and challenge to the restaurant? I guess it was maybe 73 or 74, probably the most famous food critic in the United States at the time, James Beard, for whom the famous award is named after, he eats at the restaurant and a couple days or weeks later says, this is one of the four best restaurants in the United

States. What happened after that came out? Because you were like this collective communal, all of a sudden this guy says this is one of the four best restaurants in the United States. Well, you know, it was so gratifying in one way. But in another way, it made the restaurant incredibly busy. It's sort of almost overwhelmingly so that we weren't prepared for that clientele. This is probably ultra wealthy people flying to the Bay Area

for the weekend to eat at your restaurant, right? I think probably some of them were coming in that way. But ultimately it led to my conclusion that my friends couldn't afford to eat there and couldn't get in. But it made me think about it really seriously. And I think, again, at Tom Luddie's urging that I get back to my roots, that I really love. simple food. And it was a trip to Italy, actually, when I saw a pizza oven in about 1978, that I said, we need to create a real cafe bistro upstairs.

That is more affordable. That is more affordable, where we don't worry about money so much because pasta isn't too expensive to make and maybe pizzas aren't and that would be a place for friends to gather. As a restaurant started to get more attention, especially after James Beard and more media attention, you started to become a celebrity. You started to become a famous person, not just in Berkeley, but nationally known. Was that strange for you? Or, I mean, did you even absorb that and assimilate that idea? or were you just kind of doing your thing? I mean, you can't help but be impressed when Newsweek magazine wants to put you on the cover.

You know, I never expected that kind of attention to what I thought was a pretty simple local community restaurant in Berkeley, California. I mean, what was clear to me then, and is very, very clear to me now, is that we were doing something sort of against the fast food culture of this country. That we were creating a meal that was supporting a slow food. movement that was actually buying its food directly from the people who took care of the land. No middleman giving them all the money. And then they brought their values into the restaurant and that it changed us. And we became really political. We started writing their names on the cafe list.

that this came from Bob Canard's farm, that this came from Dalporto's ranch, that this was Mas Masamoto's peach, and identifying the people who were growing and raising the food, we became, in a way, co-producers. Did people come to you and say,

Alice, you know, we got to make Chapinese cafes and Chapinness expresses, and, you know, you got to branch, out and open them all over the country in the world and we can get investors and venture money and we can do a whole Alice Waters line at Target and Kmart and

I mean that must have happened right Oh that did happen and a few times I was almost tempted by the money What happened? Why didn't any of that happen? It didn't happen because

I really feel like It's important that you find people that share your values. And when they do, they're the ones that breathe life into it and should make the money from it. I just couldn't imagine knowing how franchises work that there would ever be a way. To do it in a way that aligned with your own values? Yes, yes. It feels like selling out.

I hate to use that term too, but it feels like I'm doing it just to make the money. I just cannot think about it that way. But it's more than that. I can't ever imagine flying around the world to visit my restaurants. What I like about being a restaurant trees is that I, I know the people who work there, and it's the pleasure of my everyday life. I'm friends with them. I know the customers who come in.

I love that aspect of it. Yeah, I mean, this was, I mean, we could, if we stopped the story here, it would be impressive. And Chez Panisse was this really cool restaurant. But that's really not, I mean, that's really sort of the beginning of the story, because what's interesting about Shea Panisse is that there's a virtual concept. among chefs in the United States that what we consider farm to table, you know, which every restaurant does now, or talking, describing the source of produce. Like, they all agree. That started at Chez Panisse in the late 70s, that this was the restaurant that really created

the farm to table movement. How did that happen? I mean, you were a French restaurant and you were serving great food, but was there, was it just a kind of a natural evolution? Or did you, was there a point where you thought, look, we're in California. This is like the breadbasket of North America. You know, we can actually source all this stuff locally and tell people where it comes from. Well, it happened sort of naturally and not really consciously trying to do that. It became California without us really identifying that right away. And California meant local foods and cooked in a just sort of an unfast way, right? Well, it meant for me for sure, a very simple kind of cooking.

And we are really at the beginning in this country, discovering the ingredients that we have to cook with. And I have always been focused on the organic aspect of it, really insistent on how the animals are cared for, and what they are fed. Completely, I wanted to be about purity of food. We need to be thinking about all of these different aspects for the survival of the planet. and for our own nourishment.

When you started to focus on local food, farm to table, which I guess you didn't really call it farm to table, did you think that you were building a movement? Did you think that this was going to become something really big? Or did you just do it because you thought that was the right thing to do? Well, at the beginning, I thought it was the right thing to do. But I felt, though, in the late 70s, the early 80s, especially when the cafe became so successful, that we had this audience and that we need to talk about taking care of the land for the future. And it really became into my consciousness when my daughter was born.

and I felt like Chez Panese could not be an island onto itself that we were affected by everything that was upstream and around the world and I became very conscious of that and I started to actively talk about it

in every way I could every article that was written about the restaurant from that point on was really talking about how dependent and how easy it is to have a relationship with the farmer and how really exciting it was to talk to that person on the phone or to see the farm and talk about the planting and all of that. The grow your own back to the land movement is something that I hope happens.

again and soon, because that is what is going to bring us a rural economy. When we can find a way to bring culture to agriculture, when we can bring security to the farmers who take care of the land, when we can buy directly from them, they will want to take care of nature. And I know many are doing that young people around the country, and I'm thrilled by it. When you think about organic today, it's everywhere. It's actually a huge value add for businesses to use that term organic when they can, because they can charge more money. It's everywhere. You can go to Costco and Walmart and Target and buy organic gummy bears and organic salads. an organic candy and organic apple juice and whatever.

Everything's organic, right? Are you, I mean, part of that is connected to farm to table because that's an attractive option for people. Or, you know, you go to any fast food place and it will say farm fresh eggs. Well, every egg comes ultimately from a farm. The question is, what is that farm? When you see, like, you know, when you see that everything is organic today and everything is described as farm to table.

I mean, is part of you happy about that and proud of that? I'm troubled by it. I'm very troubled about the labeling on packages and how people are taking the values of our movement and greenwashing their industrial products. And we have to learn and be educated about what those words really mean? Is it certified organic? And who is certifying it? Where is it coming from? Are the practices at these farms, humane? Are they taking care of their farm workers? Are they paying them a decent

wage? What about the packaging? Is it all plastic? What does fresh mean? For some places, it could be two weeks old. Who do you trust? Alice, when you are a public figure and you are associated with a really important movement, inevitably you will be criticized. There will be somebody who criticizes you. And you've received your fair share of it. Some people say, you know, this is what she's talking about. It only applies to affluent people and people who can afford her restaurants and people who have the money for organic foods. Do you internalize that criticism?

Do you think about it? Does it change how you think about what you do? Do you ignore it? Well, I don't believe in this. I don't believe in the midst of a fast food culture. Food is precious. Food is precious. It can be affordable.

It can be inexpensive if you know how to cook. I mean, I say that I can buy an organic chicken and I can make at least three meals out of it for a family of four. Jose Andres says he can make six. That's affordable. I know that we can make a school lunch that can even fit into the minuscule budget of the USDA reimbursement.

If we know how to cook and we do not buy fast food. If we buy the food from the people who are doing it right and directly. This idea that I'm talking about is delicious. This is not hard to do. This is about sitting with your friends and family and eating together and even cooking together. This is about human values that we forgot about.

This is addressing the issue of loneliness. This is addressing the issue of meaningless work. We are cooking something that makes other people happy. Yeah. We are falling in love with nature. We are seeing the trees turn color. We're having an everyday pleasure of that. We're engaging in the beauty and the biodiversity.

Seeing 10 colors of carrots. It's kind of thrilling. I cooked a purple and orange carrot last night. and I marveled at it. And that's what is going to make the revolution, if you will. I call it a delicious revolution. But it's about winning people over. It's not by overthrowing.

It's not by separating. We need the biodiversity of people. Just like we need the biodiversity in nature to survive. You won the James Beard Award. I think it was in 1992. You were named the Best Chef in America, which is interesting because you are, in some ways, you're not best known as a chef.

I mean, obviously you're known as a chef, but you're best known as the person behind a movement. Do you feel more proud of one than the other? Do you see yourself as a chef, primarily? or do you see yourself as something else? I see myself as a really good cook, and I see myself as a great critic and taster. And I'm not a chef, chef.

Jacques Papin said to me, I'll stop saying that because you are a chef. You've run a kitchen, and if you've run a kitchen, you're a chef. But for me, chef goes into that, you know, a training. Yeah. Like Julia Child did. You know, when she cooked every single thing in her book and she wrote such wonderful instructions, that's not ever been something that I've aspired to do.

When you think about the success of Chez Panisse, you know, whether, and it's interesting how we define success, because it's not, it's not necessarily financial success. of course, people have done well and have been and live comfortable lives, but it's not, you know, a billion dollar corporation. But when you think about the success of Chapin, and then the kind of the movements that came out of it, and all, which we didn't really talk a lot about, but all of the chefs who kind of came out of that world too and created their own worlds, how much of your own personal success do you attribute to just luck and circumstance? and how much do you attribute to your skill and hard work and your determination?

Well, you know, I really consider that it was good luck, that I went to France when it was really a slow food nation, that I had the opportunity at a young age to understand that I had a passion around food. I didn't know how that would reveal itself. I didn't reflect on it at the time. But I just absorbed what I call human values at that time. You know, the big picture of eating together, how people have done this since the beginning of time.

How they've always taken care of the land, because that's where the food came from. They've always thought of food is precious. So to you, the biggest factor is luck? I guess there has been some determination. People have asked me for one word that described me, and I've said determined. Some people have said uncompromising.

I'm not quite that, but I'm very determined to make something happen. and usually when I feel this way, it happens. That's Alice Waters, founder and owner of Shape, and niece. In 1995, Alice founded an organization called the Edible Schoolyard Project, which sets up organic gardens in schools and teaches children to care for, cook, and enjoy fresh produce. Today, the original edible schoolyard in Berkeley also offers training programs for parents and teachers to replicate the project throughout the U.S. Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that.

And today's story starts in Dallas in 2003 when Pearson Gaines was a teenager and wanted to make a change. I had played soccer throughout my life. I always just wore my hair and braids. And then when I was going into high school, I decided that I wanted to wear my hair straight, take my braids out and wear my hair straight. Now, like many African-American women, Pearson has highly textured hair. but her hair is also very fine. If I straightened it, it would curl up as soon as I sweat, as soon as I took a shower.

And Pearson had never had it chemically straightened before. So she went to a stylist and got the treatment. And at first, her hair looked great. But then... I was in geometry class and there was a guy behind me who said, Peirston, all of your hair is on my desk. Yeah, it was bad. It was really bad. Pearson lost her hair, all of it.

And it took a long time to grow back. Now, this happened again a few years later, which is why Pearson was kind of wary of new salons. But in 2016, when she moved to Boston to go to Harvard Business School, she really needed someone to do her hair. One of my friends said that she was going to a girl at Dry Bar. It is an express salon service. They only do blowouts. I've never seen anyone who, with my type of hair, walk out of there. And I was scared, but I was like, I don't really have an option right.

But it turns out the stylist knew exactly what she was doing. The experience was just amazing. I was out of the salon in like an hour and a half, which had never happened to me and all of the times I've been going to the salon since I was a kid. And her hair looked amazing. So she was hooked. Pearson booked a weekly standing appointment, but it didn't last. She left.

She moved out of the state. So Pearson got just one month of salon bliss. And that didn't seem fair. But what it did seem like, was an opportunity. For a demographic of women who spent so much time in money, so much money. We spend nine times more than any other group of people on our hair, but the services just are subpar.

So Pearson thought, what if there could be a chain of salons all over the country for people with highly textured hair, whether it was thick or coarse or fine or tightly curled, a salon where they could get it styled in two hours and they would leave looking great. I really believed that if I didn't do this, somebody else was going to do this. It was just so obvious. It was so glaringly obvious. But she needed to be sure. So Pearson pulled together a few hundred dollars from her student loans.

And she organized a one-day pop-up salon in Boston. She found three hairdressers to do the blowouts. And to get the word out, she emailed black and Hispanic groups at local colleges. The promo material that I said out is that, finally, a blow-dry experience for you. And it had a picture of a girl with, like, curly hair. And Pearson also decided to serve green juice so her first clients could feel a little pampered. I thought I was going to be pulling people's teeth to try this. And it sold out. It sold out. Now, each blowout was just $10. And Pearson wondered if it was just a fluke. To find out, she needed to do more pop-ups. So she went to Atlanta, and she got into an incubator there, one that was geared toward women of color.

And for her next test, she raised her price. $50 a blowout. And she served something other than green juice. In Atlanta, it's about the experience and the mimosa's. And those pop-ups were booked solid. Not only did Pearson make a profit, she also had clients asking, when's the next one?

Can I reserve a spot right now? And at that moment, Pearson knew she was really onto something. If we stay doing the numbers that we're doing on these pop-ups, we'll be making $1.6 million in blowouts alone. This year, Pearson is back in Dallas, where she's hosting pop-ups every other week and scouting locations for her first blowout salon. And who does her hair now? Our master's stylist and educator.

She is my stylist. Her name is India. This solution was for me. I created the solution so that if I went to a new city, I could Google somebody and know someone could do my hair. This was literally for me. That's Pierston Gaines. She's the founder of pressed roots. If you want to find out more about Pearson or hear previous episodes,

head to our podcast page, how I built this.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at hibt at npr.org.

And if you want to send a tweet, It's at How I Built This. Our show is produced this week by Rachel Faulkner with music composed by Rumtin Arablui. Thanks also to Julia Carney, J.C. Howard, Nur Kudsi, Neva Grant, Melissa Gray, Sanaz Mechkampur, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Candice Lim. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.