Inside Food Safety Ep.4 | LIVE from New Orleans | Bocuse d'Or, LRA, IAFP & the Future of Hospitality

I have the chef, Puchrovera, I mean Mr. Louisiana, Mr. New Orleans in the house, and I know this

“because we've been walking around all over the city.”

And I know Puchrovera a little bit, he's part of the team, like we're, you know, we're buzzing buddies, but I saw people in cars drive by and literally call the guy out, like

Pete, like, randoms. That is pretty amazing. Thank you, sir.

Then of course we have Mr. Eric Moore, the Food Safety Specialist, the expert at Testo, North America, Trusted Partner with Walk and Talk Media, and this is inside Food Safety New Orleans edition. I have to tell you something right now, this is going to be pretty badass. Let me start it with this. I, today, got to be on stage at Boku's filming these amazing, the best chefs in the world

“and how lucky am I for that. I got to, honestly, this is, this is one of the ones for the books”

for me. We got to film the La Gassies, Father and Son, Daniel Balloon, like there were so many people that we actually got Paul Jean Paul. Oh my god, there's so many, but there's a remade.

It doesn't end. It's, this was here such an amazing time. Wow, I'm, I'm really, I'm kind of taking

it back. And I mean, that's sincerely. So Pooji, you kind of put this together for Walk and Talk, we'll, what, with what we're doing at large. And I want to give you the, the proper thanks and, and flowers for that. So when we're talking about relationships and we're talking about where Walk and Talk Media is today and we're talking about Testo, North America and of course, Eric Moore is right here in the flesh. We're staring at each other eyeballs and everything

honored by the way. Welcome to New Orleans and welcome to the show. Happy and honored to be here. Let's recognize Mr. Aaron Sharp, who was supposed to be here and, you know, got deverted. This was his idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He is, he is a wealth of, of great ideas coming out of him. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's really encouraging and excited. He's got energy. He really, yes. You know, it's a combination of energy and a foresight and it says, it's a scary combo to have.

Yeah, actually the grit too. He's got to pass you to the grid, buddy. Yeah, it's good kid. 100% let's start food safety. There's several shows happening right here in New Orleans. There's a lot of food handed out. There's a lot of industry folks just walking around big, like, like, Michelin stars and James Beard of recipients and all of it. They're all here.

“The force behind all of the culinary really is food safety. That's where that's what people”

care about today. That's like, in my opinion, is the number one past culinary like, hey, what is it tastes like? The number one thing is is the staff knowledgeable. Is the food coming from the right places? You know, all of that. It's, it's really, it's really where it is. Poochie, you are a decorated chef. We have all of your peers and all of these people here at the show. What's food safety mean to you? It means everything to me. I mean, if we don't,

if we can't regulate how food is prepared, held, stored, then we shouldn't be selling the food. In a culinary city like New Orleans, it's been around here doing the first, first restaurant, first cocktail, first appetizer, invented brunch. All of these different things right here in this city. I mean, it's paramount to make sure that everyone doesn't leave this city, sick, hopefully not dead. You know, everything has to be tested. I mean, and what better

brand and test out to help you do those things. Eric, New Orleans is an old city. It's an old, old place. That can have its challenges. Absolutely. I mean, from a physical, you know,

physical structure perspective, absolutely. You know, the places where a lot of amazing things happen

and kitchens here, those are old spaces. It's hard to maintain those old spaces, keep them sort of up to code or quote, if you will. But also, you know, functional, efficient and, you know,

jam things in there that are, you know, from modern technology into these old, old structure.

It's, it's challenging. And then to have to work there, right? It's even more, more complicated. You don't forget. You actually, they have to produce. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At a top tier level as well. Yeah. Me, awesome competition here. Yeah. The funny thing about Louisiana, especially with New Orleans, sort of funny things, it's an awesome thing is that a chef, shot of the chef, John Paul, who'd mention that, you know, you can go to the soul food places

that are on the corner. But they have lines around the corner because people come here for New Orleans just to experience that culture and food, the culture through the food. And within

that, you sort of doesn't matter in the Michelin stars would have you everywhere, she before,

“you have to make sure that everything is held properly, cooked properly, all the above,”

sanitized properly, keep people coming back. Yeah. All year round. And then you have this place that we're in, the convention center. It's one of the largest convention centers in the United States. So, we're mile long. Over, mile long. We walked this. It's over, mile long. Now we're walking. Hundreds of miles. I can tell you because I'm, I'm a sweaty mess. When I got it, it's killing me. Yeah, it's, it's so big. And I'll tell you,

going on, probably almost 15 years ago, I used to come here on an annual, actually, like once or twice a year when I worked for Airmark, they were the food service management company here. And massive trade shows show would come in. And the biggest one that we ever did was for Microsoft, we were doing 10,000 person plated meals, three times a day, right, for five straight days. So just think about that, right? In the main production kitchen is all the way at

“the, well, I guess that's the north end of the hall. I think it's a whole, it's essentially, right?”

I think they use the actual global parallels, like, you know, it was, I'm telling you, it was absolutely astounding. So, you know, you've got challenges, right, on individual restaurant, location levels, right, with, you know, with structures and things like that. And then you move into an environment like this, where it's mass in scale, it gets, it gets wild. I'd like to know what actual the longitudinal attitude is, so we can, you know, triangulate.

Who do you, you've had restaurants here in the city? What's the average age of these buildings here? Oh, well, we got 200 years older plus. Okay. How do you, how does a restaurant tour approach modernizing, you know, just bringing things to code like Eric was saying, how do you approach this? Well, you know, it's funny that you say this, the irony of the fact that we will walk you into this place and the person from a news anchor asks us how we felt about certain things with the

infrastructure here, based upon state city battling each other over some infrastructure. So, in a daily basis, you've got to boil a boil of water advisory and sincerely on a daily basis. Our plumbing is antiquated with 17 people at sea level, so everything's sinking, pipe to cracking all of the above. So, when you lose water pressure, you're not getting the, I'm, yeah, quite sure where the aquatics and all that, but you're not getting the right amount

of water flowing through, whatever. Anyways, it's boil advisory. So, boil advisory, you got the boil of the water. Now, imagine 10,000 people serving them three times a day, but also imagine all these Michelin star restaurants, all these James Beater Ward winners who every day have to face something that's compromising their art and their craft, something as simple as just turning

“the water off, making sure that it's sanitary. So, this is probably a great idea, right?”

Has an ingredient in food and to wash your hands, to clean your dishes, right? Like,

water is the most important. You'll learn that in culinary school and in apprenticeships.

You know, our chefs would ask us, what's the most important ingredient? We've solved pepper, the water. If you don't have water, you can't do anything. So, poochie, so, what you're saying is the, the pipes are old, you're under the, you know, under the under the sea level. But then, if that's the case, your electrical grid is also going to be potentially affected as well. With that said, if you have 10, 15, 20,000 dollars worth of, you know, product in your, in your

freezer, your cooler, you're walking. Like, that's scary. It was only last month that Chef Thomas Manzik over at the Tampa Club. He literally bought the Severus system from Testo, and this is not like an infomercial. This is us just talking facts, saved him 20 grand in a week, in a week. Yeah. Over, and yeah, like, during our 200th episode celebration, Aaron was at the Tampa Club. That

literally, Chef is at home, and he's getting notifications, and it's telling him that, hey,

there's a problem. He actually called this chef, who was, you know, on duty, and Chef comes out, and says, no, everything's fine. Everything's good, Chef. And he's like, nah, can't be because it's telling me that it's dropping. Long story short, there was some construction happening on the roof, and something happened, and a pipe got busted. Pinhole, refrigeration line leak. And he was able to see that. I mean, Kudos to Chef, like, for being able to test those,

“well, to spot, well, the devices work, but you have to look at this stuff, right? And you have to”

pay attention. So that's, like, that's where the accountability really comes in. So, like, props to him for doing that, and like, you know, really recognizing, it isn't, okay, you might, somebody might walk in there, and it feels cold, right, or take a temperature, it's fine, that he, like, looked right at the data, and the data was telling him, no, that, you know, the system is, is failing. He trusted the instruments. That's what he did. And that's, and that's,

like, paramount. And then the other city, I'm thinking people kind of realize, you know, and they have the city, we're in a modern society, where things, you know, obviously, there's

always something that I may have in your power, may go out, it might be a wind storm, whatever it is.

But in New Orleans, this place is so antiquated. So these type of systems are a must.

“Everyone must be able to monitor, and thank God we have this type of, this type of”

technology now. But before you never did, people would walk in and have a thing spoiled because it went under 40, you know, what above 40, either way. Thank God, for the companies like Testo. So how often, you know, you mentioned, right, like, you got a boil water advisory for a certain section of the city. How frequently does a, whether it's a boil water advisory, whether there's some sort of power grid surge, something like that, or even just just dramatic weather events,

which I'm sure are probably often, just as often as in Tampa, right, like with hurricanes, the same, the same hurricanes are impacting New Orleans. But I would say, probably in a more impactful way, because a storm surge and things like that, you know, the frequency at which that occurs, I would imagine that it is almost overwhelming challenge for a culinary professional chef, you know, somebody a restaurant tour, you know, to just constantly have to be thinking,

right, man, did everything stay on on night, you know, or if I take, if I take a day off, am I going to come back to, you know, all of my seafood. And you also had different franchises, I've been in kitchens before, that, you know, whoever was responsible for doing the actual body of the temperatures, sometimes I'm walking as an executive chef and I put something, show little, hey, look at this guy a little bit of responsibly, let's see how he runs

with it. And I can see that it's all fake numbers. It's all just like, I just feel that I refill that out fast, make sure you get it done so if you walk up the door, now everything's long, and it's involved in detail, specifics to each machine, each everything, and so that, that saves very, it saves labor at the other thing as well. Yeah, automation is like anything that you can put in place that, you know, is I don't want to say circumvents or overrides, you know,

human involvement, but when you're talking about like a team, especially if it's a young team, and they do want to just kind of like clock out and be on their way, I would love to have that piece of mind. I mean, young, young, young, young, young, young, I like to, it's the, it's the basic analogy, right? A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to take, I don't want you to take it's the wrong way, right? But when you can engineer

the human intervention or the human step out of a process, oftentimes, it is going to benefit the overall process. Now, again, don't take that the wrong way, because I don't think

will never ever completely eliminate humans in a kitchen, and I'm not for that at all, because

I don't want to robot making me dinner, right? I would much rather have a trained,

“culinary professional, making me food, that's why I go out to eat, like I pay for that,”

and I do that on purpose. I'm not going, I'm going to Sally the salad maker, you know, to get, well, I don't need salad, but I think establishments, you know, this kind of comes back to just what we do in general, and the story of the food, the story of the restaurant tour,

it's the food, and yeah, I want to be seeing somewhere if it's a hotspot or whatever. But the reality

is the vast amount of people who are out there really want to connect with their food, they want to connect with the people who make their food, whether it's on the culinary side or the farming side, or any of that. They want to know, like, who's touching it, and is it safe, and is it good, and who's personal? Who's the person? Who's the person? Right, and when there's like an actual story line to the life of somebody who's the farmer, who's the chef, the fisherman, all of that

“stuff, that's what drives me to try new places. When you're, we're here in New Orleans, and you”

have these iconic, culinary ins, Thomas Keller, Daniel Ballood. Walking around as if just walking around,

can you imagine if the cooler went down or, you know, some goofy thing happens to one of

their one star, two star, Michelin Rush, like, come on, like, you can't, you can't live like that. It's too much on the line. Yeah, yeah, it's too much on the line. And I'll tell you what, we go one of the reasons as well, where people flock to New Orleans, although there's history, there's culinary history, but you know, we have the River Delta, so it's some of the most fertile land in the United States, all that sediment made the Delta area, and it's very fertile, so you have the optimum produce,

you have the optimum seafood of the ocean, you have all these different things. Those aren't maintained on a temperature, a slight, slight here there, you're losing flavor, you're losing a lot of the

optimum, the texture of shrimp, fish, whatever it may be, when the temperature starts lowering,

this is where electronics and software can actually make a difference. And what better city than in New Orleans is antiquated as we are, we need technology in progressive, we can't just go step by step, we need to make that jump from antiquated or Uber antiquated to Uber at technological overnight, thank God we can do. And it's really not that hard, right? It just takes a little bit of time, a little bit of effort, and then the assurance right after the fact,

after the devices, the sensors are installed, I think, you know, you're both kind of getting at it, right? Like these amazingly talented chefs that are walking around here that everybody is enamored by, and they've got restaurants in France and New York and LA, right? They can walk, you know, if they have these systems in place, they can walk around here with complete assurance that their inventory and all those different places is totally safe. And let's talk about hurricanes.

I mean, hurricanes, you're not going to get money back from your insurance company, if the less you could prove, you can store them here at 12 o'clock, power went out at one o'clock, this is where the temperature dropped, that if not, think of the thing you're just trying to get extra money out of it, because I've seen a lot of people get extra money out of those types of

“situations, and insurance companies aren't stupid. Here's the thing, it's not even all that expensive”

when you contrast it against loss, the potential loss, you know, premium going up. I'm saying, like, you know, if it's a few grand here, a few grand more or less, whatever, whatever, when you're talking about just one week's worth of your cooler inventory, you're ahead of the game, there are, you know, like, I put this little, like, article together about how, you know, these systems, these, you know, automated temperature monitoring systems.

You can actually use them for, like, large organizations, large multi-site locations that have recall insurance and food-borne illness insurance. I don't know how, I don't know how frequently, like, an individual restaurant tour would have that, but built into those policies oftentimes, are funds to actually, they could actually pay for the investment into these systems. But you've got to do a little bit of homework, right, in figuring out what your policy dictates,

what kind of, you know, risk control offset, like, plans and programs that qualify within it,

“and then what do you need to have to, to show your carrier in the adjuster, like, what you're doing,”

and they're happy to help you because the money's there. But you got to have a pretty big policy, so I don't know how, for big companies, it makes, it makes a lot of sense. It should be stacked with the right software, like there needs to be the physical metrics in place, meaning, you know, like a, like, a test-o product that's going to monitor your, your cooler and, um, you know,

that you have this because the likelihood of your business, causing illness outbreak, it's recall,

“yeah, lowers, so it costs less to ensure you because they're not going to have to pay claims.”

So it's, it's, it's better for them to invest in you as well. It even translates into oil. You know, I, uh, I didn't know this. I learned this on the phone the other day with Aaron, but the oil tester, yeah, where it tells you, like, when to change your, when to change the oil. Yeah. All right, so all right, it isn't that a little bit of an aged oil is going to hurt you, but it is going to affect quality and drastically, drastically. And if you are able to monitor that or you have a system that tells

you, hey, time to make the change, time to, time to put fresh oil in and the fryers and whatnot, well, guess what? That's saving you money. It's saving you time. It's doing all these different things. So just think of the big, the big QSRs, right? They want their friends fry to taste the same in Budapest as it tastes in Bar Harbor, Maine. And the same as it tastes in New Orleans, in the same it, it tastes in Paris. In the way that they do that, in a, you know, beyond just proprietary,

“you know, custom oil blends is they manage their cooking process and they manage the oil, right?”

And they have specific requirements, okay, you know, the oil needs to be changed now, right? And how do they do that? A large number of them actually use an oil testing device, like the test of 270 device that we sell. And that provides a numerical number, right, that an organization,

like you basically just do like a taste profile test, it's not super hard, not complicated.

And you, you put a number on what tastes good. What do you want your product to taste like? And you equate a number to that. And when this device reads that that it's over that number, you change your oil. And that drives profit, right? Because you're not, you're not changing your oil too soon. So you're, you're buying too much, right? And, you know, what it's doing, essentially, yes, it's driving a profit, but it's also driving consistency and continuity throughout the,

if it's a, you know, multi-chain, uh, just an area. And that only, the multi-chains, stereo, I mean, what we think about New Orleans as well, if we want to keep it, the center to New Orleans, we're the festival capital of the world, you know, we have jazz, festivals, we have morning where we have all these things where outdoor cooking is going on, where there aren't electrical outlets, where there aren't running water a lot of different times.

So in, and we do a lot of a film here, like, this is the film public of the south. So a lot of, when you're on a film sets, catering people, they'll have some certain generators, whatever it is, they have to just keep things properly done. I mean, there's no better way to test it, let me do that up. I just want to call one thing out. You know, I've been going to IAP for, ah, I don't know, this is like, this is my ninth straight ear, um, and I've gone to a couple

before. Never has that meeting coincided with a regional restaurant show, which I think is amazing.

And I don't know if any of my, like, food safety counterparts, they have no clue, right? So this is like, this is super, super cool. You guys are talking about all these amazing talented world-renowned chefs right at the other end of this convention center. There's going to be just full of all these world-renowned food safety, microbiologists, and in some, it's nuts. It's wild. It's so fascinating, because I think I love science, and every, and every capacity, especially

when it has to do with, like, how we can stay more healthy and not get sick somehow.

“And, and the, and the truth is, the moons were aligned with what you, yeah, like this, this was”

perfect. This is the first time we got to meet in person, right? That's right. So here's

a place in the world. I'm saying, that's my point. And here's an awesome thing. You know, Pooch, I know that you are going to be going, attending part of IFFT. Before you do that, there is, I was looking at the agenda for some of the classes. There's a, there's a seminar on dry aging. Wow. That I'll get you the date in the time. I think you'll get. I would absolutely, yeah, I think you'll get so much of the chefs from New Orleans. Yeah, I can come. And you know what,

when you say dry aging and all that, it reminds me of Jeff Fell, I just want to give Jeff Fell a shout out. He's a good kid. Big Jeff. Yeah. That's who I turned to anytime to be educated on dry aging.

Come up, Eric. And we might even have, we might even go and grab dinner. One of these nights,

rock roll. Absolutely. We're going to walk an eat. We're going to eat. We're going to eat.

“And I actually, we're going to sit and eat. And that's what we're going to do. I want to thank Keith”

Hagerty for allowing us to do this, Carolyn Jordan, over here, helping out as well. And then, of

course, some, you know, Mark Romeg. I'm sitting at his desk. I feel like this is Johnny Carson's desk.

“He's something like that. I did not know that. Eyel. Eyel. And so just a, you know, big thanks to”

love Noah TV and the gang. My man, how did people find Eric? LinkedIn, just look at my name. You'll, you'll find it. And you can find test toe, test toe in North America dot com. Excellent.

“Pooji. My man. How does he find it? Well, you can always go to the walking talk website,”

which I'd encourage you to do. But you can find us on YouTube. Walk the talk is now we're coming back with video, they base. So you'll come check us out over there. And, uh,

always at anywhere, get your podcast. You have a list of touch. And what about Mr. Foodie

Petutie? Uh-huh. Foodie Petutie. F-O-O-D-I-E-E-B-A-T-U-T-I-E. I'd much rather you follow, uh, be walking talk show at be walking talk show. You can find all of us there. Excellent. Gentlemen, let's go enjoy the rest of, uh, of this wonderful week here in New Orleans. And we are out. [BIRDS CHIRPING]