S6 Ep32: Crafty Ways to Curb Kitchen Food Waste with Alison Mountford
“Your cauliflower is not going to save nor destroy the world. But as we all make these decisions all the time and we scale, it can add up.” — Alison Mountford
The relationship between home cooking and reducing food waste extends deeper than just being a simple solution. It’s about making conscious, constant decisions that influence both our health and our planet. Reinventing our kitchen practices could not only help us savor healthy, home-cooked meals but also contribute to a zero-food-waste lifestyle.
Founded by Alison Mountford, Ends+Stems, a meal planning service, aims to reduce household food waste and combat climate change. She leverages her 15-year career as a professional chef and entrepreneur to alleviate the stress of weeknight dinners and food waste. Alison's mission centers around reviving home cooking and supporting environmental sustainability.
Listen in as Justine and Alison answer intriguing questions around food waste namely, How can we use our expertise to contribute to shifts in the food system? Do individual efforts truly make a difference? How can social media help us amplify our impact? What is the proper way to store low-moisture vegetables such as cauliflower and asparagus as opposed to high-moisture vegetables such as lettuce and celery? Lastly, if we find ourselves generating food waste, does it mean we failed?
Connect with Alison:
Alison Mountford is the Founder and CEO of Ends+Stems, a meal-planning service designed to reduce household food waste and stop the effects of climate change. Alison turned 15 years of professional chef and entrepreneurial experience into a solution to help eliminate both weeknight dinner stress and food waste in one clever step.
Alison is a passionate problem solver and approachable leader with a dual vision; to get households cooking again and to save the planet. Before building Ends+Stems, Alison founded Square Meals in 2005, one of San Francisco’s first prepared meal delivery companies. Square Meals was the first to market and helped define the trend of chef-prepared meals delivered to your door.
For 10 years, Alison grew Square Meals into a successful cafe and catering company and had the opportunity to cook for celebrities, politicians, and many influential companies. After selling Square Meals, Alison had a short stint as Procurement Director for a food tech company, solidifying her passion for reducing food waste.
Alison has been named a Rubicon Waste Fit Champion, was a finalist for the Spoon Tech Startup Showcase, has appeared on many podcasts and radio shows, and works as a food waste consultant.
Episode Highlights:
00:48 Reducing Food Waste as a Cook
03:26 Using Your Expertise to Create Change
07:07 Do Individual Actions Matter?
12:37 Leveraging TikTok
17:52 Low Moisture vs High Moisture Vegetables
20:44 Look Forward
Tweets:
Turn the simple act of feeding yourself into a powerful contributor to environmental sustainability, leading to zero waste and a healthier planet with @jreichman and Ends+Stems Founder, Alison Mountford. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #endsandstems #foodwaste #foodwasteaudit #homecooking #mealplanning #recipe
Inspirational Quotes:
05:34 “The science was there to show that there's a potentially huge environmental benefit to wasting less food.” —Alison Mountford
08:14 “If enough people take these tiny actions, it does add up to something and that's how you get a big change that can meet systemic change.” —Alison Mountford
08:29 “We can't solve all the world's problems individually. It's a group effort.” —Justine Reichman
16:35 “Social media is a weird place. There are some implications of all of this posting and visibility. Try to keep it up and not disappear. But don't spend much time worrying about how often to post.” —Alison Mountford
20:15 “Every vegetable is different. And every person is different in our risk tolerance.” —Alison Mountford
20:22 “Everyone is different. Everyone digests things differently. Everybody responds differently. And it's important to not feel shame around that either.” —Justine Reichman
20:55 “Your cauliflower is not going to save nor destroy the world. But as we all make these decisions all the time and we scale, it can add up.” —Alison Mountford
24:40 “As an entrepreneur, you are always looking forward. It's hard to ever take a moment and see how far you’ve come.” —Alison Mountford
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today, I'm so pleased to have Alison Mountford, who is a new food waste educator and Chef.
Welcome, Alison.
Alison Mountford: Hi, Justine. Thanks for having me.
Justine Reichman: I'm so pleased to have you. It's been ages since we caught up, and I've watched you in this space evolve. I would love for you just to introduce yourself and let people know a little bit about being a no food waste educator.
Alison Mountford: Sure. So the first thing is, I am a chef. I spent 20 years catering as a personal chef. I had a cafe in San Francisco, I had a meal delivery service. So I cook. And from that, I got into food waste, as most chefs do, or reducing food waste, rather. Because your food is the thing you spend the most money on. And we respect it, and we don't want to throw it away. But because I was serving people at home rather than in a restaurant, I could see how food flowed through their house, the process of buying it, storing it, and then ultimately wasting it. And right around the mid, I don't know, maybe 2015? There was a big article about the environmental impacts of food waste. And at that moment, I had just sold my business, my food production business. And it hit me that all of these things were combined, and I had this very specific passion and experience for teaching people to cook at home. My mission has always been to help people enjoy eating at home. But how could they do it in a way that saves money, saves time, saves the planet. It's an environmental action, and I could combine all of these things together. So from there, I kept cooking, because I still love that. But I started sharing recipes and teaching folks at home. Regular home cooks reduce their household food waste on their journey to just simply get dinner on the table. But it's all connected.
Justine Reichman: Wow. I love that. Because so often, I go to the store, and I'm buying food because I want to make this one specific meal. I've always been that way. But as a result, you end up with so much waste. You're buying a batch of cilantro, a batch of this, a batch of that. And at the end, you have all these other things. So learning these skills, connecting what you do, connecting what Max La Manna does, that is a perfect match. The skills that you give me, how to buy, what to buy, and how to make sure, and then equally, when you do have a little bit leftover waste, you can find a recipe to be able to use those items, which is what I was talking about with Max La Manna for those folks not familiar with maximum mana. So I just love how everything comes together for you. My follow up question to you is you said that you became a food waste educator and you had started off with your cafe, what was that moment when you decided to sell, when you decided to pivot? Because it wasn't after you pivoted. You had some moment in time when you had this cafe that encouraged you or enabled you to create change.
Alison Mountford: Yeah. This is one of those in hindsight, it looks so clean, and it's logical. But I love talking to young entrepreneurs, and there's always so many questions and things. This is one of those things when you see somebody else's story 10 years later, it looks logical. But it was really just a giant soup of what was happening. What am I doing? What is my purpose? It was not a clean stepping path from closing my cafe to starting that. I was very torn about selling my cafe and catering business. I had worked on it for 10 years. We actually were doing well, and we actually got too big. And I was in the wrong location. And one of my reasons for selling was, at the moment, I didn't have it in me to close up that location, move to a bigger facility and keep growing it. I just had fallen out of love with food production. I wanted to talk to the home cook. So that was a very tough decision. I was torn about it for a year. Now, I don't regret it. It was the right decision. But it was very, very hard at the time. So it wasn't like I cleanly sold that and then started doing this. I worked for a food tech company for a while. I was in food procurement. I then started gigging on the side picking up small catering jobs for former clients. But somewhere in there, the zero food waste movement was starting to grow. The NRDC had put out a big follow up report about the environmental impacts of food waste. And then actually, I love telling the story.
“The science was there to show that there's a potentially huge environmental benefit to wasting less food.” —Alison Mountford
It was actually the election of Donald Trump which inspired me. Can you believe I'm saying that at the same time, which inspired me to dig in. I heard somebody speaking to all the women who were so distraught that we did not get a female president. And instead, we got Trump. And it said, if you're worried about what he's going to do, the effect that he's going to have on this planet and our country, what do you know? What's your expertise? What can you put out into the world that even in some small way might counteract it? And I was like, food waste. I can teach people at home to reduce their household food waste. The science was there to show that there's a potential huge environmental benefit to wasting less food and letting less food end up in our landfills. And I thought, that's it. That's the thing I know about. I'm worried about what he's going to roll back environmentally. And let's try this. So I just started on Instagram, just for free, just for fun. Just to put my knowledge and experience out there, and maybe reach a few people. And it grew from there. I started a little app and a website about helping people meal plan. And over the years, I've just kind of taken the next logical step forward on that path.
Justine Reichman: Wow, that's super interesting.
Alison Mountford: Do not clip this, that DonaldTrump inspired me.
Justine Reichman: But it was sort of a counter. Yeah, protest, a counter to him being President. And I like how somebody said, okay, so what can you do? Donald Trump's role in it was that, in my opinion, or what I'm taking away here is that, out of concern for him being President and what we're going to be the ramifications, and this gentleman or a woman, whoever wrote that article, you were inspired to create change using your expertise. And I think that that's great. It's a great way to respond positively to a negative or concerning situation that you are not alone in.
“If enough people take these tiny actions, it does add up to something and that's how you get a big change that can meet systemic change.” —Alison Mountford
Alison Mountford: And I think it's also a really great metaphor, or a bite sized version of my stance on taking individual action at home. In general, when I started, it was a tiny, little baby step. I didn't save the planet overnight. I didn't even flutter the butterfly wings, as they say, have changed, right? It was just this tiny thing. But over the years, I've learned more. I've perfected, not perfected actually, but I've worked on it. I've honed my craft in inspiring people at home to learn about this and take a chance. And ultimately, it's gotten bigger. I can now demonstrate, affecting thousands of students, a bigger microphone for helping people reduce their household food waste. And one of my favorite questions to get is like, do our individual actions even matter? We know that companies are sending out the most omissions, but in that same vein, it does matter taking these tiny steps at home. They get you involved, they make you feel motivated. They just make you feel better about how you show up in the world. And if enough people take these tiny actions, it does really add up to something. And that's how you get a big change. And that can meet systemic change. And that's how we're gonna get you anything.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Because nobody, you can't do everything. We can't solve all the world's problems individually. It's a group effort. And everybody, something resonates with everyone differently. So for you, it was food waste. And you didn't just take it and say, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. You expanded your message, you brought tons of people onto your website so that they could also create change and support your initiative as long as they were within that framework and that interest, which I think is really empowering. And it gives people an opportunity to create change themselves with a skill set and a tool, and the tools that you've provided. So your ability to create change goes beyond you right now with all those people. How many people do you have on the app now?
“We can't solve all the world's problems individually. It's a group effort.” —Justine Reichman
Alison Mountford: I have about a thousand subscribers for my meal planning app. And actually, I just made a huge change to it. Literally later today, I'm gonna hit go. I've actually opened up subscriptions to the app for free. So you can go on, you make an account, and you can sort through, I have about 2500 recipes. You can click them together into a meal plan, and then you hit the button that says, generate groceries, and it will tell you exactly the groceries you need to buy for the three recipes that you've paired together. And then each week, I make a recommendation of recipes. I put those recipes together in a way that might use, let's say half a bunch of cilantro on Monday, and then in a different way, you'll use the other half up on Wednesday. So I've got thousands of people there. But the reason I made it free, I was charging a nominal amount anyway. But recently, I've been doing more corporate speaking. So I've worked with companies like Target and colleges like Stanford, and they will actually invite me in to speak to their employees or teach a cooking class. So I've been doing a lot more of that. And then I've been making so much content for social media. I might hit 200,000 TikTok followers, really following and engaging in so many different ways. So they're kind of scattered the communities in a bunch of different places. But it's a lot of folks at this point. And it's really, really exciting when I get anyone's message that says, I made stock because of you. Or I use the ends of my tomatoes to make salsa this summer. I'm going to get those messages almost every day. And it's just really, really exciting to feel those baby steps coming together.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, I love that. Now, you mentioned TikTok. For me, it's quite foreign. I'd love to get more involved. I know a lot of people put it in a box and say that it's for the younger generation. And a lot of folks don't know how to utilize it. So how long have you been using TikTok?
Alison Mountford: About a year and a half. And I will admit that it was a young GenZ friend who dared me to join her on an accountability challenge on TikTok. I was a little frustrated with Instagram. I felt really stuck. Like it just wasn't doing anything. I wasn't building the community or having the conversations I thought social media was supposed to be about. So she and I did a 30 day, just between the two of us a partnership. Let's see if we can pose for 30 days and what happens. And so that was about a year and a half ago. And what happened was that that's where the conversation was. And it was incredible. The reception, the response, the genuine questions that people were asking about reducing food waste and composting, and why it matters, and how they can help? And it's just so fulfilling the way the platform works. I think it is very fun. But also people go there to learn. There's so much education. And whenever I see it in the news as the teenage dance app, I'm like, ah, you just open it. Look, that's not what's happening. I've learned about dinosaurs, and I've learned about science, and black holes, and so much gardening. It's unbelievable. And there's a huge number of people that are millennials. I'm a millennial Gen X right on the border. There's a huge Gen X, hashtag Gen X on TikTok, there are people and even older than that. There's all ages on TikTok, and you only see what you're interested in. So it's not just for the kids. And there's an amazing ability to have a conversation on TikTok.
Justine Reichman: What would you say was the most challenging thing when you first started to use TikTok to figure out? And then I have a follow up question to that.
Alison Mountford: That's a great question. Absolutely, it was the fact that everything had to be a video. I thought, oh, posting photos is a little bit easier. Editing these videos is very overwhelming. But their editing tools in the app are great. You can also download a million different editing situations. But the difference on TikTok is that people are really looking for authenticity. Your videos do not have to be super perfect and polished to do well. I believe you just need to be authentic. So I think that's different from Instagram. And it led me off the hook. I also felt more at home because it's kind of silly and fun, and you really just be yourself. And I think I'd rather have a laugh and enjoy myself than have this aspirational, perfect color palette that I felt pressured to have on Instagram. So it really unlocked some creativity for me.
Justine Reichman: But that's great because it made it accessible. It made it accessible. It took away some of the errors, the editing, the challenges that maybe we feel like we're not all good at. But because they have those tools, you're able to do it in an easier way and pick it up. No doubt. Was there something that you did or that you do on an ongoing basis that you think really works on TikTok?
Alison Mountford: The first thing that really broke through was I would show an aging vegetable. The first one was a head of cabbage that I used half of, and then we had a super busy weekend, and it just languished in my fridge, and I pulled it out and it was all kind of oxidized and withered on the ends. And I'm like, no, it's cabbage. I know that it's fine. There's no mold. It's just oxidized but it looked terrible. So I just pulled out my camera and I started with, hey, would you guys eat this? And then let me show you how to turn this into a delicious meal. And I just showed how I sliced it off, and then I roasted it with a nice miso paste and turned it into dinner that night. And it was beautiful. And what I found was that tiny bit of gentle controversy, some people were horrified that I ate it, and other people were right on my side. Of course, we need that. There's nothing wrong with it. So that tiny bit of friction caused a storm of comments and interest. So people were either, you had to take one side or another. I do prefer videos that have that very gentle controversy in there. It gets people talking, catches their interest. So that was the first one that did well. And I've done other videos like that since. And now, I can do videos really talking about what I want to talk about, which is methods to reduce food waste and meal planning. And now that I have more interested genuine followers, they are willing to start diving deeper into the conversation.
Justine Reichman: How long are these videos?
Alison Mountford: I've done videos that are seven seconds long, all the way up to three minutes long. I'm sure you could geek out on the stats, see what does best and where people drop off. They have all those analytics. I don't go that deep. I want to have fun with this. The minute it's not fun, I lose interest, and it feels like a struggle. So I kind of just post what I want to post. I know what I talk about, food, food waste. I show my garden and my composting. And if I feel like posting it, I post it. Sometimes, I post memes or jokes that are on trend. And sometimes, it's more serious videos.
“Social media is a weird place. There are some implications of all of this posting and visibility. Try to keep it up and not disappear. But don't spend much time worrying about how often to post.” —Alison Mountford
Justine Reichman: And how often during the course of a week do you post?
Alison Mountford: Same answer. If I feel like posting a lot, I'll post once a day. If I am busy and I can't make it, then I skip it. I've really kind of made this deal with myself that I will not be obsessed over this. I won't obsess over the likes, I'm not going to obsess over whatever the algorithm is doing. And I know that's all out there. You can do it that way. But you know, social media is a weird place. It's weird to be posting in some, there's some implications of all of this posting and visibility. So I'm sure you could find somebody to support any number of posts per day or per week for maximum engagement. And I truly sound cheesy saying it, but I truly just try to keep it up and not disappear. But I don't spend much time worrying about how often I post.
Justine Reichman: And so you've been doing this for a year and a half and you have around 200,000 subscribers, that seems pretty amazing. And you have fun while you do it. You don't put any stress on yourself. You don't have to worry about all the nuances. I think I can even do that.
Alison Mountford: Yeah, I'm a type A longtime business owner, so I'm familiar with dipping my toe into the stress. But I try really hard in this one area to just not worry about it.
“Every vegetable is different. And every person is different in our risk tolerance.” —Alison Mountford
Justine Reichman: A separate question, because I was thinking about your cabbage, and I cut the artichokes off out of my garden and then Tim did not cook them. I can cook a whole host of things. I can't make a good artichoke. It's either too hard, or too this, or too that. So these five artichokes don't really dry on the side. Okay, they look like they're inedible, in my opinion. But I'm going to ask you, I've got five of them. What can I do with them?
Alison Mountford: I would try it. Artichokes are really hearty, but they do have a lot of moisture in them. It's a good example, every vegetable has a different situation. So even the cabbage, it's a low moisture vegetable. So you can just slice off any moldy pieces, and you should be safe to eat it. But high moisture vegetables, let's say that was a tomato that had mold on it or a peach, you actually would want to throw that away, because that mold can spread through the areas of high moisture. So unfortunately, there's not just an overall bucket like is X safe to eat, if Y, you really have to look at it, and how to Google it. But I would say without seeing them, the artichokes are probably okay. And you'll have to cook them to find out. I would have them, clean them up, and I would also recommend steaming them. Because if they have dried out, steaming them could help bring back some moisture into them. But they may or may not be okay. It's worth a shot, especially since they're delicious and you grew them. But it's hard to say. And one caveat to that, I always want to say, when we talk about pushing the envelope, or eating things that you don't know if they're expired or whatnot, everybody's going to be different and have a different threshold for this. In no way should you make yourself sick. So if you are in doubt, you have my permission to throw something away. And my question to you if you do is, what steps could you take so that next time you don't get this close to the edge where you wonder if it's going to make you sick? Could you write yourself a note? Could you harvest them at a different time? Could you buy fewer ingredients from the grocery store? Throw that thing away and don't get sick, but then make the change for next time. And we're all done.
Justine Reichman: I appreciate that. And I think it's important because people get caught up in the whole thing and they want to do everything. And like you said, there could be mold or something, throw it out, don't get sick. And so my question around that is, I had a cauliflower and I had some black mold, I just cut it off. Is that seeping through, ot am I--
Alison Mountford: I did a video on cauliflower too. So cauliflower like cabbage is low moisture. So I think food safety says that you can absolutely cut that off, and it's not seeping through. But let's say that you had health issues, or you were super sensitive to molds or something, you knew that from, I don't know, your house, life or whatnot, that person might decide to throw that away. I personally would eat it and feel comfortable with it. But that's where every vegetable is different. And every person is different with our risk tolerance.
“Everyone is different. Everyone digests things differently. Everybody responds differently. And it's important to not feel shame around that either.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: Yeah. I think that it's important to recognise that everyone is different. Everyone digests things differently. Everybody responds differently. And it's important to not feel shame around that either. Because we're like, how could you throw that out? Well, it had mold. Sometimes, we even order groceries, and things aren't perfect. And then what do you do? You don't want to waste it, you want to eat it. It gets very conflicted. You get very conflicted in the head.
Alison Mountford: And that's why I always think, the message is, look forward, and how else can you participate in reducing food waste? Because at the end of the day, you know, we sort of touched on at the beginning. Your cauliflower is not going to save nor destroy the world. But as we all make these decisions all the time, and we kind of scale back from your house, and to your neighborhood, and your community, and your state, then it really can add up. But it's important to note that if our goal is stopping climate change or restoring some of the planet, we need systemic changes. You or I today don't have immediate access to that. So it's great for us to participate, take these grassroots community actions. But it's also important to remember that the benefit is that you are acting, you're preparing yourself for when you can vote on systemic changes, and you can participate in a bigger way. But stay engaged, participate, but don't feel too discouraged if you do generate some food waste, or you just have something that you're not sure if it's safe.
Justine Reichman: So as we wrap up, I don't want to forget to discuss your big news. So I'd love for you to share with our listeners a little bit about your big news.
“Your cauliflower is not going to save nor destroy the world. But as we all make these decisions all the time and we scale, it can add up.” —Alison Mountford
Alison Mountford: Yeah. This is so exciting. This is the first time I'm saying it out loud too. So about a year and a half ago, I applied with the team at Drexel University for the EPA first ever grant to actually implement changes to reduce household food waste, and we won the grant. So it's so exciting. Thank you. So we have a team that's going to be working for the next three years. The idea behind the grant was to see what we could do that works at scale. So what we are testing is a series of basically online courses, like video modules, that folks will be able to sign up for and participate in the video modules. You'll be asked questions so that we can judge what you're learning and if in fact you're reducing your food waste. And then we'll compare that to the team near Drexel and Philadelphia, which will be working in person to do some community based interventions. So we'll see if people are learning online, ever since COVID, I think, online learning, and here we are virtual doing this, that's here to stay, so can we take these types of courses and learning, and put that online, and lead people through a series, really a curriculum, unlike Tiktok or social media, which is fantastic. Because you get these short clips of videos, but you can't build on that learning, and less people are making sure to come back. We have no way to control if they are.
But in an online course setting, you can really build and build on that knowledge, and get people to produce a change. And then we'll check in on them about six months later. Have they kept up with these changes? What have they learned, and what are they working on? And it's exciting. Because previously, the grants available in food waste have been either in grocery store food waste, or food rescue. So if the Super Bowl has food leftover, how can we rehome that food? In household food waste, every grant up till now has just been to measure it and try to figure out why food is wasted. But I've been already working on reducing the food that we know is wasted. And this is the first grant of that type. I'm just so thrilled to be on this team, so I'll be working on putting together the culinary modules.
Justine Reichman: Okay, so six months from now or from when you start, we're going to regroup, and get the update from you on how things are progressing.
Alison Mountford: Fantastic. It's so exciting. We have a dream team. And it's just really amazing to be, like I said, I started on my own with an Instagram post. And as an entrepreneur, you are always looking forward. It's really hard to ever take a moment and say, wow, look how far we've come. But to actually now be participating on a national scale through a government and university agency, that's pretty amazing. That's such a huge step forward, and I'm just super thrilled about it.
Justine Reichman: Yeah. Congratulations on that. I'm super excited for you to watch the progress, to learn and see how things progress. So for those folks that are watching or listening to the podcast today, where would they be able to find the Ends+Stems app or website so that they might be able to get their recipes to support no food waste.
“As an entrepreneur, you are always looking forward. It's hard to ever take a moment and see how far you’ve come.” —Alison Mountford
Alison Mountford: So it's still at endsandstems.com, like cooking from end to stem, and that's where you can get the recipes. And then everything else is linked there. So that's probably the easiest place to go. I know they all want to go to TikTok now, so I'm in TikTok. It's linked on my website, you can find me on TikTok. You should just be able to search my name and it comes up as well.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I learned a lot. I think everybody else is inspired and learned a lot as well that they can take with them. So keep us posted on how things progress. Congratulations on the grant and all that you're doing.
Alison Mountford: Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here. I'm a longtime fan of the community, and it's just great to participate. Thank you.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. Thank you.
