cochon 555

Today I have Brady Lowe, founder of Taste Network. Started in 2002, he’s currently on a mission to disrupt, and rethink the typical food marketing strategies, forge new online possibilities, and partner with and help promote sustainable, ethical, and delicious food and drinks from around the world. 

You might know Brady from the Cochon 555 events that he put on. But you might not know that he separated from the Cochon 555 brand a couple of years ago, which was one of the things I wanted to talk to him about. Building something that you love, and then letting it go, possibly seeing it go down in flames along the way. But Brady is still going strong with other aspects of Taste Network. 

We talk about the future of the food events industry, and discuss supply chain issues, especially as it related to farms in the early days of Covid. And a few years ago Brady came under fire for posting a racially insensitive photo from one of his events on Cochon’s Instagram page. There was a considerable fallout the days surrounding it, and I wanted to give Brady a couple of minutes to speak on that.

Sponsor- The United States Personal Chef Association
The Covid pandemic has clearly redefined the world of dining. Despite over 110,000 restaurants closing around the country, people still want the ambiance and social connectivity that is so critical to the dining experience. Over the past 27 years, the world of the personal chef has grown in importance to fulfill those dining needs. While the pandemic certainly upended the restaurant experience, it provided an Avenue for personal chefs to close that dining gap. 

Central to all of that is the United States Personal Chef Association. Representing nearly 1,000 chefs around the US and Canada, USPCA provides a strategic backbone for those chefs that includes liability insurance, training, communications, certification, and more. 

One of the big upcoming events for USPCA is their annual conference scheduled July 7-10 at the Hyatt Regency Sarasota, FL. Featuring a host of speakers and classes, the conference is a way for chefs to hone their skills and network with like-minded businesspeople. For those who supply the industry, it’s a chance to reach not just decision-makers but the actual buyers of products. 

Contact Angela Prather at aprather@uspca.com
1-800-995-2138 extension 705
https://www.uspca.com/

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Brady Lowe and Taste Network

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Taste Network
Brady's Instagram
DrinkRealSpain.com

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CHEFS WITHOUT RESTAURANTS

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Founder Chris Spear’s personal chef business

Today's episode features Brady Lowe, founder of Taste Network and Cochon 555. Taste Network began in 2002, Cochon555 in 2008 and Brady created anchor celebrations at The Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Toronto Food & Wine Festival and The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The portfolio includes the ground-up creation and cultivation of the festivals: Rioja Wine & Tapas Festival, PeachFest and Mags For Ag; in addition to hosting Kosta Browne’s 20th Anniversary Party that raised over $100,000 for local charities. The mission is simple: Further the conversation of heritage breeds and support family farms on dinner tables worldwide, all to campaign for those championing agricultures with purpose and passion while educating influencers, chefs and buyers on how to sustain small business owners stewarding responsible growing practice.

Brady Lowe is a respected authority of fine wine, artisan foods, premier foods, heritage breed pigs and experiential events. He has produced exceptional food events since 2003. It was then, while working in Atlanta at the dawn of the good food movement, that Lowe was amongst the first to unite boutique wines and hard-to-find cheeses for affluent audiences. One taste pairing in particular sparked an ‘out of body experience’ in a customer that Lowe would never forget. At that moment, he devoted himself to transcending the boundaries of the food world, to creating unique combinations, not just with ingredients but among people. Now a food educator and taste influencer, Lowe is passionate about reaching individuals with a social conscience to support a responsible community of local chefs, butchers, winemakers and farmers that we all depend on.

Lowe grew up in Iowa reading the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series and his mother’s collection of cookbooks; books that would influence the narrative of his culinary future. At University of Iowa, he studied communications and marketing. Upon graduating, he moved to Atlanta and stepped into the world of fine dining. While selling cigars at the height of the burgeoning cigar culture, he discovered there was a unique vernacular to cigars, a flavor vocabulary that he enjoyed learning and sharing. The ideas translated naturally to other disciplines he wanted to study, those of wine, cheese, chocolate and cuisine.

After getting his 90 points of service in hospitality fine-tuned at Atlanta’s premier restaurant group in 2002, his appetite for the larger food movement blossomed and Lowe started hosting larger tasting events for private clients and notable members of the Atlanta food community under Taste Network. Three years later in 2008, he launched Cochon555, a 16-city culinary tour showcasing five chefs, five pigs and five winemakers in a friendly competition to promote heritage breed pig diversity and whole animal utilization. In 2010, Cochon555 teamed up with Food + Wine Magazine as an Official Event of the Food + Wine Classic in Aspen, Grand Cochon became one of the most talked about events of the weekend. What started as 250 million impressions in the media annually has grown to over 1 billion impression in the top media channels worldwide. Now ‘heritage pig is big,’ and Cochon555 is the most talked about culinary competition in North America featuring 100% heritage breed pigs. In 2011, the tour continued to expand with the addition of Heritage Fire, a tribute event to fire cooking and butchery, and later that year was summoned to host the opening festivities for The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas with the debut of All-Star Cochon, the first ever non-competition event featuring fan favorites and best bites. In 2012, Cochon555 expanded again to release Heritage BBQ, an event dedicated to expose commodity BBQ restaurants and celebrate chefs cooking on community based-platforms that support local family farms. Cochon Island was developed to bring awareness to  water-locked food ecosystems like Hawaii and Puerto Rico.