dougzacker

Your tax dollars help pay for home-delivered meals for the elderly that can either be cooked & delivered within a recipient's community, or cooked, frozen, and delivered from across the country? Adrienne Fudge, of 40 Dreams Catering, provides the former & is determined to maintain her community-based model, no matter how big she gets. In this episode, we are joined by Charles Rosen of Ironbound Farms to discuss Adrienne's methods & benefits relative to her giant, PE-backed, national competitor, Mom's Meals.

Our earliest thoughts and aspirations are shaped by what we see and read in books, but the publishing industry has been a constricting force by hiring homogenous authors telling homogenized stories. Marietta Zacker, of the Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency, talks about the effects of the historical exclusion of authors, illustrators and stories from marginalized communities, why this has happened, and how her and her colleagues are getting diverse and compelling stories into the hands of children & young adults.

Amazon & Etsy require advertising capital just to be seen on their platforms. So, where are people of color, whose communities have lower levels of investment capital available, supposed to go to sell their retail products? Enter Marvin Francois, co-founder of oneKIN and the soon-to-be launched live stream social commerce platform Twiine. Marvin and his partners are on a mission to provide POC-owned businesses with a robust platform through which they tell their stories, interact with customers and sell their products.

As one of the few remaining manufacturers in the US, Mitch Cahn & Unionwear are trying to fill the void left by all of the cost cutting, outsourcing companies that have contributed to our crippled supply chain for lifesaving healthcare products, including personal protection equipment. They have turned a factory that was gearing up to make baseball hats for the Olympics, the US Census, and presidential campaigns into a facility making face shields & isolation gowns for frontline healthcare workers.

Farmers markets are unexpectedly coming to our rescue. Dan Lipow, of The Foraged Feast, is learning that as the restaurant portion of his business is disappearing, another part is surprisingly thriving...farmers markets. They don't rely on long international supply chains & they are outdoors which is perfect for the time we are living in. Add online sales to Dan's world, which he just started, and he may end 2020 with the same revenue as last year.

Ironbound Hard Cider, founded by Charles Rosen, is a company that straddles every strata of American society: farmers, urbanites, suburbanites, the economically well-off, and everyone else. And, Charles thinks deeply about everyone and how we are all connected in good times and now bad. According to Charles, the degree with which we acknowledge, celebrate, and truly rely on that interconnectedness will determine how we get beyond our current crisis.

Among the first things to go when the coronavirus arrived were big annual events like SXSW, Jazz Fest, and countless St. Patrick's Day parades (not to mention smaller and more meaningful events like weddings). Doug Zacker checked in with Matt Glass from Eventage to learn about how one event company is trying to keep employees whole and counsel clients. We also discuss the larger context of big events in a time when we are forbidden from getting together.