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Pierre-Olivier | The Pretty Ugly Company
90 Plays10 months ago
When the produce in our fridge looks a little squidgy around the edges the clock starts to tick, we gotta use it or else it’s destined for the green compost bin. But what happens at the industrial level?
For example, what do you do with hundreds of pounds of green bell peppers that aren’t fit for the grocery store? Well that’s where it all started for the founders of The Pretty Ugly Company.
In this episode you’ll hear the story of how Pierre Olivier and Lysanne have taken on a bold mission to combat food waste. Their fantastic, upcycled salsa made from discarded vegetables saves about 2 pounds of produce per jar.
They also make a delicious organic corn chip that includes beer waste!
Their passion for rescuing neglected produce is fuelling their rapid growth as a food company and we get to jam on some really interesting topics around snacking and sustainability.
We even chat about our shared experiences in the restaurant business, our love for Anthony Bourdain and how the magical touch of Ryan Reynolds sure would help their cause. Ryan, if you’re listening, this one’s for you buddy.
Learn more at www.theprettyuglycompany.com.
Here’s a summary of the conversation:
Vision for the Future Grocery Store: Pierre envisions a future grocery store with significantly less plastic, featuring only organic, upcycled ingredients, and fresh local produce to minimize reliance on imports.
Combating Food Waste: Pierre’s experience in the restaurant industry, particularly witnessing the wasteful disposal of surplus ingredients like green bell peppers, inspired him to address food waste. This led to the founding of Pretty Ugly, a brand focusing on upcycling.
Pretty Ugly's Salsa: The brand creates salsa using fresh, often discarded vegetables, saving approximately 2 pounds of vegetables per jar. The idea was sparked by the realization of the high waste involved with tomatoes and other vegetables.
Corn Chips from Beer Waste: Expanding their product line, Pretty Ugly introduced corn chips made from organic corn and beer waste, further emphasizing their commitment to upcycling and reducing waste.
Market Challenges and Strategies: Facing the competitive snack aisle dominated by large corporations, Pretty Ugly initially positioned their products in the produce section of Quebec grocery stores, avoiding high slotting fees and making their products stand out.
Consumer and Buyer Response: The positive consumer response in Quebec and interest from buyers indicate a readiness for innovative, upcycled products like those offered by Pretty Ugly.
Expansion Plans: Pierre discusses plans to expand Pretty Ugly's distribution beyond Quebec into the rest of Canada and eventually North America, aiming to increase their impact on reducing food waste.
Salsa as a Communal Food: Highlighting salsa's role in bringing people together, Pierre connects this to Pretty Ugly's mission of making environmental impact through everyday consumer choices like salsa and chips.
Celebrity Endorsement Fantasy: Gendron expresses a wish for Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds to endorse Pretty Ugly, highlighting Reynolds' commitment to the brands he supports.
Brand Philosophy: Pretty Ugly focuses on the upcycling mission, quality of products, and the desire to impact food waste positively, aiming to provide an easy and enjoyable way for consumers to contribute to environmental sustainability.
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Transcript
Introduction to Food Waste
00:00:00
Speaker
This is aisle 42. When the produce in our fridge looks a little squidgy around the edges, the clock starts to tick. We've got to use it, or else it's destined for the green compost bin. But what happens at the industrial level? For example, what do you do with hundreds of pounds of green bell peppers that aren't fit for the grocery store? Well, that's where it all started for the founders of The Pretty Ugly Company.
Meet The Pretty Ugly Company
00:00:27
Speaker
In this episode, you'll hear the story of how Pierre Livia and Lesanne have taken on a bold mission to combat food waste. Their fantastic upcycle salsa made from discarded vegetables saves out two pounds of produce per jar. They also make a delicious organic corn chip that includes beer waste. Their passion for rescuing neglected produce is fueling their rapid growth as a food company when we get to jam on some really interesting topics around snacking and sustainability.
Insights from the Restaurant Industry
00:00:55
Speaker
We even chat about our shared experiences in the restaurant business, our love for Anthony Bourdain, and how the magical touch of Ryan Reynolds sure would help their cause. Ryan, if you're listening, this one's for you, buddy. Okay, here we go. I hope you enjoy listening to my conversation with Pierre Olivier from The Pretty Ugly Company.
00:01:17
Speaker
Pierre, I love the brand name. I love your story. I love upcycling and I love salsa. But before we get to all of that, I like to kick off our conversation with a question about the future. So here you go. If you were to imagine the perfect grocery store of the future, what would it look like? Well, there's going to be way less plastic than there is right now, that's for sure. But I think
00:01:44
Speaker
In my world, there's going to be everything from organic to upcycled ingredient only, and just fresh and local produce. I mean that we don't really have to buy from the United States, right? So maybe more local and plastic-free product and upcycled brands as well like us. Sounds beautiful. Sounds simple, elegant, and beautiful, doesn't it?
The Birth of The Pretty Ugly Company
00:02:09
Speaker
That's great. One of the things you and I have in common is our time in food service and working in restaurants. I started as a dishwasher at the age of 14. Two weeks later, I became the only cook, the only employee left standing actually. So I was thrust into cooking and from that day forward had a love affair with food and food service. Can you walk us through a little bit of your experience in the restaurant industry and how it inspired you towards combating food waste?
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I mean, the restaurant business, I think is one of the best life school and the best way to get early life lessons going on, right? I mean, I started working in the restaurant business. I was 12 because my uncle and my aunt had restaurants. So I helped on the dishwasher. I did everything from
00:03:01
Speaker
broom to being a waiter. But usually what happens with the restaurant business is you see how many food is being wasted on a day-to-day basis. Usually chefs, they hate waste, right? They're going to do everything in their power to cut costs and don't waste a lot of food, right? But usually the consumer wastes a lot. And what really rang a bell for me is when we were doing big events or somebody, a distributor or all sort of just would be calling us and be like,
00:03:30
Speaker
Hey, I've got five cases of green bell peppers. I'm going to show where I'm going to
00:03:35
Speaker
do a really good deal on those few boxes you want in. And if the chef says no, and one time he just asks, well, if I say no, what are you going to do with those boxes of green bell peppers? And he says, oh, I'm just going to throw them away. So that really sticks to me for a long time. And I always wanted to start a restaurant, but then COVID hits. So that wasn't a good time to launch a restaurant. But that situation that was stuck with me, I was just, okay, I got to do something that's going to bring both my
00:04:04
Speaker
love of food and my passion for business and my careful environment, all the three together. And that's where the ID came from actually for founding. So is the, was it green bell peppers? Is that what that they had the big truck of? Yeah, I think they had like something like 400 pounds of green bell peppers. And that's really stuck with me. Amazing. Have you read Anthony Bourdain's, uh, any of his books about the restaurant business behind the scenes?
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, I love Anthony Bourdain. I don't have a lot of idols in life, but Anthony Bourdain is definitely one of my idols. And that's funny because my girlfriend is coming on the same page with me with Anthony Bourdain. We watch so much of his cooking shows traveling around and his
00:04:51
Speaker
I mean, it's a really, really, really good book. I don't know, he's got the way that a few people have to really describe how he feels and a unique POV of the world, right? It's so inspiring to read Anthony Bourdain and I think if all people were like him and just ready to sit down around people and eat some good food and just talk to each other, the world is going to be a better
Food Waste in North America
00:05:14
Speaker
place. Yeah.
00:05:15
Speaker
I agree. Yeah, my time in the culinary world was well before the days of YouTube and well before there were really a lot of celebrity chefs. So when years after my restaurant days, when I read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, I sort of just felt, A, this kind of pull back to my younger days, but also this affinity of just someone who is saying out loud some of the things that I saw as a young man working in kitchens. But yeah, that's
00:05:45
Speaker
That's interesting stuff. Yeah, yeah. One year spent in the restaurant industry, it's like seven years. It's like dog years. You see so many shit and you learn so many things and you meet so many people that you come out to change man in only three years being in the restaurant business. Sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst, but hey, that's it.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, life in the kitchen is a totally different world. Sometimes it's not real life. No, no, it's not. It's usually not.
00:06:18
Speaker
Do you see a future in which food waste is reduced at the source or do you feel like there's just going to be this ever increasing wave of food that isn't getting consumed, it's still being grown and where that food waste and upcycling demand is going to have to grow infinitely?
Upcycling with Salsa
00:06:39
Speaker
I think the way the supply chain is set up, at least in North America, there's always going to be some food waste along the way. The more people are involved and the more the food comes from a remote place or from California and such, there's going to be waste resulting from that.
00:06:59
Speaker
From my perspective and with the farmers I talk with on a local basis, they're really trying to reduce waste. First, because it's not profitable to waste, right? They want to cut down costs, but I think the more and more people are getting into the farming industry, they realize that they need to have a business for the entire city of their life. They have to take care of the planet and if they don't,
00:07:28
Speaker
Well, we don't have something to eat in a few years. So people are getting more conscious about that fact. And at least small and local players are doing their part to reduce waste. And upcycling is becoming more and more well-known in the industry. And that's a plus if you look back.
00:07:47
Speaker
around three years ago four years ago there were not as many brands as they are now up fighting things right and so the words is getting out there and i think that's something to look forward to i agree i think it'd be a great goal to see some of those
00:08:03
Speaker
food systems change and get more sophisticated so that we are producing less waste and we're more ready to deal with the waste that we have across the board. Talk to me about salsa. I mean, you talked about having the option to rescue all these green bell peppers. So, you know, you can only do so many things with pounds and pounds of green peppers, but
00:08:25
Speaker
Has salsa always been something that has excited you or was it this one moment where you're like, green bell peppers, I've got to deal with this. What do we make with it? Talk to me about the impetus of salsa creation on your side. It was really, it came out of the blue. It was really a naive thought that everybody likes salsa, right? I mean, everybody know what salsa is. It's not like we're trying to create a brand of kombucha 20 years ago made with fermented
00:08:54
Speaker
kind of floating mushrooms. So people know what salsa is, and it's entirely made with fresh ingredients. So the more research we're doing about salsa, we found out that actually, tomato is the most wasted food in the world. In Canada, on a daily basis, it's more than one million tomatoes being torn away. It's
00:09:14
Speaker
It's huge, it's crazy. So salsa became the vehicle for our upcycling mission. And I mean, with our salsa for Purdue, we were the only upcycled salsa using only fresh tomato in North America. And we're about able to save about two pounds of vegetable or jar that we produce. And that's because it's only fresh tomato, green bell peppers, onions, and it takes a lot to do a good and fresh salsa.
00:09:44
Speaker
you don't even sacrifice quality. It's even better because we don't use canned tomatoes like the big guys are doing out there. But yeah, it started with the green bell peppers and then some funky idea that everybody loves salsa. It's like a little bit like Anthony Bourdain I said before. He has that ability to bring people together and just sit down and share something. And I think salsa is one of the best finger food to bring out to a hockey game, a soccer game, a pool party or something.
00:10:13
Speaker
They don't say they do, but everybody's double dipping and everybody's sharing. You don't open a jar of salsa and eat it by yourself. Well, you can, but usually there's people around. So I think salsa represents us as founders, and it's the best way to go to save two pounds of vegetables per jar.
00:10:29
Speaker
I love it. It's all pretty ugly. Hence the brand name. I love it. And it's just fun to say, as Jerry Seinfeld says, it's salsa. Yeah, funny you should have mentioned double dipping. I've never looked into this, but I wondered during the COVID days if there was like, were there salsa rules around double dipping? Everyone was so, we're all so concerned. And salsa seems like one of those share items that there wasn't a lot of food sharing going on, at least not
00:10:56
Speaker
in the early days of the pandemic. But yeah, salsa brings people together and salsa is a communal ingredient, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And that's what I think it's fun about salsa. But when we add our first thought of doing an upcycle product, it was around late 2021. So the pandemic
00:11:17
Speaker
was already going on. And by the time we just do the business plan and our first few research and the first recipe and the first sale on a farmer's market, the pandemic was kind of already behind. So we didn't really felt the impact of COVID-19 on a project.
00:11:35
Speaker
But yeah, salsa is just fun. It's party, it's fun, you bring friends over. And this is what we want to do with Pretty Ugly. It's put the upcycling mission first and out there. And we don't want to lecture people. We don't want them to feel bad. It's just an easy and painless option.
Innovations in Upcycling
00:11:53
Speaker
You eat chips on salsa every week, keep doing it, but just buy ours and it's going to be fun, simple, fresh. You can end up with friends over.
00:12:01
Speaker
because I feel like nowadays there's so many negative posts and news articles out there and there's so many things that can go on and are going wrong right now that it's hard as a person on an individual basis.
00:12:16
Speaker
just pause and say, okay, if I want to have a good impact on the environment on the world, where do I start? It's really hard to, where do I start? That kind of thing. So this is what we want to do. We want to give that option to people. Where do you start with? Buy a cycling product. That's going to have a small impact. It's not like the biggest of them all, but
00:12:37
Speaker
at least that's something that you can do on a daily basis without changing your consumption a bit too much, but you can do something great on a small scale and maybe that can snowball and do something great. Yeah, I appreciate you saying it that way. I think we all need to find little ways to work in conjunction with the bigger ways that we can have an impact on the world around us.
00:13:03
Speaker
You guys, for as much as I love salsa, you've also added chips, corn chips to the mix, and you're using beer waste as an ingredient in your corn chips. Talk to me about this beer waste and upcycling a corn chip.
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, but first of all, we went into salsa first and it was going very well, but there was something missing, right? Like the best combo is chips and salsa. It kind of goes together. And at first there's some people that didn't understand what we were doing because the chips weren't there to support the salsa. We had a woman once ask us if it was mayonnaise. I mean, how can you mix the two? But anyway,
00:13:44
Speaker
We needed to bring the chips into the equation and just have this impactful combo. So we decided to take organic corn and mix it with beer waste, with our beer grains that can be hops or anything like that. So we take that. Brewers are going to left those grains behind after they've done brewing the rears. It's grains. So we take that, we dry it and we put it into flour and we mix it with regular organic corn flour. So it's going to taste just like regular
00:14:14
Speaker
homemade tortilla chips that you can have on at a Mexican restaurant but it's going to be a little bit more sturdier so you can put a lot of sauce onto it so this is really nice.
00:14:25
Speaker
I love it. I am a sucker for corn chips. I get really committed to a brand of corn chips for a while. And then I, you know, I'm always trying new stuff and then I switch allegiances and then I have another new, this is my favorite. And so I'm not sure, maybe I'm a brand's worst nightmare, but I think the challenge is that I really like salt. So corn chips are a wonderful way to deliver salt quite quickly.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yeah, and actually that's funny you're saying that because our chip we went completely the other way around at least for that skill for that particular type of chips we decided to go the authentic way so it's really just corn.
00:15:08
Speaker
and beer grain and a little bit of sea salt. So it really tastes like traditional corn tortilla chips that you find in the south or the restaurant or when you go in Texas or something like that. There's not a lot of salt. And the reason behind that is that we really wanted the people to taste what they put on the chip. That can be our salsa or some dip, some hummus or whatever they want to try. Everything is salty right now. So we tried to do something less salty, but we've got
00:15:34
Speaker
a lot of ideas to do some new flavor of chips that's going to be for the self-lovers out there. Good deal. Do people ever comment that it's pretty unlikely to have a Tex-Mex, you know, southern inspired or Mexican inspired food production coming out of Quebec? That's not that common.
00:15:57
Speaker
Yeah. And if you look at our branding, you're going to see right away that we're doing things differently. I mean, we didn't try to make us look Mexican or authentic. Me and my girlfriend are not. And we're not trying to go down that path. It's just something big, bold, funny. We want something that tastes good first and foremost, and we want to put the upcycling mission in front of everything. And then
00:16:23
Speaker
we have the quality of the product behind because like we said earlier, we're coming from the instrument industry. So for us, it was impossible to put a bad product out there and we learned how to respect the ingredients.
00:16:39
Speaker
And this is one of the reasons we're the first salsa in Canada feast that doesn't use canned tomatoes. So when you taste our salsa, it's packed with flavor. It's super fresh. And we were saving vegetables, but you wouldn't even taste it or know it if you didn't know it was pretty ugly, right?
00:16:56
Speaker
But yeah, it was just something that we had to do something. And we found that there was the best way possible to have an impact on food waste. And like we said earlier, salsa and chips, it's like the best combo you can have at a grocery store or at the drugstore or whatever. You just grab your beer, your chips and salsa and have some fun. And this is really all we are about, me and my girlfriend and the people that create you.
Challenges in the Market
00:17:23
Speaker
Love it. Now, the chip aisle in grocery stores, I've, I don't know, I guess I kind of feel like it's the thunderdome of the grocery store. It's wickedly competitive. There are some gigantic companies that command very large sections of that grocery aisle. What's it like to be the small
00:17:44
Speaker
upcycled chips and salsa brand from Quebec trying to make its mark. How are buyers responding to the story of upcycling? How are consumers responding to their approach that you guys have taken towards chips and salsa? That's a really good question. And for everybody that's involved in the business, they know how true this is and how the big guys are there to dictate the way the chips is being set up and everything. It's crazy the amount of power they have.
00:18:12
Speaker
And this is one of the reasons that at least in Quebec, we started last year, so we're really a young brand, right? And we decided at least at IGA, which is so based, they've got like 300,000 in Quebec. We decided as a young brand to go in the first produce section and not beside the big guys in the cheap hour because first of all, we couldn't afford the selling fees. It's crazy expensive. And we thought maybe
00:18:41
Speaker
People are gonna notice us more if we're alone besides the tomatoes that that we're saving when we're gonna have a bigger impact that way so we try it for a year and went really really really well but outside of Quebec it doesn't work that way so now.
00:18:57
Speaker
We're coming elbow to elbow with the big guys right now with other retailers and we see that it's another world completely. But I think the consumer is ready for us. I mean, the salsa dips or salty snacks is in our category, there's no innovation. There has been not a single innovation over the past 15 years. At least not. I don't think that mango salsa is innovative, right? So I think we're going to bring something new to the table and the consumer
00:19:26
Speaker
Are you
Consumer Reception and Future Plans
00:19:27
Speaker
ready for that? I really think so. At least this is the feedback we had for the past year in Quebec. It's been tremendously well. We saved three times more vegetables than we thought we were going to save because we're selling. So the more we sell, the more vegetables we can save and the more big grains we can save. So I think the rest of Canada is ready for us.
00:19:45
Speaker
But we're just going to work with our strengths and weaknesses. And the weaknesses is our cash flow as a young company. But we're going to try to make some noise and make some waves. And the buyers, I'm just going to keep it short, but the buyers are interested and they're going to open the door for us. So we have pretty good feedback for the buyers.
00:20:05
Speaker
I love it. And that was quite the throwdown, by the way, that mango salsa is not an innovation. That's like, man, those are fighting words. I love it. What if the next truckload shows up your door and it's mangoes? Oh, man. Then you're going to have to eat your words. Yeah, I'm going to take it for sure. But I mean, you know, it's just a new flavor profile. It's not something completely new that do something more of an environment like we're trying to achieve for this environment by that. And there's not a lot of small company that are breaking through in that.
00:20:34
Speaker
category because it's crazy compilative. So nobody wants to touch up, but because we're naive and we just have a big dreams and a big idea of saving vegetables and doing something great for the environment that we decided to attack those, be him off of companies and just trying to push our way through. So good. Okay. So here's a fun one for you. If you were to have a celebrity sighting of someone famous eating your chips and salsa, who would you want it to be?
00:21:04
Speaker
It has to be Ryan Reynolds, right? It does have to be Ryan Reynolds. You're right. Is he wearing the Deadpool suit or is he just like normal, like dad Ryan Reynolds? Which Ryan is it?
00:21:18
Speaker
Oh, it can be a mix of the two, right? Maybe he's dressed up all in white and he just pills salsa all over his white shirt and he has to change it to dental or something like that. But I think Ryan Reynolds is the best Canadian ambassador for any brand out there. He's so funny and he's so committed to the brands he gets on board with.
00:21:38
Speaker
It's just not like out there, Polilei's name doing one post on LinkedIn once, he really seems to be supporting the brand he buys into it. So that's what I like about Randy Reynolds. And he's funny as hell. I mean, he's a funny guy. He is super funny. Yeah. And maybe he wants to invest in a Quebec-based upcycled chips and salsa brand, right? Who knows? Who knows?
00:22:03
Speaker
Why not? Maybe in a few years. Exactly.
Where to Find Us and Closing Thoughts
00:22:07
Speaker
Good deal. Where can people find your product and follow you guys and your team and what you're doing to rescue tomatoes and vegetables and make beautiful things? The easiest way is just to follow us on social. We have about everywhere, like pretty much every bin out there.
00:22:22
Speaker
For now, we're only in Quebec and across all IGA. We're eating shells at Metro as well and a lot of exciting news for us. And we're getting the ball rolling outside of Quebec. So we've got deals coming through in Ontario and the west of Vancouver. So you guys are going to see us in small mom and pop shops, but as well as bigger retailers out there in just a few weeks.
00:22:45
Speaker
Probably in early 2024, maybe around the Super Bowl, who knows, we're going to see pretty heavy popping throughout Canada. And it's really the goal because the more we're expanding, the more we're scaling, the more we can save vegetables and vegans. So that's the goal behind it. And this is why some people from Quebec asked us, why did you guys choose an English name? And that's because we want to be
00:23:07
Speaker
throughout North America. I think there's a big market for chips and salsa and it represents perfectly what we're doing. We're taking ugly and funny looking vegetables and make something pretty out of it. So we're ready for attacking the English side of Canada and I hope and I think people are gonna like what we're doing.
00:23:25
Speaker
I agree. I think it's going to go really well. And I'm excited for the brand, excited for the opportunities, and knowing that all the things that you got, all the fruit and vegetables that you guys can rescue, it's really remarkable. So thanks for leaning into the hard spaces and doing the hard things. The Earth thanks you, and so do people that love chip and salsa. So thanks for doing this. Really appreciate the time, Pierre. All right. Thanks for having me. I had a blast. Really nice.
00:23:53
Speaker
How fun was that? I hope you enjoyed all the pretty ugliness of that one. Please visit theprettyuglycompany.com to learn more about their up-cycle mission and their amazing snacks. Thanks for listening. I'm Corwin Hebert, and I'll see you in the future.