Raj Thandhi brings the conversation back to something the agri-food sector often treats as secondary, but that quietly determines everything: culture.

This episode explores the space between what is grown and what is actually lived. Not in abstract terms, but in the practical realities of kitchens, habits, and identity. Raj makes a clear point—food doesn’t move because it exists. It moves when it belongs. When people recognize it, understand it, and know how to work with it in their own lives.

Her work sits inside that process. Through recipes, storytelling, and education, she translates between cultures and contexts—connecting Punjabi traditions with local ingredients and contemporary Canadian realities. In doing so, she’s not just sharing food. She’s shaping how culture adapts, and how agriculture finds relevance within it.

What emerges is a shift in how we think about the system itself. Culture is not downstream from agriculture. It is one of the primary forces that determines whether agriculture succeeds, scales, or stagnates.

This episode reframes food literacy as cultural participation, and leadership as the ability to shape meaning, not just output.

Key themes

1. Culture as a driver of demand and adoption
2. Why food has to “belong” to move
3. Diaspora cuisine as a bridge between local and global
4. Cooking as a form of cultural infrastructure
5. Rethinking leadership through culture, not just production

About the guest

Raj Thandhi is a chef, recipe developer, and food educator behind Pink Chai Living. Her work focuses on making Punjabi cooking accessible while integrating local ingredients and contemporary contexts. Through her recipes, writing, and digital platforms, she explores how food, culture, and place shape one another in everyday life.

https://pinkchailiving.com/

https://www.instagram.com/pinkchai/

Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsh.

Welcome to the Future Herd.

What Raj Thandi surfaces in this conversation is easy to miss if

you're only looking at AgriFood through production or policy.

She draws attention to a quieter layer of the system, the point where food

either becomes part of everyday life or remains abstract even when it's available.

And she's very clear in her own way that this is where a great deal is decided.

Not in fields or boardrooms, but in kitchens habits and confidence.

A recurring thread in what she shares in today's episode is that

the barrier is rarely supply.

It's literacy, it's comprehension.

People don't cook what they don't understand, they don't buy what they don't

recognise, and they don't integrate what doesn't feel like it belongs to them.

That gap between what exists and what is actually used, it's not a

minor inefficiency, it's structural.

And this is why her work operates directly in the spaces we should

be paying more attention to.

What becomes, what becomes apparent over the course of this conversation

is that translation between cultures, ingredients and contexts is doing

far more than we tend to acknowledge.

It is shaping demand, influencing value, and determining whether local food

systems are lived or merely discussed.

When Raj adapts or presents a recipe, she's not just sharing technique.

She's altering the conditions under which certain ingredients become viable.

There's also a more complex dynamic at play.

She is working across overlapping systems, diaspora traditions, regional

and local agriculture, digital audiences.

And instead of flattening those differences, she lets them interact.

That creates something more adaptive, but also more difficult to categorise.

It resists the tidy narratives that the sector often prefers, and instead

allows for a nuance and complexity.

That enables all sorts of opportunities for entrepreneurs and families alike.

By the end of this discussion, the usual hierarchy, production first,

culture second starts to feel inverted.

The question is no longer just what we grow, but whether people know how

to live with what's grown around them.

That shift, subtle as it is, has significant implications for how we

think about resilience markets and of course leadership in our food system.

Raj, welcome to the Future Herd.

Thanks for having me.

Now, uh, as much I want to discuss with you today, partly

because you really fit my larger agenda, that leadership in the present

and in the future really comes down to communications and understanding your

audience and engaging your audience.

But the first question that I throw out now to all of our guests, uh, it's

rather abstract, it's rather sweeping.

It's meant to be very subjective.

what does the future mean to you?

The future as in the abstract or the future of food.

It's for you to decide.

This is kind of meant as like a rolling of the dice.

You could talk about the future of food.

You could talk about the future of yourself.

You could talk about a collective future, or alternatively, you could talk about a

future you desire that you want everyone to see so that we can rally towards it.

Okay, so, um, you caught me off guard with this one, but because

we live in this world right now where everywhere I go, every dinner party I'm

at, every gathering I'm at, everyone's talking about AI and all my friends,

which younger children, I have children also, but they're in university.

You know, everyone's really worried about ai and right now my biggest concern

for the future, my hope, my desire, everything wrapped in one, is that we can.

Continue as a community, as humanity like.

Maintain that our critical thinking skills, our empathy, who we are as

humans comes first and all of these things that we're, we have access to ai,

social media, all these mediums that you and I are using to spread information.

These are just tools and my kind of big picture goal for the

future or what I wanna see in the future is for my children to be.

Empathetic, kind, you know, using all the parts of their brain that

they're supposed to use, not off like outsourcing, hosted technology.

And I think in many ways that also relates to food.

You know, I want people to, when I think about how I, where I sit in the

food ecosystem and where I sit in the future of food, I think it's about

keeping people connected to the food.

You know, it's not always about the hack or the shortcut or the easiest way around.

It's about figuratively and literally touching the soil, like knowing

the food, knowing the process.

It's not.

It's not about always finding the shortest way from a and b or like

a quick way to get there, but maybe engaging with your food, being kind to

the community that's building your food.

So many people who know me in real life, they tell me, you know, I see

the world with rose tinted glasses, or I always see the best of all things.

But, um, I am always wishing for like empathy and kindness in the

future in every possible way.

Right on.

And in spite of it catching you off guard.

I think that may have been the best answer, uh, to that

question in our modest, uh, I believe it's 12 episodes so far.

So you're, you're off to a fantastic start and I absolutely want to talk

about empathy and food and, and culture and the way it connects us.

I also wanna indulge in a question that I'm not able to ask, uh, most

of the guests that we've had so far.

But in your case, uh, even though I suspect it's gonna catch you off guard

again, that this is a, a question you're uniquely positioned to answer, which is.

What has your relationship with the internet been like?

And, and I say this because with most people, I might ask, you know,

how did you get into the industry?

Or, you know, how did you become a farmer?

Right?

Or, you know, WWWW when did you get into policy around agriculture?

And that's a way for the guests to kinda, not so much establish their expertise,

but give a bit of an origin story.

But you have a, an expertise and a knowledge of the internet

that I want to tease out first.

So, you know, rather than give you the abstract, what's your relationship to the

internet, which you can take if you want.

did you realise that the internet was an opportunity for you?

Uh, a way for you not just to have fun, but to, to be, uh, for lack of

a better word, professional when it comes to the way you use the internet.

Um, okay.

So I'm one of the people who I think you could consider a

dinosaur in the social media space.

I have been blogging since.

2011. So this is my 15th year blogging.

And, um, my relationship with the internet, funny enough,

also is really closely related to my relationship with food.

So without going really deeply into a backstory, um, I started a little.

Flicker page in 2011, I was between jobs.

I was figuring out kind of what I wanted to do.

My background is in pr, marketing, economic development.

So I had, you know, I, I wanna be fair and say I came to this with

a skillset and communications, but not everybody at that time I think

understood what social media could be.

And at the same time as I was going through this career shift

I was going through, my family was going through some upheaval.

My husband and I both were out of work at the same time.

The finances were crunched, our kids were little.

They were like five and eight, and I was trying to feed really fussy, picky kids.

With a limited budget, limited cooking skills, limited patience,

and trying to get them to also eat culturally relevant food.

So I started posting pictures on my flicker account of my

attempts at recreating food that my mom and grandma had made.

You know, my attempts at upgrading myself from a boxed mac and cheese cook to

somebody who could actually cook things.

And two amazing things happened for me.

One is I discovered my passion for food.

I came to food really late in later in my life.

You know, people love cooking when they're young.

I discovered it in my early thirties, but the second thing

that happened is I'd go to Twitter.

Talk about something.

And other people would say, like, say if I was talking about a traditional recipe,

they would say, oh, I always wanted to make that, but my mom never wrote it down.

I don't know how to say that herbs name in English.

I don't know what that spice is called in English.

And I think something kind of clicked for me that there was an entire

community of second gen Canadians who were living in that same space as me.

So I discovered really early on.

You know, to answer your question, that the internet had the power to

create communities from the get go.

My community has been built on people who shared similar struggles,

similar anxieties, similar kind of food histories and stories, and

then, you know, it just kind of.

Took on a life of its own.

From there, I, you know, went, I took culinary classes.

I really dug into like my, my interest in food.

But at the same time, I started realising that the recipes are

important, but more important were the conversations in DMS and the.

Things people were asking me, the level of trust people were giving my

opinion, like it would blow my mind.

You know, strangers would message me to send me a picture of something they

cooked and say, I successfully did this.

I was able to do it, or this is my question, and.

You know, my relationship with the internet has been amazing.

Um, you know, a lot of people say, you know, social media is a difficult place.

You know, social media is a mean place.

I knock on wood would say 95% of the time have great, um, experiences online.

But I also think that goes back to the fact that I'm really not

trying to sell anybody anything.

I'm always trying to build community.

So I think, you know.

It is.

I always say to people, this is really bizarre, and I'm kind of off

on a tangent, but people always find this funny that there's this old

book in business, it's called like.

How to make friends or think and grow rich or something like that.

And in that book, they're always talking about how your network

matters and the people you talk to and the people that you know.

And I think of, like, I've always thought of social media and the

internet in that way, that I wasn't ever trying to reach everybody.

I was just trying to speak to the people who needed my message.

So in that sense, the internet has been good to me.

Most of my career, most of the things I do, you know, you know whether it's

my role with IBC as Chef Ambassador, the work I do for CBC, my recipe

column in the Vancouver Sun, it all came out of this one decision to start

tweeting, which doesn't exist anymore.

I don't, I'm not even on that app anymore.

That platform doesn't exist just 'cause I started tweeting when

I was cooking for dinner, and a community was created out of that.

I have to push back initially and say, 'cause you're clearly

not a dinosaur, and I get that there is a kind of ageism on the internet

that once you reach a certain age, young people may not show the respect

that in your case you clearly deserve.

But you are clearly a community builder.

And, and, and I want you to kind of elaborate on the power of community

on the internet because on the one hand you're speaking from a sense

of confidence, a, a sense of not optimism, but benefit and, and.

Transparency transparently.

This is where you and I share something in common.

'cause I've also benefited tremendously from being part

of communities on the internet.

And I've often told people that the secret to my success, the secret in

fact, to my happiness, has often been the communities that I'm part of online.

And I think this is something a lot of people.

Don't understand, like if they haven't experienced it.

If they haven't been part of it.

So I, I'd love for you to unpack what you see as kind of leadership

within these communities.

And you kind of alluded to it where.

Earlier you evoked empathy and you know, you sort of suggested that part of your

success is you're not selling anything.

And and I would go even further, I would say that you're

actually actively giving, right?

You're, you're, you're giving recipes, you're giving culture, you're giving all

sorts of insights that are, you know, part and parcel of your own experience, but.

I suspect you have experienced bad or dysfunctional online communities

compared to ones that are really empowering for all the members.

So I'd love to hear your thoughts on, on why, on what works on the

role of leadership within that.

Kind of community building, either through your own experience or through people

that you've observed who maybe you've learned from, uh, in terms of watching

how they've handled, uh, either conflicts or just opportunities when it comes to

making people feel like they belong.

Yeah, I mean obviously like I think that social media is a really great

testing ground for future leaders because that's just the world we live in now.

You know, um, at some point if you're gonna have a leadership role, it's gonna

have to be transferrable to social media.

I feel.

I just, I don't think it's gonna go away.

And, you know, leadership on social media.

It's a lot of listening.

I feel like there's this misconception that being, you know, big on social

media is about being a one-way speaker.

Because if you have, you know, it, it, it's an amazing metric to have a hundred

thousand followers, but you're, that doesn't mean that I'm on a megaphone now,

shouting at a hundred thousand people.

I'm still listening to the people taking that information, distilling it.

It's kind of like having a live feedback loop.

Right.

Like at any given time, I can put out a recipe.

I actually put out a recipe yesterday that bombed.

I really thought it would do better, but I realised something.

I put out a recipe that was based on a vegetable that right now is at Prime High.

Like it is really priced out of a lot of people's budget right now.

It's just, it's just cauliflower.

But cauliflower is so expensive right now that I didn't read the room.

And I think the reason that that recipe didn't do well is because

it's not the right time to be asking people to buy that vegetable.

So, you know, you're in a constant feedback loop every single day.

There's a trend, there's people to react to.

So I think that the community building aspect, the leadership is one.

One.

I mean, if you're gonna approach social media as I'm just doing

it because people tell me I have to do it, then don't even do it.

Like, I'm sorry.

Like, I'm just gonna say the thing.

If you don't believe in it, if you don't believe that the people whose

opinions matter are there and bringing them into your community matters,

then it's never gonna work for you.

I, you know.

While I wear many hats that are maybe more mainstream, but on my Instagram

page, my focus really is documenting, preserving heritage, Punjabi recipes,

and also making them accessible to North American cooks, particularly

people who have different ingredients.

So in that capacity, I have got to have my ears open and I have to listen

and you know, I will read comment.

Streams from people and I get some people on the internet can be kind of

irritating and you feel really compelled to tell them, you know your opinion.

But I'll read comments like on other community pages and I'll see

really defensive responses from the author or people being really upset

that someone asked for further.

Not justification.

Sometimes people wanna understand your recipe, right?

They wanna know why you suggested this step.

And people get really defensive.

And I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I feel that way, but I try

and step away and come back.

And I have really tried to, I have really tried to take the

perspective always that, um.

In this busy, busy world where people could consume a million things, if you

will give 90 seconds of your day to my reel to watch it, to ask me a question, I

will 100% give you the same respect back.

And I feel like to me, as someone who doesn't work in a traditional

leadership role, but I have worked in companies before.

I have worked in government, I have worked in an agency setting

where that's not the kind of.

Treatment I got from leadership.

You know, sometimes when you're new and you ask a question, they,

you know, it's like, really?

You had the audacity to ask me that question.

Whereas I think on social media, what I love about social media, and

if somebody's listening, who is, you could be an expert in anything.

You could be an expert in lentils, tomatoes, I don't

know, the cello, any, anything.

And you could be a thought leader in like a month because you took the

time to put your information out.

I, I just.

I love the internet and social media, and I just, I think to sum

up my very long tangent, yes, I have had some bad experiences.

There are bad apples in every industry.

You know, I watch the videos where people are like, you know, content creator did

this to me, and Influencer did that to me.

I can't believe someone said this to me, but you just gotta find your people.

Like, don't waste your time on the spaces that aren't your people.

I, I, I have to certainly feel.

Affirmed here in the sense that part of my desire to have you on the show,

part of my desire to pick your brain, I is that, that you're absolutely

confirming is that the journey you've taken, you are understanding a model

of leadership that it, it's something we need to be teaching people, is

something we need to be sharing.

And, and you've used a bunch of words already, like empathy and

respect and community and listening.

Which are, are all, I think to you and I as people who live on the internet,

is kind of self-evident, maybe to a lot of institutional leaders are, are,

are things that they, they still need to be wrapping their heads around.

you also, uh, describe something that I think is, is not just

brilliant, but really important when understanding Canada's AgriFood

system and, and in particular.

The way in which we as a country can live up to our potential.

'cause you hear all this talk about, you know, Canada as a superfood power,

Canada as an agricultural power, but I've always regarded Canada as,

uh, an intersection of diasporas.

if you're honest about looking at where Canada's come from, where Canada is

and where Canada's going, is a network.

Of different diasporas spanning all over the world.

what you described is not just an approach to a diaspora where on the

one hand you wanna reinforce culture, you, you want to celebrate culture.

You're doing an intergenerational pass down of culture, you're

also making it accessible.

You're inviting other people to learn about the culture, to understand the

diaspora to, you know, I, I saw a video of a a a a Rainbow Roti that I

thought was, again, a really powerful way to make these things accessible.

This might be self-evident to you, right?

You may just be doing this 'cause you're having fun and you're doing

this, but I think there's something really profound in how you're building

these bridges between cultures.

I'd love for you to unpack that.

I'd love for you to describe kind how you found yourself doing that and, and,

and the reward or, or the, the success.

I think that has come from being able to, to play that.

You know, I never thought about this until this precise

moment because of your question.

I think being, um.

Second generation Canadian, which I think all of us are, but not

everyone identifies like that because.

Of all sorts of things that would take way too long to unpack.

But you know, my parents immigrated from India, from Punjab in the early 1970s.

So, you know, being second generation, I think you learn very young

automatically to, to balance two worlds.

You know?

'cause we had our world at school.

In our world with our parents, we have our, what we call English

food, which is the, was like the strangest bucket we put food in.

That's not our, you know, traditional foods.

So I guess for that reason, it never felt like a strategic, uh, it never felt

strategic for me to be like, how do I take a recipe and make it work with,

you know, what I can find in Canada?

What is grown here, what's in the grocery store here?

Because that's how I grew up.

You know, I grew up with my mom being like, I used to find this

at home, but I can't anymore.

So we substitute it here.

So I think in that way.

Saying, I'm gonna take something and I'm gonna make it accessible,

and then I'm gonna use language that someone who reads a Canadian cookbook

or a Canadian recipe can understand.

But I'm also gonna use traditional language.

All of that just, that's just how I am.

Like that's how me and my friends who are the same culture as me, we

behave and you know, to, to your.

Point about how that kind of fits into the AgriFood system.

I feel like that is a skill that I've never thought until this moment with

this conversation with you, that if we could rev reverse engineer it from

plate to, you know, policy versus I feel like so much works from.

Policy to plate, you know?

Then we would realise that, like you said, the plates in home

kitchens in Canada, they do not always look like meat and potatoes.

They do not always look like what we have grown and farmed for generations because.

There are so many communities and so many diaspora, and we, and we almost do

have to learn how to speak this duality.

Like we have to learn how to speak that.

Yes, a potato does go with steak and potatoes, but a potato also goes in an

aranta or a potato roasty or a biani.

You know, like we have to learn those conversations, which I

never thought before today.

A skillset, I guess it's a survival instinct for second gen kids.

You know, like the duality is a survival instinct, but it's actually, you know,

you should um, you should try and build a consulting kind of gig out of this

'cause you're onto something there.

Well e except you are the consultant.

This, this is, if anything I'm activating and you, your entrepreneurial

mind, uh, when it comes to this.

'cause you're absolutely right.

Survival instincts in one context are entrepreneurial innovations in another.

And you know, this is why I think the.

Insular nature of the policy world of the sectoral leadership of

AgriFood is a liability because we miss the opportunities, we miss

the values, and, and you're kind of describing it on the one hand.

You're kind of helping expand people's palate by giving them, you know,

new recipes or to your point, how to deal with picky eaters amongst

kids or amongst family members.

you're also at the same time achieving a cultural literacy where, you know, on

the one hand you're using language that matches people's frame of reference.

But not at the exclusion of Punjabi cultural references, or not at the

exclusion of ingredients that might have been traditionally in these dishes,

and that in and of itself, while you describe it as a survival instinct.

I see it as food literacy.

So instead of people thinking, oh, lentils, that's something

we export, it becomes lentils.

That's something I can make withdrawal.

That would be so great.

And it's these small steps that take.

An industry like AgriFood from something that's commodity based

to something that is much richer, much more value added, and positions

Canada within the rest of the world.

Now I am rambling and going on digressions.

Why don't we come back to the, the, the kind of responses, 'cause again,

we're, we're able in hindsight's 2020, we could look back at what you've done

and go, oh, Raj, that's so brilliant.

Look at all the things you've done.

But you have done this kind of out of passion and, and out of

your own sense of intuition.

So what has the reaction been around the ar as, as you've done it along the way?

How have the, whether it's the CBC, whether it's by bc, I'm curious to

hear about how you have been kind, uh, helping people understand the value of

food education, of food literacy, and of doing the kind of work that you do.

You know, um.

There's a couple things in that we wanna pull off of, but to answer your,

uh, question that, you know, I, I think, um, in the last 10 years, I have

definitely seen that there is a lot more understanding for regional nuance.

Like for me, my first roadblock when I started telling my food

stories was, is that I identify as.

Punjabi, which is a state inside of India, and Indian food is generally

sort of homogenised under one bucket.

And a lot of people said, you know, it would be a lot easier if you

just said it was Indian food or you know, some people want you to call

yourself South Asian and you know.

The, that's fine for whatever framework.

Somebody decided at some point fit their understanding.

But it's not fine because being Punjabi is so distinctly different than

being from say a, you know, a state like Gura or Rajistan or Ma Russia.

Like I, you can cross 30 kilometres in India and you're in a new language,

a new culture, a new food identity.

So I think like my first battle was to really battle for the

fact that even people within my own community, other chefs.

Were frustrated with me.

You know, they were like, why are you making it harder?

So like, you know, that was my first battle and in initially it felt very

lonely because I, you know, I'm still one of the few voices in North America

that identifies as a Punjabi chef.

Most people say Indian, um, you know, and in Western, I believe, currently in

Canada, someone recently told me that I might have the largest recipe based

page of somebody who's an Indian food blogger, um, or a food content creator.

But then it always comes back to, you know.

I'm Punjabi, not Indian.

So that was a bit of a struggle and you know, and when you go into mainstream

media and you're pitching ideas and you're like, you know, I wanna call this doll

what it's called in my home, just even though on restaurant menus it's called

this, or even though it might be easier for Google search if it was in Hindi.

So, you know, those little nuances.

I think, you know, when we think about the AgriFood sector as a

whole, I think about what small producers could learn from that.

Is that.

There are cultures that, like there are hundreds of thousands

of people here in Canada and they're looking for ingredients.

They're looking for things that you might break the market and

you might make something that just that culture is looking for.

But to do that you have to stop looking at them as Southeast Asia.

And so Asia and Africa, you know, like you ha if you start looking at

regional nuance, there are so many products that are missing on shelves.

There are so many.

Or like produce items that are missing.

So for me, that was something that I always thought about, but

over the years it's gotten easier.

And people,

and if

sorry, go ahead.

if I could just kind of reinforce your point by distinguishing,

say, Punjabi food and Punjabi culture.

You're not only your own sense of identity, your own sense of culture,

but you are then creating value in the marketplace where then I, as a consumer,

instead of going for Indian food, I'm gonna start wanting Punjabi food.

And, and the reason I, I kind of identify with this was.

You know, when I was living in Toronto for a period, I, I, I was a real big

fan of Tamil cuisine and there were a number of Tamil restaurants that I

would often go to and bring my friends to, and there were a lot of political

reasons why these Tamil restaurants were distinguishing themselves and engaging

in that level of cultural distinction.

But it fostered loyalty amongst consumers, amongst their customers because they

then understood the, the, the reason these dishes were different, the reason

the ingredients were different, and the larger culture that it existed in.

So it's not just an issue of category distinction, I think it's

also an issue of creating value, add and desire to the food itself.

Does, does that make sense?

100%.

So we live in a world right now where everybody's a foodie.

I don't use that word because I feel like it doesn't really mean anything anymore.

Like what does it even mean to be a foodie?

But everywhere you go, people are like, I'm, I'm a foodie.

This is my favourite hole in the wall space.

This is my fa I'm, you know, I'm trying this New Spice.

We try this new recipe.

People are watching all the cooking shows.

So there are, there is like.

And this kind of goes back a step to when you were talking

about how we treat the consumer.

When we think of when it comes to selling food in the AgriFood space, I think

it's a real miss When we think of the consumer, we have to think of the eater.

We have to think of all of the drivers that go behind why we eat what we eat.

Whether it's like the financial modification, motivations, sorry,

the health, the, the cultural drivers or, or the food adventurers.

So this, there's this giant opportunity that exists, like I'm consulting on

a project right now with someone who is working on a, I can't say because

I don't wanna say what it is, but it's an herb that is missing, that a

culture needs, and it's an herb that.

You know, can be done here in Canada, but no one's thought about it.

And I kind of feel like it's going to make people feel they're gonna walk into

this or they're gonna see this urban and they're gonna be like, ah, home.

You know, they're gonna feel so connected to it.

And imagine how many other products exist in, you know, I, I'm only

an expert kind of on my region.

I have a deep understanding of like the South Asian cuisines, but there

are probably experts everywhere in all sorts of regional cuisines that.

If we could make partnerships, you know, between the people on social media who

hear consumers every day saying, sorry, not consumers, but like people who hear

conversations every day where someone's saying, oh, you know, I'm looking for x, Y

thing, but I can't find it here in Canada.

This happens to me almost every day.

You know, I have a lot of immigrant followers.

I can't find this.

So I'll say, oh, you know what?

That's not available, especially if you don't want it imported.

But here's some.

Other items that I think have similar flavour profiles, and there

are probably people who can do this for every region of the world.

So if there was a way to create a partnership between producers, policy, you

know, retail marketers, like everything your ears to the ground are the people

that are on social media to kind of, you know, to say what we've been saying

all along, you cannot get better real time data than what content creators on

social media are making or are, you know.

Learning or hearing.

So, you know, and to go to your point about regional nuance, like imagine

how, uh, much brand loyalty and trust a food brand could create if people who

felt overlooked, who felt like their cuisine wasn't important or their culture

hasn't been recognised, suddenly saw a product in the market that spoke to them.

Um.

You can't buy that kind of brand loyalty with marketing dollars.

Like, you know, once people are loyal to something, they're loyal to it.

When it comes to food.

And, and not just that, but it reinforces your point about

eaters and the emotions and the psychology that goes into an eater

because you, you, you just evoke the scenario that I seem quite likely where.

know, let's say there's a particular ingredient that a community's passionate

about they can't get ahold of.

Someone produces it in in small enough quantity, let's say initially that

everyone's excited and it's that emotion on social media, which becomes infectious.

The excited that they now have access to an ingredient or a herb they wanted, but

then everyone else watching them goes.

Wow.

Look how excited they are about that ingredient.

want that ingredient.

I need to have that ingredient.

All of a sudden you got a craze going on.

'cause that's how social media works in terms of the

infectiousness o of that energy.

You know, and very briefly, 'cause again, I'm digressing again.

A couple of episodes ago, uh, we had Camden Lawrence from the

First Nations Agricultural Bank.

Uh, basically they helped finance, uh, indigenous agriculture across the country.

And he dropped this brilliant piece of knowledge, which is.

You know, people don't realise that the price of Basel is higher

than the price of cannabis.

And that if people, instead of trying to have illegal grow ops, had legal

Basel grow ops, amount of revenue for the community would be tremendous.

And you're kind of describing a similar opportunity that there's all these

communities throughout Canada that on social media, are providing signals that

growers could be tapping into that if they started growing these ingredients,

again, we get from the diasporas here in Canada then position us to start

feeding cultures around the world.

I'm rambling again, but are, are we kind of on the same page here in terms

of understanding this opportunity?

Absolutely, and it's, this is not rambling, this is excitement.

This is us just trying to get the message out because you know

everything you said, like, think about the viral feta pasta, the Dubai

Chocolate bar, gochujang, kimchi.

These were not all mainstream items before they went viral on s. TikTok,

but we only, we generally tend to think of them as like a product.

It has to be, but you know, there's this, um.

Wild Herb used in, uh, Punjabi saag, which is kind of like a,

a stewed mustard greens dish.

It's called btu, and it grows everywhere in bc It's wild everywhere.

But last summer, a couple of BC blueberry farmers, their grandma told

them, Hey, do you know what this is?

And they put it on social media and said, you can come and get this for free.

I was one of the people that was like, I'm 100% gonna go and get.

This herb.

Right.

But it was like such a really, it was such a fun social experiment.

Like somebody who was a blueberry grower, his grandma was like, do you

know in India we used to cook with this?

And you know, obviously please follow all the rules.

Don't, I don't wanna get anyone in trouble with what you're supposed to

do and not do in terms of food safety.

But when I saw that, I thought, wow, like there are people, there's a demand

for this thing, which is growing like a weed in bc. And there are, and this then

pertains to like educating ourselves.

You know, we get into.

In any industry.

I'm not trying to dog on one industry.

We get in, we get our like, you know.

What is it called?

We, we have our blind spots.

You know, we kind of, we have our head down.

We're focused on, we're like, this is what we've always grown.

This is what we've always done.

You know, and when we, when we start talking to other people and we create

like incubator opportunities, when we have conversations, that's where I

think that this kind of real innovative, creative opportunities will come out.

And to be fair, you know, we talk a lot about the cost to the, the end

product user to the eaters, but.

Agriculture is expensive for the farmers also.

So imagine if there was a, imagine if there's a farmer out there who

has like a really amazing opportunity just there, but they don't know about

it 'cause they haven't talked to the person who can recognise what they have.

Well, and you know, let's use that as an opportunity to talk about what

you're doing with buy BC because it is, I think, a really smart way to take the

stuff we're talking about today and kind of close the loop and, and you alluded.

To it in the sense that there's herbs that are growing wild, uh, at parts of

Canada that we ignore, but that are of great value, uh, to certain cultures,

certain cuisines, and as people recognise either the taste or the nutritional

value, you know, attitudes change.

there is a communications piece to all of that.

'cause on the one hand, you know, the farmers have to understand

what's going on with the eaters.

The eaters have to understand, you know, to your point of cauliflower,

when crops are in season.

When they're affordable.

When they're in abundance, and then what?

To do with them.

So, you know, talk about the work you're doing, the, the kind of

ambassadorship that really helps to make these connections in, in a way

that, again, I think we're looking at a model of leadership that we should be

replicating right across the country.

Yeah, I mean, I think first off, like, you know, kudos to the BBC

team for thinking about it this way.

You know, this is a, a rule that there was, you know, a process

for, there was a, a bid process for, I applied for this role.

And I think, you know, first off, this is a really great example of

like innovative thought leadership.

To not assume that.

You have to have, you know, a technical chef in this role.

One of the, the things that, you know, the team and I have talked about a lot is the

importance of connecting with home cooks.

I think often when we think about brands and they wanna promote something,

you know, we, we think about chefs.

And, and you know, again, this is a very like grey area where being a chef

who specialises in an ethnic cuisine is different than being a chef who

specialises in French cuisine, say, but you know, often as, as, um, content

consumers, when a brand before social media, brands often looked at things

as like, let's get a, a pro chef.

You know, a chef who's gonna.

Do a certain kind of technique or a certain kind of plating, but the

perspective with buy BC from the very beginning, from where I've started, my

role has been how can we take products that are readily available in BC that

are in season and introduce 'em to home cooks if they're not already using them or

show home cooks, how they can incorporate them into their cultural recipes,

which, you know, we've done some unique pieces where we've taken something that

wouldn't traditionally sit in a Punjabi recipe, but we've brought it in and.

You know, the idea really just is to, 'cause at the end of the day,

you know, there's all these people that are in the AgriFood system.

There's a supply chain, there's policy, there's all that.

But at the end of the day, the last mile, the.

Farm to plate is in somebody's kitchen who has 30 minutes, limited budget, limited

time, you know, and that's the people that through buy BC we're trying to talk to.

We're trying to be like, you don't need to buy 15 ingredients.

Like, let's just focus on one ingredient, do it well.

And you know, in the process we're trying to tell really cool producer stories.

You know, like I did a piece.

Uh, in November on an egg, Liz hazelnut cake, hazelnuts are not necessarily

the most, um, economical option, but a lot of people said, you know, now

that I know they're grown in bc I'm interested to try them because I didn't

know you could grow hazelnuts in bc.

So it's a fine balance, you know, because yes, we are in a time where.

Economics matters.

Like all Canadians are worried about the cost of groceries.

I am worried about the cost of groceries, like, you know, so economics matters.

But I think if you can tell a good story, people will splurge

on an ingredient and all of that kind of to come full circle is.

Are you creating community?

Are people invested in your brand or you online?

Do they trust you?

Do they wanna support you?

Then they will pay the extra $2 at the checkout if they, even if they have to

let it go from somewhere else, but they won't just 'cause you put up a flashy ad.

I think what you're evoking there is the power of

culture and, and culture is something we often take for granted.

The way that, you know, fish often don't think of the taste of water,

culture determines what we want to eat, how much we're willing

to pay, who we share it with.

And I think much of the AgriFood industry is kind of.

Uh, dare I say it culturally illiterate because they just kind of accept that

culture is there, versus, to your point, the, the survival instinct of a

second generation Canadian is to be very conscious of culture because you exist

in multiple cultures and you have to code switch often, uh, between cultures.

and I do wanna unpack that, but I wanna connect that to something

that you've also repeatedly evoked.

Today, and you just brought it up in terms of the chef that it used to be, they

might go to a very technically oriented or highly trained and certified chef, but

these days the credibility and authority is probably coming from a home chef.

It's probably coming from a chef who like yourself, has earned their authority,

sharing knowledge on the internet.

And so what I kind of wanna tease out and, and get you to, to riff off is this idea

that the next authority can come out of anywhere, often within just a few weeks.

And, and you've talked about that in terms of how social media works.

you also kind of talked about that in terms of, you know, maybe, uh, someone

identifies a herb that is really valuable that all of a sudden sweeps the

country that makes them an authority.

So how do we kind of reconcile this idea that anyone who's listening

to us right now could find an opportunity in the AgriFood space and

leverage that opportunity with their communication skills to become a leader?

I'm digressing again, but I'm doing so 'cause I suspect that you're gonna have

something really smart to say in response.

Oh, okay.

Well, um, I'm gonna break that up into two parts.

So first I wanna say, um, I have the utmost respect for culinary training and

chefs who run kit commercial kitchens.

It's not that I don't respect that.

I just think we're in a shifting world today.

And, and I have some culinary training, and I am still in the process because at

one point I figured, you know, I need to understand what I'm talking about when

I'm talking about other types of cuisines.

Um, I have the utmost respect for that, but I think there's a, I do not

think that just because you can run a. Brigade in a commercial kitchen, you can

run an Instagram page where you teach food, where you connect people to food.

There, there are two different skill sets and I also think that you know, much what

we've talked about today has reminded us that ethnic foods, um, different culture.

The way we cook, the way that we learn to cook in community.

We don't all work in a brigade style kitchen, so it doesn't

resonate for everybody.

Um, and today, anybody, I mean, I literally mean anybody can take

something that they're passionate about.

If they have a little bit of, uh, communication skill online,

pre not so much presence.

But if you're comfortable on camera, if you're not comfortable on camera,

you can figure out workarounds.

But really.

I come up against this a lot and perhaps this, maybe I shouldn't even say this,

but I'm gonna say it that a lot of times I have had people who believe

that they are experts because of.

A different world told them they were an expert.

You know, there was a time when a certain certificate or a certain

training or a certain check mark meant you were more of an expert than me.

But we live in the wild, wild west of leadership and expertise now.

Like, uh, anyone could.

Take what they know.

And if you can distil that into an approachable, friendly, authentic

format, you can be the expert.

You can be the expert on tomatoes, you can be the expert on potatoes,

you can be a cheese expert.

You, you know what?

You can even choose to do it in a, um, condescending way.

Lots of people do it really well in a condescending way.

I just don't recommend that as a brand.

As a brand, I think you should be open to feedback.

There's lots of people that are like, you know, their voice online is, I

am the expert because I don't think that's what a brand should do, but

you have to find your voice and.

I also think it's a bit, I think we're in a world where

there's a lot of like reality.

Um, people are facing reality.

There's a lot of shock.

They're like, but I'm the expert, but I have less followers than this

person who's just passionately talking in their kitchen about something.

Or someone's like, I have always planted this.

It has always sold, you know, at Christmas time, this product always sells well.

Surprisingly, Christmas or another holiday now is diverse.

Not everybody is making the same bird or the same side or the same.

And you know, some of those people are actually, um, not even minorities.

It's um, Eurocentric communities who want more flavour in their food.

Now they're like, maybe we're not gonna do this.

Like, I think, you know.

You just have to open your mind.

You want, if you want your brand to stand on social media, if you wanna

stand for thought leadership, and if you wanna stand for thought leadership

in the AgriFood space, the first thing that you can do is be honest.

Do not be defensive if people tell you food is expensive.

If people tell you groceries are expensive, if they're

confused by food labels.

I see this a lot online where people get really defensive and they tow

that company line and they have these like perfectly crafted PR statements.

I don't think you build communities like that.

You build communities by being honest and saying, we're in it with Canadians.

I've gone on a rant, but the whole of this to say is like, it doesn't

matter what your degree says.

It doesn't matter what your, what your experience says today matters.

I think what you speak to people and it matters that people feel respected.

And I, I hope you're having a half as much fun with this

conversation as I am because I, I am certainly learning a tonne and it's

helping me really connect the dots on some of my own thinking and in particular.

think what, what you just helped me r realise is that authority now is based

more on your ability to ask questions than it is on your ability to offer answers.

And that's part of the reason why on the internet anyone can become an expert

because everything's changing so quickly that if you ask the right questions.

That could lead you to new knowledge, which then establishes your expertise.

You may not be the top expert, but you're an expert.

You're able to kind of participate, that's part of why I think diversity

is so essential to a thriving sector.

And, and we've been talking about that kind of around it and talking

about the value of culture, the, the value of understanding and

listening to communities, the.

Kind of the, the advantages that second generation Canadians have in being able

to have their feet in in both cultures.

In all cultures.

But I, I'm curious as, as we kind of wrap up and this is another crazy

abstract question, but I suspect you're gonna have an interesting answer.

How do you stay curious?

Because it's obvious to me that curiosity has been a big part of your

creativity, of your attitude, right?

You're, you're, you're, you're, you're kinda, uh, seeing the

internet as an opportunity rather than as a dysfunctional mess.

And that is something I, I wrestle with myself.

but how do you, on the assumption that you are curious, how do you maintain that?

How do you fuel that curiosity and what role do you think curiosity

plays in this, uh, model of leadership that we're kind of evoking today?

Okay.

So I am definitely a curious person.

Um, my kids call them side quests and I usually have many, many

side quests at any given time.

Um, but I think the key about being curious and, and you're,

you're absolutely right, like being curious is the number one thing I

think that allows you to be, um.

Allows you to be a leader on social media because you have to be coming

up with new stuff all the time.

You have to come up with new ways to present it, but you

don't find that on social media.

So this is the kind of hard part I allow myself sometime

on social media just to scroll.

I don't care.

I know people say it's brain rot and stuff, but sometimes I just

scroll and I watch silly things.

But when it comes to actually being curious about the stuff that I wanna

do beyond the conversations I have in my dms and my comments, then

I like try to take it off a line.

And I think something that really helps when you are a blank slate like

I was when I started, I learned to cook on the internet with people.

I learned the internet with people.

I think coming to it as, I don't know everything.

I think sometimes with the old Guard, with people who sit in leadership positions,

your number one problem is if you think you know everything, you've already

lost a battle on social media and then.

You have to keep learning.

Like, that's the thing, like I have taken classes on pastry making.

I have taken classes on Thai cooking.

I, I took a writing workshop in London once I, you know, read a lot, I read a

lot around what, um, actually I read a lot that has nothing to do with what I do for

work, but I feel like I really try to stay connected to the written word because.

I feel like this is maybe a little off topic, but we get so caught up in social

media being about the photos, the videos, the recipes that, but at the end of the

day, it's about the, the storytelling.

So I try to constantly work on like consuming.

If I'm consuming, I try to consume good stories, but really, I think

you nailed it earlier when you said, keep your ears open and listen.

You know, like ask questions.

Ask questions of everybody and anybody you can, and.

Perhaps this is a good way to sort of sum up what I think of leadership is that

when you're in a leadership position.

You have gotta ask a question of everybody from the person that's the farm labourer.

You know who's picking the fruit to the person who's packing it

to the person who's eating it.

Like we start to think of certain people, we start to think of.

Specific people in communities as the expert, the editor that knows, the chef

that knows, you know, the taste maker that knows, and I think that world is gone.

I think we can be more curious.

We can be better thought leaders.

We can produce really amazing products here in Canada.

If we were talking to different people, like you said, diverse, unique voices

across social classes, across cultures.

And that's where the magic will come of content creation too.

Right on.

Uh, this has been an absolute tour de force.

Uh, we're coming to the last question and this last question, like the

first question is really meant to be a kind of curve ball, something

that catches you a little off guard.

I, I'm a big believer in the kind of each one teach one principle.

And so I like to end the episode by asking the leader that we've been talking about

and what a phenomenal leader you are, Raj.

Are there any leaders that you, uh, look up to that you follow on social media?

This is kind of the shout out, uh, part of the show.

Are there folks that, that you're paying attention to, that we should be paying

attention to in terms of, you know, either different models of leaders or just

leaders that you think are kind of cool?

I wish I had thought about this a little more and prepared for it,

uh, because obviously, you know when you have that moment when there's so many

people, but, um, your brain goes blank.

But one person who I'm really inspired by right now is my

fellow by BBC Ambassador Michael.

He has this amazing knack for how he teaches people things that

should be inaccessible information.

It is.

Stuff that in the past would be under the guard of like you had to have

gone, you had to train in a Michelin starred restaurant to know these things.

And Michael is just making it accessible to home cooks in a

way that I find so inspiring.

Um.

There are so many other people and I'm happy to send you some for show notes, but

right now when you said it in the context of the conversation we're having right

now, like if I was in AgriFood right now, I would look at his stuff and I would see

like, this would be a great way to teach people to distil knowledge and to have

faith in people that they're smart enough to process whatever you're teaching them.

Like he has so much faith in home cooks that you know, I can

teach you something that is.

Such a, like a fine dining technique, but you can learn

it and I love that about him.

Right on.

And, and you, you're getting the gist of, uh, what I'm trying to achieve as

an interviewer in that I think food is very much something of the gut and

I want as many of the questions as possible to go straight to the gut

and get that instinctual response.

So again, uh, you did fantastic in that regard.

I, I have to selfishly say that I have enjoyed this conversation so much.

I would love to have you back, uh, if only because you kind of started

by evoking ai and I think the role of the algorithm has kind of been beneath

the surface of our conversation.

So I suspect we would have a lot of fun talking about that

subject amongst many others.

Um, so I would very much love to have you back and no pressure to answer now,

but the last thing we'll end on, where can people find you on the internet?

You can find me online as Pink Chai.

I am on Instagram, TikTok not so much.

I'm trying to learn that app and YouTube and um, it's at pink, chai Pink,

like the colour chai, like the drink.

And to your point about consuming social media, TikTok

is very much my guilty pleasure.

Uh, if only because it, I find it really does connect me, uh, with lots

of educators, uh, uh, people making all sorts of interesting food and

doing so in a very accessible way.

So I do encourage you to, uh, check it out and lean into it further only because

I think your brilliance and expertise would play very well on that platform.

Uh.

Thanks again.

This has been absolutely fantastic.

I, I feel a little guilty in that when I have episodes as amazing as this, so early

in the arc of our show, uh, we may run into difficulty maintaining the quality

of the conversation moving forward.

But nonetheless, thank you for setting the bar so high.

Raj.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

If there's something to carry forward from today's

conversation, it's that the food system doesn't end at production

and it doesn't fail there either.

What Raj makes visible is a layer that's often overlooked precisely

because it feels informal.

The decisions that shape demand, normalise ingredients, and ultimately

determine what becomes viable are happening in everyday practise.

And how people cook, what they feel comfortable attempting and what they pass

on to loved ones that has consequences because it suggests that many of

the challenges we talk about, market access, local adoption, even resilience,

aren't only technical or economic.

They're cultural and they require a different kind of intervention.

Not just more supply or better policy, but more translation, more

literacy, and more people doing the kind of work that Raj is doing.

It also raises a sharper question for the sector.

Who are we recognising as leaders?

If influence over taste and habit is as consequential, as influence over

production, then the map of the food system starts to look different.

And I'm sure glad we were able to have Raj on the show to demonstrate that this

conversation doesn't resolve that tension, but it does make it harder to ignore.

Raj is not alone.

She's part of a growing cohort of teachers, of learners, of influencers,

leaders who are connecting the loop when it comes to how we consume food,

how we love food, how we share food, and as the system continues to change.

You know, that might be a useful place for us to be paying attention.

And similarly, a useful place for this episode to come to a close, not

with answers, but with a clear sense of where the real leverage might be,

where the real opportunities might be.

Until then, we'll see you next time here on the Future Herd.