From Chef's Kitchen to Tech CEO: Alejandro Oropeza on Bridging Food and Technology

And of course, after joining CookUnity, we've recently launched shoppable video capabilities on the CookUnity app with amazing storytelling from hundreds of chefs that are part of the platform. And again, we're building on this hypothesis that video is a great mechanism to connect users to amazing stories. If those stories are about food, they tend to get you hungry. And if you're already hungry, why not help you discover a myriad amazing chef crafted meals on cookedUnity?

Step into the world of success with your brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success.

This is a call I've been looking forward to. Alejandro Oropeza, you are the co founder and CEO of Flavours, and we are meeting because of the partnership that you just built with CookUnity, which I'm a huge fan of CookUnity and I'm really excited about this partnership. So thank you first and foremost for being on your brand Amplified.

Of course. It's great being here, Anika, thanks for having me.

And I'm really intrigued because obviously you started out going to school to be a trained chef, then you became a tech CEO who also still has, of course, a hand in the kitchen. So can you talk to us a little bit about that journey from being in the kitchen to building tech for people who want to do better in the kitchen?

Yes. Look, it's. I think like most stories, it's less linear than it would appear on paper. And I always kind of had a conscious choice to try to learn from the best. So the long version of this story starts in my grandmother's kitchen when I was seven years old. I grew up in Mexico City in a family of chefs and restaurants and just in two families that had a really strong passion for food. And so food has always been kind of my. My means of personal expression and something that I'm really, really passionate about. And so it was kind of an interesting journey. I started cooking, I was seven years old. I went to culinary school in France. When I was 18, I worked in the family restaurant in Mexico City when I was kind of 18 through kind of early 20s. But I always knew that there was more that I wanted to learn about. And some of the other things that were intriguing to me at the time were marketing and content. And so I spent some time working for Procter and Gamble as a brand manager there. And then I joined Google in 2011, I believe. And I did a bunch of different stints within the company across Latin America, Europe, the US and the last of that was actually leading the global marketing team for creators at YouTube, so working very closely with influencers, vloggers, people that were coming up on the platform, and then launching tools to help them monetize their business, grow their audience, et cetera. What was interesting, I think, is as I was having that job that on all accounts felt like my dream job, I was still missing something. And I think what I was missing was reconnecting with my deep passion for food. And so I think it was during that point in time when I was at YouTube that I realized I needed to get myself back in the kitchen. And I think it happened pretty organically. Around the time of the pandemic, it was 2021, the world had just closed. And I think most people would have avoided starting a company back then. For me, a series of circumstances just made it such that I really wanted to do this. And I had a vision for a verticalized social media platform or verticalized video platform that was focused on food. And of course, you can see how kind of the conducting thread of what I'd done before. Food content technology sort of prepared me for that journey. And I was lucky to meet Francois Chou, who was my co founder and CTO and partner in crime through these five and a half years. And it just seemed like we both had this amazing passion for food. And the timing was right. We started in, I believe, August of 2020. So, yeah, mid Pandemic, we decided to, from our living rooms, start a company together and go do everything else. So it was definitely a fundraiser that just recently culminated in the acquisition from CookUnity. And we're very excited to be part of that journey now.

And what I'm seeing is such a great through line between the early days, shaping, you know, yourself culturally through the experience of enjoying food and learning at your family's kitchen. Right. And then taking that out into the world and then also creating culture and connection on YouTube, launching products to millions of creators, 70 plus languages, advising creator strategy. And I imagine that also had to help you once you decided, oh, I need to go back to the kitchen. There are some things that are I really miss in my life. But you were able to take everything that you used with creator strategy to kind of understand immediately what needed to be done, what would be really impactful to others, because it was being impactful to you and to your business partner.

Yeah, I think it. Look, it's Very interesting that. I think in life you go through these transformations, especially if you're curious. And I was always very curious about culture. I was always very curious about food. I was curious about living in different countries, which is something I've been fortunate enough to do. And, yeah, certainly the experience of having done creator strategy at YouTube was really helpful in then going and building a creator platform for food content creators, such flavors. The experience of having worked in a kitchen myself gave me a level of empathy for what these people did every day. That's different. If I hadn't had that experience, and then the ability to sort of connect the dots of, you know, content and advertising and commerce, which are things I've done before, was also helpful. So I think for a lot of founders, it's. It's just about the outcome or the money or the. Or the panache. I think for me, it was always about a deep passion for food, a deep passion for technology, and an understanding that there was an opportunity at the intersection of content and commerce. And trying to bring those two things together at Flavors was the dream.

There are a lot of, obviously, platforms, YouTube and many others that do exactly that. Right. They help people who are really passionate about something monetize their content. Hopefully they're passionate about it. They're not just doing it. I always tell people, if you're going to be a podcaster, don't go into it thinking that you're going to make a lot of money. First you have to be passionate about what you're doing.

Right.

You obviously clearly are. What were you seeing that was missing from YouTube, from these other platforms? That was the problem or the frustration or the impetus behind saying, I need to build this new kind of app?

Yeah, look, I think, as I've said, my journey is deeply personal. And it started with something very personal to me. So I remember watching, you know, food content on YouTube and Instagram and feeling really happy, but also feeling really hungry. I remember watching Chef's Table, which was getting started at that time, and just seeing these beautiful visuals on my tv and again, feeling heightened appetite and a desire to do something I would often like with my wife. Watch these shows, and we'd be like, hey, are you hungry? What are we getting for dinner? And so I think that that is kind of the. The most nascent version of the spark that triggered Flavors. Because what we realized is when people watch food content, they get really hungry and they want to do something about it. And so the whole thesis of Flavors is that people didn't want to just watch content but they wanted to do something about it. The doing something about it at the time for us meant building a partnership with Instacart. You would watch recipe videos from top creators and chefs and then you could purchase the ingredients with one click. This was before TikTok shop, before YouTube shopping. It was kind of early in the days of shoppable video or social commerce. And so the thesis was you watch something, you get hungry, we want to get it to you as fast as possible. So the first attempt at that was Instacart. The second thing we did is we built the ability for people to discover local restaurants in San Francisco by watching a feedback, kind of an infinite feed of videos on the same app. And then if you click through to that, you could go purchase takeout on Uber Eats. And so what's interesting about that is at the time, nobody else was doing that. Now Both Uber and DoorDash have embedded video features on their core apps. And of course, after joining CookUnity, we've recently launched shoppable video capabilities on the CookUnity app with amazing storytelling from hundreds of chefs that are part of the platform. And again, we're building on this hypothesis that video is a great mechanism to connect users to amazing stories. If those stories are about food, they tend to get you hungry. And if you're already hungry, why not help you discover a myriad amazing chef crafted meals on cookunity? So the conducting line, again there is the notion that storytelling isn't just storytelling and that when it's amazing and it makes you hungry, that should lead into a more satisfactory experience of actually eating the food that you're seeing on the screen.

Yeah, I think that's one of the best things that we can think of with food. You know, sometimes as entrepreneurs or in our day to day, we just eat whatever's handy because it's there. But the best meals that we have are those experiences where we maybe get to try a new restaurant or try a chef that isn't in LA where I am. But I can go to Flavors and I can go to CookUnity and I can learn the story and about a chef somewhere else who has put together some meals that I can now purchase if I wanted to.

Yeah, totally. And I think what, what we're finding with this first experiment of adding video to cookunity is the canvas that you have to tell. The story of these amazing dishes is so much richer when you have immersive video, when you have the actual human telling you the story of, you know, how this rigatoni came from their grandmother and why it's important to them, and the great ingredients that go into that rigatoni, and then you can order that again. It's. It's food for me is. Is a social connector. It's the ultimate kind of universal human experience. We all have to eat, hopefully three times a day. And when you see the stories of these chefs, you have people like Anthony Nichols, you have a Nathani, you have over 180 chefs on cookunity that have all of these amazing, diverse experiences. And now they can use shoppable video to tell the story of that amazing experience. And. And one click away, we'll send you the food to your home so you can enjoy with your family. So I'm super excited that we've kind of breathed a second life into the original idea that was Flavors, and that that idea now exists within CookUnity on a platform that is delivering to over 95% of US homes. Like I said, over 180 chefs everywhere in the US and in. In Ontario and parts of Canada. Now also, you can order these. These great meals. So I think it's a great experience to see this fully vertically integrated experience of storytelling through to eating. Basically.

I'm resonating so deeply with what you say, because it does. When you're telling stories about. Telling stories about food and chefs. It brings me back to my childhood and my mom being from a different culture and coming over to the US and my father living a few places because his grandfather was a colonel and built a lot of the air force bases in different places around the world as an engineer. And the cultural experiences and the food that they brought back to me as a child and having dinner parties and trying different cuisine and those themes and how really, at the core, it was about bringing people together around a really nice meal and the music from the culture. Right. All of that. It's. There's such great memories for me, and obviously, so I'm really connected to mission and what you're doing. And you mentioned that from the first meeting you had with Matteo and the Cook Unity team, you saw that you shared the same vision. You'd already had individual success. Right. People magazine, top food app, fast company, most innovative companies. Those are not minor achievements. So when you shared the same vision and you saw the alignment, had you been in that space that you were thinking that you were going to eventually merge with somebody or have an acquisition or an exit?

Yeah, yeah. We were already in the late stage of an M and a process that we had been running with a few people And I think what was very unique about meeting Matteo and the community team is I could tell that they shared a really high level of passion for food. Matteo grew up in a farm in Argentina, is incredibly connected emotionally and spiritually, intellectually to the. To the food world. And the more I spoke to people at CookUnity, the more evident it became that it was kind of a match made in heaven. Right? They had thought about doing shoppable video because they had seen kind of the trend a few sort of quarters before that. We had been in the process of running an M and A acquisition process with a few players because it became obvious to us that it was going to be. The company had much more potential inside a larger company with an established user base, with an established revenue base than as a standalone. And so it was kind of the perfect marriage of passion for the food space, passion for empowering creators. In the case of cookunity, it was actual restaurant chefs, frogs, it was content creators, and then the vision that if you brought together amazing storytelling through the chefs and you delivered a great, high quality food experience, that that could, that could turn into something meaningful. And so, so far, we've been at the company for eight months and it's been an amazing ride. And every day we, we talk to people who have these amazing backgrounds in the food space, and we get to work with, you know, 180 of the most exciting chefs out there to deliver those meals. Again, like with YouTube and flavors. I think the beauty of CookUnity is that it's empowering chefs to do what they love and do very well with doing what they love. So of these 180 chefs, the average fake rate is about 7 to $800,000. Some people are making $7 million a year on CookUnity, and they get to do that by, you know, sharing the food from their childhood, sharing food from the culture that they came from, and sharing that love through that food nationwide through Kucunity. So we're very proud to be now part of that mission.

So can you talk a little bit about Chef as creator? Because you just mentioned that the different chefs, different people on the platform can. I mean, this is another income stream for them beyond whatever their restaurant or other offerings are.

Tell me more. What do you mean by Chef as creator?

So with the chefs as creators, they're getting to use this platform to storytell, to share their food, their cuisine with people who might not have access to it otherwise. And so as part of the model, then also as creators of these recipes, then they have a piece of the action.

Yeah, look, I think even before we came along to CookUnity, CookUnity had already built a phenomenal platform for chefs, you know, across the spectrum from Michelin star chefs to locally and regionally famous chefs, to build a nationwide business selling through cookunity. Right. And so, like I said, that has from the beginning been a really profitable proposition for chefs that are on the platform. What we've added to that is the ability for the chefs to tell their story through video. So we've used some of Flavor's proprietary technology and have rebuilt additional technology to allow people to watch videos and then after watching a video, be able to add it directly to their cart. We also work with these top chefs and content creators at a kitchen studio to create the content that they put out there to make these beautiful, enticing videos. And so we've effectively kind of turn an existing successful platform like Cook Unity. We've now appended an amazing storytelling surface that's that shoppable video experience. And we're early testing those features and that functionality, and we expect to continue to grow and roll out features like that to improve engagement retention through that great video based storytelling.

Yeah, fantastic. And you've gone from working in tech for different organizations to becoming a solo CEO to now integrating your company in. What has that been like for you to go from one to the other to the other? Because I know the mindset that you have to have when you're working in a company. Right. Yeah.

I would probably use two words. Right. The first one is dream. And I say that wholeheartedly like it was my dream to create a company where creators could tell their stories and users could see those stories, get hungry, get connected to those stories, and to truly build a community of food lovers. Right. So that was. That was a dream I had well before starting Flavors. It materialized as a company and kind of through the journey that we went through, I think that's kind of one thing. It felt like a dream. And sometimes dreams are scary and sometimes they're exciting. Right. So sometimes you're flying and you're at the top of the world and you feel like you're Superman and otherwise you're, you know, sometimes crying yourself to sleep. I think both are true in the, in the world of being an entrepreneur. I think one of our old investors, Al Andreessen Horowitz, famously said when he was an entrepreneur, he slept like a baby. So he woke up every hour and cried. And so it's both things, I think, in terms of the dream, you get to see Your vision fully realized. And that's been amazing. Right from starting a company with Francois, my co founder, in the middle of the pandemic and incorporating the company and signing the documents with face masks on and raising money from our living rooms from top venture capitalists because they weren't open for business otherwise. So from that kind of nascent version of the dream to now, having gone through the full journey of the highs, the lows, and now landing at another great company where we get to continue to pursue this dream, I think that that part of the dream has been amazing. And in terms of the skillset as you were talking about, like. Yes. I think the other word that comes to mind is flexibility. Right. And growth mindset. What made me successful at Procter and Gamble, for example, which was process and understanding how to navigate a large org and delivering incremental value for a really large established company, was completely different from what made you successful at Google, where you had more flexibility, more agency. It was growing fast. You had to be more innovative where the culture was less hierarchical. But that was also another huge company. It was very different to what it took to bootstrap a company with two people and go build a business around it. Right. And that again is once again different to what it will take to be successful at cookunity post acquisition. And so I think it again, it's a combination of commitment to your dreams and a willingness to be flexible and the humility to learn. Right. Because in whatever new chapter of life, I think it's really important to keep a, a low ego and a sense of self awareness such that you can learn. And I'm learning every day. I've been learning every day since I first stepped foot in my grandma's kitchen. And now I'm learning every day at cotunity about how to successfully integrate a business into another. And so far it's been very fun.

Amazing. You are obviously a community driven entrepreneur. You have to be with everything that you're doing. So what does that mean in practice? Like how do you balance community needs and what you want to bring to the table with business metrics and ROI and the things that investors are going to look at?

Yeah, it's hard. I think the, the venture capital and sort of investment world aggressively steered away from community and from consumer investing and from social media investing at the same time as we were growing as a company. Right. So the thing that people, I mean people are talking about AI all the time. Investment in AI has grown exponentially. Almost no other area of investment has stopped declining. Actually Right. So I think the reason I mentioned that is some of the things that are required to build a great social media platform in the early days aren't always compatible with profitability, with some of the success metrics or some of the things that matter for social, for example, are not revenue in the early days. You're just trying to retain users to see if they bring their friends, to see how long they engage with the product to, to effectively capture their mindset and their attention through this great user experience. And I think that's very different than what, you know, late stage investors will invest in when they're looking for profitability and other things. So I think a lot of these social platforms struggled because the whole market shifted from kind of overnight. Right. And that's also partially why I think many of these companies will continue to integrate into other companies and grow through other means than just kind of traditional venture backed financing.

And thinking about your transition into being a CEO, being an entrepreneur, being a builder, you mentioned a few things that people need to think about, flexibility being one of them.

Right.

Having that also that mindset of the difference in the kind of investor investment you're going to get depending on where you are. What would you say was one of the keys to success for yourself when you knew that the product that you had built was going to hit the way that you wanted it to hit?

I think, I mean the number one skill I think of any entrepreneur, and I don't think this is exclusive to like venture backed tech entrepreneurs, I think this is true for anyone starting a business, is resilience. Right. You're going to hear endless no's, people will dismiss your ideas constantly. And I think you have to surround yourself with the optimists, the people who will help you build the dream, the people who will literally, yes. And the idea, because criticizing an idea is, is easy, right? Like we can all go to a football game and watch from the seats and criticize the people that are actually playing in the court. What's really hard is to get in the court, play and keep playing when people are booing, when they're joyful, when you're winning, when you're losing. So I think resilience, resilience is probably the most important skill of any entrepreneur, tech or not tech. It's just the, a level of stubbornness that most other people would find unreasonable and ridiculous is probably the minimum bar to get anywhere. Right? So for us, I mean this meant, I'll give an example, only 2% of total venture capital money in the US is invested in Latino founders, less than 2%. In California, the Latino population is about 40, 45%. Right. So it's a 20x delta between kind of fair share of population and investment. So if you consider that you have to be insane to, as a Latino founder, go out there and fundraise and try to do it, because all the odds are stacked against you. We pitched, I think in our first round of financing close to a hundred venture capital firms before we got the first term sheet. What was interesting and amazing is because of that inordinate amount of persistence, we actually end up getting funded by Andreessen Horowitz, which is the defining, the category defining venture capital firm who are amazing partners. But again, that's only true because we just would not give up and we would not stop going. We closed the transaction with Kucunity in the same vein. Right. Like, we just would not stop going. And this is true for recruiting, it's true for building a great product, it's true for raising money. So I think that the number one skill is just like being ridiculously determined and ridiculously obstinate to continue going in the face of adversity. Yep.

Resilient, obstinate, optimistic. I'm seeing themes here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wonderful. And where do you see this partnership going next or yourself going next? I know you're in the early stages, eight months in, you're already making great.

Strides whenever you do an M and a transaction with another company. I think general knowledge is that a lot of these things fail. And I think the reason they fail is when there is a misalignment of values or a misalignment of culture or a misalignment of beliefs. I think the thing that's been amazing to see at Cocunity is from the get go, there was an aligned vision, there were aligned values, and there was a shared sense of passion and excitement for the space. So I'm excited to be where I am now. I think we're building something amazing. I get to do it with some of my favorite people, which are people that were on the Flavors team and many other new people that we're now meeting as we're working at CookUnity. So I think that the thing that's next for us is to continue to build the category defining food content and commerce platform by bringing these two experiences together, to continue empowering chefs, these 180 plus chefs, to tell the stories of their grandma, to tell the stories of their childhood, to tell the stories of these immigrant dishes that they that came with their family or that came with them and then make that food available to millions of people in the us and so I think that that to me, as of now shifts to the people, which is kind of our latest campaign. Unity is a very exciting manifestation of what I believe to be a good.

Use of our 10 fantastic. And you mentioned AI and how AI driven companies are the ones being funded the most. And you have launched AI powered meal recommendations. So can you talk a little bit about the role that AI can play in food recommendations and in this experience that we've been talking about?

Yeah, I've always thought of AI as kind of a second brain. Right. So the construct that I use for how I think about my own usage of AI is like I sometimes need a second brain or a third or a fourth or a fifth brain. And so I think in the context of food where AI can be really relevant is personalized recommendations. So for example, at Flavours, before joining Community, we launched the world's first cooking AI assistant, where you took a picture of your fridge or your pantry and it would tell you it would match through computer vision, the images of the ingredients with our catalog of video recipes. So you would take a picture of an apple and we'll show you 10 videos of an apple strudel and how to cook it. I think those, those kind of, they seem gimmicky, but they're actually really helpful use cases for AI because what you're basically doing is you're adding a second brain to your ability to cook, to your ability to meal plan, to the ability to perhaps make, you know, hard trade offs between allergens and taste, or cooking for a family of four or five people, each with different likes and dislikes and tastes and allergens. And so I think again, the construct of the second brain or the third brain or the fifth brain is people are busy, people are hungry and they still have to go home and feed a family every day. And so the more that we can build these human inspired experiences where AI helps you to make great decisions to feed your family, I think the better off we'll be. There's a ton of other interesting use cases I think around recipe planning for chefs or for content creators to produce great recipes with the help of AI, you know, nutrition, health and well being. The ability to have just, you know, smarter meal choices because of the help of AI is also super interesting to me. So I think again, to me it's always a case of using AI as a, as another thought partner in whatever problem you're facing. And in the case of food, there's just a bunch of really interesting problems around personalization, nutrition, allergens, so many things. Yeah.

Wonderful. Alejandra, I really want to hear about that meal that you like to make that brings you back to your grandmother's kitchen.

That's a good question. I'm not sure I have a single kind of singular meal, but I would say I was enjoying this recently. I'm an immigrant myself, so I am originally from Mexico City, and I've lived in the US in the uk, in different places. But I am also a grandson of immigrants from Denmark, from Spain, from Italy into Mexico. And one of the things that I think is a beautiful, simple dish that I used to have at my grandmother's house is a sopa de verduras, which is just like a super simple chicken stock with fresh veggies. And she, with her Italian heritage, actually used to sprinkle parmigiano Reggiano on the table. And so it's like this super, super, super simple soup with veggies and then just a touch of Parmesan cheese, which is. Which is amazing. And then I do have a bias for a lot of French food because I train there. And so a lot of the stuff that I like to cook is somewhat inspired by that culture and Mexican culture.

Fantastic. Well, I'm excited to dive in even deeper because it is one of the things that I love when I pick up the cook unity, and I get to see the chef and the QR code, and I can go and learn more about the chef and their and the storytelling. And I think that helps create these connections that we all long for and that we all still want very much. No matter how much technology we have, where in the world we live compared to our family members, food can still really unite all of us.

Yeah. I've always seen food as, like I said, the ultimate universal kind of human connector. I think the first thing that any immigrant brings is their food. Right. So I think that the reason you go to New York and you have such a thriving, amazing food culture is because. Because of all the people that brought their culinary traditions, both the very fancy ones and the very simple family oriented ones, into the new culture. And so I think food is a great way for you to kind of show your culture to other people, to connect with other people through the experience when you're homesick. The thing that, at least for me, you know, like, if you're in the middle of winter in New York and it's freezing out and you can't make it to Thailand, but you have some amazing Thai food that transports you into a different dimension through sense, smell, taste, sight. I think it has that ratatouille effect on me. I do think the whole premise of that movie is beautiful, is no matter who you are, we all have these memories of our childhood and our family that are often triggered by the foods that we ate as children or foods that were special to us. And those meals have the potential to transport us a world away from our reality. So sometimes it's. You can't travel to this amazing destination, but you can travel through food. Sometimes you're longing for your family and you're far away and that brings you closer to family. And sometimes maybe you've lost a loved one and they cook something that every time you cook it or you eat it sparks that love inside of you. So I think that's the power of food. I think it also has a lot of political power and a lot of kind of connective power. There's a phrase from Anthony Bourdain that says, food may not be the answer to world peace, but it's a start. And I do think that the willingness to share a meal with a different person, particularly somebody that you maybe don't agree with yet, and just being able to sit through a meal talking, sharing that experience, I think lowers the barriers amongst humans. And so all of those, for. For all of those reasons, I find food to be an amazing, amazing connector and something worth spending my time on. Effy.

Yeah. Could not agree more about that. I love the connection we can make and food. We all need to eat. And if we can share, like you said, a meal with somebody we may not agree with at first, it humanizes us to each other.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Amazing. Well, we're going to have links to CookUnity and all of that in the show notes, so I wanted to see if you have one last piece of wisdom that you could give us that keeps you grounded, inspired can be a piece of wisdom. A quote or one of each, I'll give you.

Instead of giving you like a. A faux quote or something else, I'll. I'll give you what I think keeps me grounded and hopefully that can help others in a more authentic way. So I think meditation for me has been something that has been incredibly powerful. I discovered meditation in my late 20s when I was living in England, going through a really hard personal time, and I decided to kind of pick up meditation and try to see if it would help me. And I've been meditating for over 10 years. Now, I think that's probably been one of the most helpful ways to ground myself. And I think the other, the other way of grounding yourself, I think, is to surround yourself with the people you love. Like, the journey that I went through would have been impossible without Andrea, my wife, who was there when I didn't believe in myself, and I didn't believe I wanted to leave this great job at Google to pursue my dream, and she pushed me to do it. And then every moment in between, kind of from day one to day a thousand, she was there. And so I think that finding some routine that keeps you mentally healthy and grounded could be in workout, meditation, prayer, like, whatever you like, and then staying close to the people who see you for who you are. Aside from the lows and highs, I think those are probably my two biggest things. And of course, resilience. If you're a founder, if you're building anything, whether it's a multinational company or whether it's a mom and pop restaurant, it's going to be hard. Assume that it's going to be hard and just give it your absolute highest level of effort possible. And whenever anyone says no, just keep going and just believe that you can do it.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Alejandro, for sharing your story, your journey. I love all of the different things that you went through, from starting out cooking those meals, making those meals when you were 7 years old, to becoming a trained chef, to going into tech, to marrying the two together in a way that can bring joy to so many other people. And as I mentioned, I have tried cookunity. This is not a, you know, a commercial for Cook Unity, but I really have enjoy the meals. I am busy and often I am the person who, if I don't have gone grocery shopping or if I have, but it's all food for my daughter, you know, special meals, then I will forget to eat. So having meal delivery where I can choose and try different things and also get to know who the people are behind the food and know that the sources of the food are also going to be really good sources. Right.

I would, I would really encourage, I'd really encourage your audience to try cookunity. I think what's amazing about cookunity is it's not just a meal planning or meal delivery platform. It is a chef crafted delivery platform. And I think the difference in that when you actually go into the kitchens is the chefs are producing the meals themselves. The quality of the food is second to none. And now you get to see how it's done behind the scenes with these videos. Right. So you get to connect with these amazing stories. And after connecting with the story, you get tweeted. I had an amazing jerk chicken today on CookUnity, which was literally the best jerk chicken with these amazing sweet plantains and great rice over it. Yeah, it's a great product and I think now it's even more interesting because you get to see the story of the people who made it. Yeah.

Well, I'm excited to follow the journey as you continue on this path. And you just made me really hungry.

So working as intended. Thank you very much.

Yes, thank you to everybody who is watching this episode or listening to it. Of course, we'll have information for you how you can access CookUnity and perhaps get a special offer in our show notes. Check them out. And again, I'm here with Alejandro Oropeza, the co founder and CEO of Flavors, which has just partnered with CookUnity to bring us the storytelling videos behind some of our favorite meals. Have a really beautiful day, everybody. Eat well and connect with Community.

Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of youf Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out@yourbrandamplified.com.