HIBT Lab! Yolélé: Pierre Thiam

Pierre Thiam was robbed within days of arriving in New York City. It was 1989, and he had just traveled to the U. S. from Senegal to study chemistry and physics. This chance incident, however, set Pierre’s life on an entirely different course. Today, he’s a renowned chef, restaurant owner, cookbook author, and co-founder of Yolélé – a company working to introduce the world to an ancient West African grain called fonio. This week on How I Built This Lab, Pierre talks with Guy about his company’s work to circulate this nutrient-dense and drought-resistant food source. Pierre also shares how he overcame cultural norms to embrace his cooking career, and his take on the connection between colonization and the vulnerability of our global food systems. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 5:13Guy Raz?

  Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So one of my favorite things to do is to wander the aisles of grocery stores. I'm always in the lookout for weird and new products. Recently, I came across some mushroom jerky, cassava cheese puffs with plant-based cheese, a Mexican fermented kombucha-type drink. Anyway, I always work to find at least one new thing in the store to try each week. And about a year ago, I came across a grain that looked really interesting. It was high in protein, gluten-free, and most intriguingly, it was an ancient grain from Africa. It's called Phonio, and I immediately grabbed a bag and cooked it up with some chicken thighs later that night.

• 5:58Guy Raz?

  Not only was it great, but also totally different from other grains like quinoa, or farro, or rice. The man who is most responsible for bringing Phonio to the US is a Senegalese chef named Pierre Chiam. He's the founder of a West African restaurant in New York called Teranga. And Pierre's on a mission to get people to discover Phonio. Why? Well, not only is it a nutrient-dense plant, but it requires very little water to grow. In fact, it thrives in drought-stricken areas. In other words, Phonio could be a major source of food as climate change continues to ravage the planet. In 2017, Pierre co-founded his company, Yolele,

• 6:40Guy Raz?

  to bring Phonio to the US and eventually to the world. Besides Phonio, Yolele now sells Phonio flour and even snacks made from the grain. And their products are available in thousands of stores across the US. Pierre Chiam joins us. Welcome to the show.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Thank you, guys. It's a pleasure.

• 7:00Guy Raz?

  So you are originally from Senegal and you grew up, I think, in Dakar, right? In the capital or around the capital?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. I grew up in Dakar in a neighborhood called Pointe-E.

• 7:10Guy Raz?

  And you were not, from what I understand, as a kid or even as a young man, you were not necessarily food focused, right? I mean, you were, as a student, you were into science and mathematics, is that right?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yes, I had a math baccalaureate and then I went to university for physics and chemistry. But growing up in Dakar, obviously, food is a big part of the culture. But, you know, it's a gender-based activity, so kitchen is for women. And food was not an option as a profession. I never thought food could be a career.

• 7:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah, but it's interesting. I know you've talked about this before. You've given a wonderful TED Talk. Anyone listening should go check it out. Dakar, because of where it is, its location and its history, it has a blend of cultures, obviously, many different West African cultures, but also there's like French influence within the food and Lebanese influence and Vietnamese influence. Tell me a little bit about the foods that you grew up eating.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, like you said, Dakar is like a melting pot, really, because of its location. You know, it's the most western coast of Africa. So it became a natural port of entrance. For centuries, it was the place where mariners would come before going anywhere in Africa. And over time, the French colonized Senegal, so we still have a strong French community there. And the Lebanese community has been there for generations now. And they brought their food culture. And you have, obviously, the West African community and the Vietnamese, because the Senegalese and the Vietnamese had the same colonial past with the French.

• 8:45Guy Raz?

  Yes, yes.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I had all those flavors growing up. I was exposed to that, not to mention the local cuisine, which is also very, very interesting because my mom was from- The south of Senegal, which is a part very more lush as opposed to the north of Senegal, the south of the Sahara and dry and arid. So that part of Senegal has a different type of cuisine with lots of seafood, which you see everywhere in Senegal, but also lots of citrus. Fermentation also is a big part of our cuisine. So my upbringing was was full of flavors.

• 9:16Guy Raz?

  Wow. I I know that you decided to, at a certain point, to go to the United States to continue your studies. You studied physics and chemistry in Dakar, but there was a nationwide student strike, and I guess you couldn't continue your studies. So you ended up getting a visa to the United States and you were supposed to study in Ohio, right?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Uh huh, in Cleveland, in a small college, yeah, in a town called Berea, actually, near Cleveland. I I came here in nineteen eighty nine and I knew a friend who lived in New York. So I had to land in New York and then take a bus from New York to Ohio. That was the plan. So he insisted that I stay in New York a couple of weeks. And, you know, that was a great opportunity. Everyone wants to see New York at least once. And that changed everything. I'm still on my way to Ohio. I never made it there. I I stayed in New York and three days after I arrived, I got robbed and I lost every single penny that I had. That was.

• 10:15Guy Raz?

  What, you got three days after you arrived to New York in nineteen eighty nine, you were robbed?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Three days. My my friend lived in a place on Fifty First Street, right near Times Square. And I'm not sure if you knew New York in nineteen eighty nine.

• 10:27Guy Raz?

  Oh, yes, that was a different place.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  It really was a scary place. And I was horrified by it. Dakar is like a peaceful seaside city. And and now I'm here in New York. That was completely different than what I expected to see. You know, it wasn't what I saw on TV and I'm broke now and it's getting cold because I arrived in the beginning of fall. So I had never seen winter before and I'm like, I'm out of here. I I had my return ticket, a friend of mine. Happened to be working in a restaurant and they were looking for a busboy. The only job that required no particular qualification or experience. And I applied, I came and the boss, Richard, who is still a good friend, just took me.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  He saw this desperate young kid and he gave me the job and I, that changed everything.

• 11:19Guy Raz?

  It's amazing. I mean, you were coming to the United States to study physics and chemistry in Ohio, get robbed in New York and that's it. It's all gone. And it's amazing because it's, I mean, you laugh about it now, but it's, I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time and very scary.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 11:38Guy Raz?

  But it's, it's crazy when you think about something like that happening. That horrible thing had to happen in order for your life to completely change. I mean, you didn't obviously go and pursue physics and chemistry. You've got a job as a busboy and you would then go on to pursue a life and career in food.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, absolutely. And it had to have happened. Now I look back and I'm like connecting the dots and I'm like, without that incident, my life would have been completely different. I would, I would have hugged that guy who robbed me. I mean, I, you know, he changed my life for the best, I believe.

• 12:14Guy Raz?

  From what I understand, you really got interested in cooking. I mean, you, you know, you could again have been, become a busboy and maybe risen to eventually to an assistant manager or manager of the restaurant. But you, you really were interested in what was being prepared in the kitchen and, and I guess wanted to learn about that.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, it was ingrained in me without knowing it. My mom at an early age, I remember she had this collection of cookbooks. And I, as a kid, I remember that was a La Russe Culinaire, a French collection. And I used to look at the photos of her cookbook collection and I had no design, no, I just liked the pictures. It looked delicious. And now I'm here in New York City, you know, as a busboy, I'm taking the dirty plates into the kitchen. I'm looking at this food that looks so much like the pictures of my mom's La Russe Culinaire and I'm like. Wow.

• 13:06Guy Raz?

  What kind of restaurant was it, by the way?

• 13:08Speaker 01

  The restaurant was French slash American cuisine. So, so the food was beautiful, you know, more beautiful than I what I've ever seen before. And the, the fact that the chef was French trained too. He spoke a little French and he loved whenever I was in the kitchen. He loved to practice his French with me.

• 13:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  So there's so many things that, that got me, you know, very lucky really. And that chef offered to, you know, he knew my story over time. He knew that I wanted to make extra money because I was still hoping to save money and go to Ohio. I was like, New York is not for me. This city is crazy. And, and he said, okay, so why don't you come and do extra shifts in the kitchen? You know, you could be a dishwasher. And I'm like, sure, I'll do the extra shift for the money, but I don't intend to stay in this. You know, this is too hard. And I hated washing dishes a bit. I, you know, I hated it so much. I hated it, but it was a necessary first step. And from dishwasher, I went to, you know, when the, the prep guy is missing,

• 14:08Speaker 01

  they always call the dishwasher to and give you the knife and you start chopping vegetables.

• 14:13Guy Raz?

  Prepping.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  And, and prepping. And, and that's how you learn your knife skills and how over time you become a prep cook. And then you're no longer a dishwasher. And then the gare du magis is missing. And then they take you to the gare du magis station and you start learning how to make the dressings and how to clean the leaves and the salads and stuff. And that's where everything changed for me because when I started to make dressings and I realized that I was making an emulsion of acid and lipid. It was vinegar and, and oil.

• 14:42Guy Raz?

  You're a chemist.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  And I'm a chemist. And I'm like, hey.

• 14:47Guy Raz?

  This is chemistry, yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  What's going on here, you know? And I, and I started to look at every reaction in the kitchen from a different angle now. Because I, I knew the, I knew the theory of it. I knew, I knew the, what was happening. So it was really something of like, I dig this. I like this. I like the, the kitchen atmosphere. I like the camaraderie. This became my, my family.

• 15:09Guy Raz?

  Within just a few years of arriving to New York, you actually became the head chef at this restaurant, boom, in Soho.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:18Guy Raz?

  It's remarkable.

• 15:21Guy Raz?

  I'm just, I'm trying to, I'm trying to like, I wish I could be a fly on the wall for like, those long distance calls you, you, you had with family back in Dakar, or maybe the letters you write. Dear family, I am not studying chemistry and physics. I'm actually the head chef at a restaurant in Soho.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  It, it, it took me, it took me a while to do that. It took me a while. I mean, I was still very embarrassed, you know? It was cultural, you know, you come to, from a culture where cooking is really a women's activity. So this cultural thing was stuck with me, even though I was very interested. But I knew I was in New York and everyone in the kitchen were men like me. So it was in this world, it was fine. And I was loving what I was doing. I really loved it. I was passionate about it. But it was still difficult to tell my parents about it for a little while. And since I knew that, you know, it wouldn't be long until my mom find out and, and I had to tell them. So that's when I mustered all my courage and went to call and say,

• 16:24Speaker 01

  hey, by the way, you know, I, I am not going to school, okay? And I am cooking and I love this. And, and my mom just, you could see, I mean, she was very reserved, but you could see she had this relief. She was smiling. I could feel that. And then she said, wow, that's great. What kind of cooking are you doing? And she was curious about the food that I was doing. And she started asking me questions. And then she wanted me to give her some recipes. And I was like, wow, that wasn't bad. And she told my dad and my dad came too. Also, you could feel the smile, but they were both amused. But you could see that they were really. Relieved parents who knew that their son had found something that he enjoyed doing

• 17:09Speaker 01

  and they were encouraging and I was like, wow, I didn't think my parents were cool like that. But it turns out there wasn't, there's nothing to be cool about. I was just doing a job that I liked doing. But now I was free and I was free to become a cook and later a chef.

• 17:26Guy Raz?

  Pierre, from what I've read, I mean, you were trained in a sort of European cooking styles, French, Italian. But many chefs who are trained in European traditions but don't have European backgrounds go on to open restaurants that reflect their own identities and their own backgrounds. When were you able to start exploring that culinary side of your world?

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Well, it started really, it came organically. First of all, you know, I, when I moved to New York, I was always craving for that food, the food I grew up eating. There was no restaurants really that serving that food, you know. So at the restaurant, at Boom, the chef is interesting because he's doing a cuisine that's different. He's inspired by Southeast Asian cuisine, you know, and that's new in New York. We like in the early nineties, mid nineties. And that cuisine has flavors that somehow taking me back home. There's lots of fermentation, there's lots of acidity, you know, there's that freshness, you know, that and the grain and all that. And at times when that was my turn to cook family meal, I would cook food from memory,

• 18:32Speaker 01

  dishes that my mom used to prepare.

• 18:35Guy Raz?

  Family meal, of course, is what is what the kitchen staff eats before they serve the customers.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, four, five o'clock family meal. Someone from the line is the one in charge of family meal. And when that's my turn, everyone was looking forward to it now because I got them used to this caramelized onion and lime sauce with chili over rice. I had them peanut sauce with cassava. I mean, I'm bringing those flavors now, eggplants and okra and all that. And they're like, wow, this is different. This is cool. And then like this should come as specials, you know, that's how the idea started to come into me now. New York is calling itself the food capital of the world, but Africa is not in this world. I'm like, hey, you know, this is going to be my mission. I'm going to start finding inspiration from that cuisine and bringing it and that I never

• 19:26Speaker 01

  looked back. Eventually. The restaurant was doing so well. We opened a new branch in South Beach, Miami. And guess what? They decided to send me to run that kitchen.

• 19:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  And I'm like, wow, this is amazing. I mean, I'm like completely, you know, shocked, but so excited because in addition to sending me to run the kitchen, I was told to even add some of the family meal specials in into the menu.

• 19:53Guy Raz?

  Into the menu.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Into the menu.

• 19:56Guy Raz?

  These were dishes like you were using like sweet potatoes and cassava and plantains and peanuts and chilies and.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. You said the right words. Sweet potato cassava peanut sauce became my first dish in a in Ocre. And that one was so well received. I mean, there was a food reviewer who came to the restaurant and wrote an article about the restaurant that mentioned this one dish. It's like, I was like, wow, this is, you know, to me, it was like the top of everything. I mean, being mentioned in a paper here in the US. So that was really the thing that confirmed to me that I had to stick to this mission. So when I came back to New York, I decided to start a catering business. And eventually in early 2000, this catering became my very first restaurant.

• 20:47Guy Raz?

  Yolele.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Yolele.

• 20:50Guy Raz?

  We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from chef Pierre Chiam about his journey from chef and restaurant owner to founding the company he oversees today. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

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• 24:45Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm speaking with chef Pierre Chiam. Okay, so in 2000, you opened your first restaurant called Yolele. And you'd begin this journey as a restaurant owner and then eventually a cookbook author. And from what I understand, for your first cookbook, you went to Senegal to research ideas for the book. And I guess during one of those trips, you rediscovered this grain called fonio, which you had eaten kind of rarely as a child, right?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I had eaten fonio on rare occasions when my parents would take me to visit my grandparents in the south of Senegal. So fonio is grown in that region, in the south, in Casamas and Kedugu. Those are like the fonio areas of Senegal. But in Dakar, where I grew up, there was no fonio. So I'd never had fonio growing up. So I'm now writing this book many years later, and we spend time with the women of my family, really. That was where, you know, I was getting the inspiration and I wanted the book to be about that. And as I'm traveling in the south and I'm tasting all these different flavors.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  And the fonio came back and it hit me and I'm like, oh, wow, this grain is so delicate. And in that part of Senegal, they still consider it, they call it the most delicious grain of all grains. That's like how they see fonio. So I was like, I need to write about this grain. I need to bring this grain. I need to to even include it in my menu.

• 26:20Guy Raz?

  We should, for more, just stop and describe fonio because I've, I said this before we started recording that I have made it. It's a little bit like, and help me out here, like it's a cross between like couscous, like the fluffy lightness of couscous. And sort of a nutty, there's a nuttiness, but it's none of those things. It's not quinoa. It's not couscous. It's not a wheat. But it has that lightness. Is that fair to say?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fair to say it has the size of couscous. It's tangy like couscous and fluffy. It's even lighter than couscous because you know, when you eat couscous, you kind of feel heavy after. But with fonio, it's really, I mean, you can eat fonio and just go for a run right after it. It it digests really easily and it has nuttiness to you, right? It's slightly nutty. And the other particularity of fonio, which is really great, is very neutral flavor. So that makes it very versatile. You cook fonio with so many different flavors. It adapts to so many different sauces. My, my last cookbook was dedicated to fonio. So I have lots of recipes from the whole journey of fonio.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  It, you know, from desserts to baking to, to, to savory dishes to, I mean, fonio sushi, you know? I mean, there's like so many ways to use fonio.

• 27:35Guy Raz?

  Before we talk about the business that grew around this, because that would eventually happen, I want to ask you a few more questions about fonio. Because it is this grain that is, I guess it's really high in protein and amino acids. And also doesn't require a whole lot of water to grow, right?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  No, founyo grows in an area called the Sahel. You know, Senegal is south of the Sahara.

• 27:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  And it's dry and arid. But founyo grows so easily there. You know, it's like one of the fastest maturing grain that requires very little water. It's rain fed, but it, you know, it just requires the first rain. And after that, even if there was no other rain coming or the rain is inconsistent, like it's the case right now with climate change.

• 28:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Founyo is guaranteed to grow. There's a nickname for founyo. They call it the lazy farmer's crop for that reason. Because what the farmers do is when the first rain comes, they just throw the seed. They don't even till the soil. They don't really do any work to the soil. They just throw the seeds, like broadcasting it. And then they can just go and sleep for two months and come back and harvest the founyo. That's how easy it is to grow. And in addition to that, the most important part is that the agriculture of founyo helped to regenerate the soil. Because it has, it has deep roots that add nutrients to the soil.

• 28:54Guy Raz?

  So they create aeration in the soil, essentially?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly, exactly.

• 28:59Guy Raz?

  And you don't have to churn it up with tractors or, you know, which releases carbon, right? You can just, those deep roots aerate the soil.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. And when they're harvested, they just cut the top. The roots stay in the soil and eventually it adds nutrients to the soil. And not only that, founyo is a nutrition powerhouse, like you mentioned. It's gluten free and has so many properties. One of them being very important is it has, it scores a low glycemic index.

• 29:28Guy Raz?

  Good for diabetics.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. So there's like, I mean, there's so much going for that grain. And I was like, I have to figure out a way to introduce it to my readers.

• 29:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  And because my cookbook was incomplete, I always had to think of substitutions for certain ingredients. And that's when the idea of Yolele, the business of bringing those crops to the market came to be really, that's when that seed was planted.

• 29:55Guy Raz?

  All right, so the seed is planted and you're starting to think this could potentially be the next quinoa because quinoa was introduced to the US maybe in the 70s, but really didn't take off until the 2000s, right? And but we know there are challenges with quinoa. It's hard to grow, it's very resource intensive and there's a shortage of it in some places. And so as the climate is changing, it would make sense to look for a more sort of robust and resilient crop. And here you go. Here you have one. From what I understand, even in Africa, fonio was much more widely eaten 100, 200 years ago than it is today. So what happened? Why is that the case?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  We got colonized. Colonization came and then there was a mindset that came with it. Crops like fonio, millet, sorghum, which was our traditional crops, became the country people crop. We were branded with crops like wheat. In Senegal, for instance, we love eating our baguette bread. We eat baguette bread every single day. We don't grow wheat in Senegal. We don't grow wheat in Côte d'Ivoire, in many of those countries. But Africa now is like importing, bringing wheat. I mean, and it's interesting that you ask this question because today, with the Ukraine crisis, there's a serious shortage of wheat.

• 31:19Guy Raz?

  Serious. And by the way, it's reverberating around the world, including in places like Sri Lanka. They're all connected to these shortages of wheat. We're seeing these crises happening around the world.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  And that tells you how foolish we are to rely on crops like wheat. I mean, first of all, the limited number of crops we rely on. Our food system is wheat, rice, soy and corn. And we ignoring crops that are much more not only resilient.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Like Founyo and we need to integrate them. But the most crazy thing is continents like Africa, which have such a diversity of plant crops. And now because one part of the world is in crisis and the whole continent is suffering from it. Because the concentration of the supply is coming from Ukraine and Russia. It is it is mind boggling. So it's urgent that we rethink it and we start integrating crops like Founyo. And not only it makes sense, because for our food security, we need to make sure we have that. But also because those crops are so much more adapted to the environment. They're resilient, they're drought resistant. There's a lot of reason why we need to rethink it. But to answer your question, this that's what happened.

• 32:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  After we got colonized, we started importing wheat, we started importing rice. We even had a rice culture in Senegal, but because of our connection with the French, we started importing broken rice from Vietnam. So that Senegalese farmers would focus on growing peanuts that we need for our our industries. Colonization was a business. So the French made peanut a cash crop in Senegal. So the farmers started growing peanuts.

• 33:03Guy Raz?

  It was a monoculture and it became a monoculture. And as a result, Founyo stopped being produced. People stopped growing it.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  And people stopped growing Founyo. You had to go to Kedugu and Kaza Master. The only places where you would see Founyo.

• 33:17Guy Raz?

  It's an amazing story, right? You are a chef in the United States and now have a platform with a book. And you come across this grain and you're thinking, I gotta get this in the hands of American cooks. When do you start to think, okay, I'm going to create a business and I'm going to start a business around this grain. And I'm going to start to bring this grain to the US. Because it doesn't happen right away. It took you a few years before you did that. But what was the impetus?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Well, the the impetus was, one was my naivety, first of all.

• 33:47Guy Raz?

  Which is always important, very important.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Very important. I'm like thinking, I'm a chef in New York. I've seen how Kino I did it. It was not this grain, I mean, a non-grain. And then today, everyone is Kino. Founyo. Can do it, you know, if quinoa can do it, fonio can do it. And, and all I'm going to do is take the grain and introduce it to my fellow chefs because they are all looking for new products, new food, new flavors. And they'll embrace it and then they'll serve it on their menus. And then the customers will ask for it and then the supermarkets would require. I mean, that was my thinking, very naive, like I said, right? But really, the impetus was when I, one of my travels in this part of Senegal called Kadougou, where fonio is king. And there, you realize the level of poverty.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  The people in Kadougou, I mean, it's only pretty much old people living there. You know, the youth, they left pretty much. They're all trying to make it to the city or to Europe. They're looking for jobs. They're able, they're willing to work. They're risking their lives to go find a better life. And I'm like, if this grain can become a world-class crop like quinoa has become, this will change the situation here. So this really was my thing. I, I felt like I could bring something, I could, it could be my contribution, you know. I thought I was uniquely positioned, being a chef from this part of the world, in the food capital of the world. And if this plan works, it wasn't much of a plan, but if this plan works, you know,

• 35:19Speaker 01

  this is going to bring jobs. People are not going to leave because they're going to stay and grow fonio and make money from it because the Yorkers and everywhere else, even people in the city, Dakar will start wanting it because all we need to do is create a chain of value. And to me, there's one thing I got right was I knew it needed to be branded. Those French, they branded their baguettes, that's how we're still eating it. They branded this broken rice to us. Yeah. And, and now I'm going to brand fonio and I'm going to make it sexy. And this is going to, to work. And these guys are going to, to have a dignified living with something that grows in their land, that's been growing in their land for 5,000 years.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  And, and that was just the, the way I was thinking and I, I just went for it. I was like, let's do it.

• 36:07Guy Raz?

  We're going to take another quick break. Coming up, more from chef Pierre Chiam, founder and president of Yo Lele. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

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• 38:00Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz and I'm speaking with chef Pierre Chiam, who's building a food company based around an ancient West African grain called Phonio.

• 38:12Guy Raz?

  Okay, so Pierre, your initial idea was, hey, if we can produce Phonia, if we can get people harvesting Phonia and processing it and then creating a pipeline to the US, we could create an industry here in Senegal that would help the local economy. But I guess at the same time, you were also thinking, let's market Phonia because it's also really nutritious, right? It's an efficient and nutrient-dense product. Is that more or less right?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  I was thinking both. I knew it was nutritious and I knew that there was a demand for that here, ancient grains, nutritious, gluten-free. Phonia was checking all the boxes. So I was like, this is what we could do. Let's brand it. Let's brand it and create a demand for it. I knew I needed a partner and I looked into someone who also had an experience in actually doing it, really, and Philippe Tevro, who's a veteran in the food industry, who actually had worked with bringing quinoa in the 80s.

• 39:10Guy Raz?

  Philippe Tevro, I think at the time, he worked at Dean & DeLuca, right, for many years?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. He worked at Dean & DeLuca. So if you remember Dean & DeLuca, they used to bring all these interesting flavors. And me, when I was working in Soho, we oftentimes shopped at Dean & DeLuca.

• 39:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah. It was a groundbreaking store, that one in Manhattan, and really, all kinds of cool, amazing things came in through Dean & DeLuca.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  That's correct. That's correct. And a lot of the food we were serving, we couldn't be doing it at Boom without the ingredients, the access of Dean & DeLuca.

• 39:42Guy Raz?

  So he had eaten, because we didn't mention, he had eaten, you had opened a second restaurant in New York. He'd eaten there. It's called La Grande Dakar. And you kind of, or somehow you started to talk to him about Phonia and it intrigued him and he thought, hey, there's something here.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And actually, we have two versions of the story, but he remembered reading an article where I was talking about Phonia. The article was really a call, really for, I was so distraught by the stories of these young people. It really is a tragedy, if you heard of, may not have heard about it, but there's for a decade now, there are kids who are dying in the ocean because they're taking dugout boats, fishermen dugout boats, trying to travel from Dakar to Barcelona.

• 40:32Guy Raz?

  Yes.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  And thousands are drowning and they some so many make it. That's just amazing. Just imagine the journey. Many of them make it, but thousands are drowning every single year. To me, it was, you know, something needed to be done and and we shouldn't expect help to come from anywhere but from ourselves. And I was like, Fonyo is actually the thing is grown here and this could be desired and bring income and that would just help in it. So this was the thing I was talking about in that paper and Philip read it. And and he reached out and and we and we met and we talked and I was like, yeah, actually, you know, let's do it.

• 41:12Guy Raz?

  You and Philip decide to form a business called Yolele. And how did you initially, I mean, did you go out and raise money for the the company?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  No, no, actually, we didn't. We it was it started with friends and family, really.

• 41:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  So so we did we did one thing. We knew the logistic of it was going to be something we didn't have the means for. So we reached out to a company called Woodlands, who have been importing foods from sixty plus countries around the world, interesting flavors and they we knew they would get that. And they were intrigued enough to decide to send a few executives from the company to Kedugu, Senegal with us for them to see what we're talking about. And they came and those guys are like these Chicago executives and they have been to Africa. And and now they're going into not only Dakar, but like in this deep south, you know, six, seven hours drive through like dirt road and stuff.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  So it was quite a trip. But once they got there, they were all transformed and they felt so at home and welcome and they had so well as well. And they came back and they're like, yeah, we got to do it. Let's figure out a way to do it. And that's how we did it, you know.

• 42:27Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  We started working with group of women cooperatives. They were getting the Fonyo process for us and we would ship it by containers to to Woodlands and Woodlands would package it under our Yolele brand.

• 42:42Guy Raz?

  You managed to broker an agreement with Whole Foods initially that Whole Foods would Carry this product because they like interesting, new, unique products. And it's a great platform to get this out there. But one of the challenges from what I've read about Fonio is the processing of it, right? Because it has a very thick hull that is inedible and it has to be like ground out of it. So how did you solve the challenge of like processing it? Because to get to the grain is a lot, it's very labor intensive, right?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Fonio, that's the only challenge. You see, it's easy to grow, but it's hard to process. It has a skin that's inedible. And that's also one of the reasons why Fonio didn't make it big until now. Because the processing was so, at the time, it used to be a mortar and pestle.

• 43:33Guy Raz?

  Mortar and pestle, a person literally grinding each?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. You see the African mortar and pestle though, they like the big ones carved out of a trunk of tree. And with a big pillow and they pound it and they pound the big pestle. And it takes about two hours to just have one kilo of Fonio. That was the time. And eventually it became mechanized, you know, and actually a Senegalese engineer came up with a technique. And Fonio was mechanized, which is the Fonio we're getting right now. There's a mechanized aspect, but it's still some manual parts of it. And we knew we had to fix it at some point. We knew we can now identify some great cooperatives that are doing a much better job than others to get us a good quality Fonio.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  But we knew there's a moment as the demand grows that we had to figure out the solution for the processing of Fonio.

• 44:26Guy Raz?

  So what did you do? Yeah, how'd you do that?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  So we went to a company that makes actually the best of the milling processing equipment in the world, actually. And we told them, hey, we have this grain and we need to figure out how to process it. And it has to be all automated and it has to be efficient. And it took a while to come up. We had to send tons and tons of Fonio party for them to do the testing. And now we Figured out we have this machine that completely revolutionized everything now. We not only eliminated the waste because at the this stage of Fono processing, we still had close to fifty percent of waste, which is crazy.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  And now with the machine, they designed a machine that not only eliminates that waste, but it really is also processing at a much faster capacity. We have like two tons per hour as opposed to one ton per day. It really changes everything, remove the bottleneck that was really slowing everything. And now we can access Fono to not only the the growing demand in the market here, but there's also the food industry that couldn't have access to Fono because the processing wasn't at the standard, standard called G F S I, that like you can sell to big food now. So now big food that big food is looking to meet their sustainable development goals.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  And Fono is offering all of that and now we have access to it. So that's opened a whole other set of perspective. We can have Fono flour for bakers. We can have Fono pilaf now. We have Fono chips. That's a whole other different category we just entered now.

• 46:13Guy Raz?

  It's it's awesome. I mean, it's amazing because you've expanded, as you say, you've expanded your product line from originally Fono grain to flours and chips and other things. I think your products are now available in like two thousand stores in the U S, the Whole Foods and and some Target stores as well, and obviously on online. Tell me how you are, besides, you know, doing common conversations like this, how are you getting the word out? Like, it's still, you know, you are right now, Fono right now is where Quinoa was, let's say, in the eighties, right? Where there's very little awareness. It's actually a very easy grain to cook. It cooks very quickly.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, five minutes.

• 46:47Guy Raz?

  It absorbs flavors really well. You can cook it in chicken stock or vegetable stock if you want to. Oh, or just or water. But it's it's still not a lot of people know about it. So like, how do you make this into Quinoa? Do you start with restaurants? Do you start with like, are there sort of influential places where you really want to get this? You know, get this made?

• 47:11Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it it really, it started, again, you remember when you mentioned Whole Foods? There was one Whole Foods that gave us a chance, right? It was next to my restaurant in Harlem. And that Whole Foods, I had to go. In the place itself and do some cooking demos and

• 47:26Guy Raz?

  Right, right.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  How people taste, you know, like I made some fonio salad, fonio and mango salad and kind of thing. And people would taste and every time I would do that, every time I would do a demo, the fonio bags would fly off the shelves.

• 47:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  So that that's really when it started and Whole Foods, people noticed that this grain is doing really well. Let's give it a chance on a second store and then they gave us shelves on Union Square and then on Times Square and then in Brooklyn. And then next thing we were in all the Whole Foods in the northeastern region and and it kept growing like this. We also started to grow with a community of influencers who connected with the food in different ways. Some were connecting with it because of the the heritage aspect of it, you know. So you have the African diaspora who could connect with this grain, who is considered as the oldest cultivated grain in Africa.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Others, because of the nutrition aspect, you know, we have this strong gluten free community who just just embraced fonio. And they are posting it on social media. We're using a lot of social media as well. Uh, our platform, Instagram and TikTok now, I mean, all of that is being part of it. And there's these collaborations we're doing with other brands that are also similar to ours in terms of mission of like bringing, you know, diversified food products into the market. So so there's all these guerrilla type of approach that we are using to spread the word. In addition to, you know, I've been fortunate to get media attention through the restaurant or through my books.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  And so all of those are creating awareness and and more and more the word is coming out, but a lot of it is organic.

• 49:05Guy Raz?

  And you have a you have a restaurant, two locations in New York, Taranga, and where you do serve fonio. You've got delicious, I mean, I haven't eaten there, but I'm just looking at the menu, like the chicken grilled chicken bowls and the vegan bowls and all this and jalaf you do jalaf, but you also have many dishes with fonio as a

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 49:23Guy Raz?

  As a side.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  As a side, there's been a series of circumstances that that did help to spread the word. I think the timing was also is good. People are more aware that we need to to diversify our diet. We need to bring products that are not only good for you, but good for the planet and delicious. And fonio was all of that. And again, it cooks in five minutes, so you can't beat that.

• 49:47Guy Raz?

  Awesome. Let's do it. Let's eat it. Let's eat some ponio. Let's make some ponio right now.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Right now. It takes five minutes. That's all. Or you can even do it even faster. You get the chips, you know? So it's a snack. So you just open a bag and you are changing the world, your own contribution.

• 50:02Guy Raz?

  I love it. Pierre Chiam is founder of Yolele Pierre. Thanks so much.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Thank you, Guy. It was a pleasure.

• 50:10Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. You can follow How I Built This on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening right now. The next episode is available right now, or you can binge all of our episodes ad-free by subscribing to Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. If you want to follow us on socials, we're at How I Built This on Twitter and Instagram, and I'm at Guy Raz on Twitter and at Guy dot Raz on Instagram. This episode was produced by Catherine Seifer with editing by John Isabella. Our music was composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineer was Gilly Moon. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Chris Messina, Elaine Coats,

• 50:55Guy Raz?

  J.C. Howard, Liz Metzger, Josh Lash, Carla Estevez, Sam Paulson, and Kerry Thompson. Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.