Yes Chef Group's Jack Goldberg on building a $100M+ food media empire from restaurant videos and live events

Speaker 2: What's going on? What's up? Not too much. Good Tuesday. You have a good weekend?

Speaker 9: It was good. It was good. We did our I first

Speaker 2: feel like you have like a million things going on.

Speaker 9: Yeah. We do. For good or for bad. We do... We're trying to trying to cool this down. By the way, I... I'm super pumped to be here.

Speaker 2: Thanks.

Speaker 9: I... You know, you guys have been inspiring to our team in many ways. I feel like I I love this this story and the trajectory. I mean, I think people think it probably was like, my god, this happened so fast. Obviously, it's taken time and you put in a lot of fucking work to get to this point. Yeah. And I

Speaker 14: think a lot

Speaker 9: of people don't... Maybe not realize that. Yeah. But congrats on everything that you guys have done. It's been very cool for our team to watch and inspire us.

Speaker 1: Yeah. The meta the meta story behind, like, media companies now is, like, more important than ever. Totally. Like, I I saw you guys posted a a video recently about, like, one of your event, like, having... It was a weather issue with one of your events and, like, giving people... Like so much of TBPN has been about like giving people behind. We we sort of... We came out and we were like, don't believe in like building public in the traditional sense. Like in Yeah. In tech, when people build in public, they just post their revenue every single month. And then usually they stop because they go through a rough patch. Yeah. But but like in media, you're sort of forced to build in public because people just see everything that you're working on.

Speaker 2: The interviews you're getting, the sponsors you get, whatever you're doing.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like creating that creating that meta narrative is like actually really important to driving engagement. Yeah. So...

Speaker 2: But I mean, let's go back and set the table for everyone. How did you get started? I want to hear about the first product and and the growth trajectory there. How fast was that? I'm sure everyone labels you an overnight success as everyone does. It was probably a lot of hard work. But take us through that because I want to then explore how the footprint has grown because there is a lot going on now.

Speaker 9: Yeah. 100%. Kind of the high level. So about four years ago, my cofounder, Liam, and I, we met studying abroad. Actually, before four years ago, we met studying abroad in Australian college.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 9: And four years ago, we posted our first video.

Speaker 4: And

Speaker 9: really has always just been rooted in passion and love for food. Like, I was working at PwC doing tech consulting at the time, and he was, like, Capgemini. I did management consulting.

Speaker 2: Thank you for your service. Seriously. It's it's a little disappointing when you left, but, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 9: Yeah. It's actually funny because the first full circle moment, the first job I did at PwC was for Pepsi. I Oh, didn't... And I was a consultant for Pepsi, and now fast forward to today, Pepsi is one of our large partners. I'm really close friends. Kirkham, CMO.

Speaker 2: Very cool.

Speaker 16: And I told

Speaker 9: him, I was like, I actually worked for you for a different way. So we we did our first video at this Mexican restaurant, Aldama, like, literally four years ago, and we'd be working till 8PM, go to dinner. We we didn't know what we were doing. We were, like, pulling a lobster tail like this and holding this and I was just, like, doing it. Because we felt that there was a need for innovation in the food space. Everyone was kind of the same. We're like, it doesn't feel like there's someone who is relatable, who when you go and watch the content, that's like me and my boys are our friends sitting and eating. That's what we want to put out. Like, there's no difference between us talking here and me talking on the internet. Like, it's just the same thing.

Speaker 2: And

Speaker 9: we went and we did that first video, and it did, like, a quarter million views, and we were like, oh, shit. Like, that was crazy. Let's go into every single restaurant in a square mile and show them what we just did and run it back. Yeah. So Liam was living in San Francisco. He was literally canceled his flight home. He was supposed to come for a couple days. He stayed on my couch literally for a month, and he's, like, six, four, and

Speaker 14: a half, like, five feet tall.

Speaker 4: Parked in

Speaker 9: the hospital closet with three people, and he'd just run and gun every day. Same thing. Like, work during the day, 8PM, dinner, edit till 3AM, post, boom, boom, boom. And it just kind of compounded, you know, the next we did, like, half a million, and a million we started gaining followers. And our our big moment, I think in every founder's story, there's, like, that that moment that you work towards, that lucky moment that allows you to take the next step.

Speaker 14: Sure.

Speaker 9: And I think a lot of people say luck is involved in all stories, it totally is. Obviously, you need to be ready to, like, take advantage of a lucky moment, though. And we were at dinner, and the CEO of Sports Illustrated at the time was at the table next to us, and we just kind of get it... Started getting some followers, and we have a bunch of food on the table, and these moms come up to us, and they're like, my daughters know you. So we, like, kinda had a little bit of motion for the first time. He kinda looked at us. He's like, like, who are you guys, and what the hell is going on? And we give him the pitch. We're like, we make content, but we do consulting. This is only 10% of the time. We've done 30,000,000 views in

Speaker 1: two weeks.

Speaker 9: And he was like, what if, you know, we're looking to get younger and do more social first content on SI? And they also... It was the company, Rooter Group. They own Men's Journal, and they own a couple other magazines and different sites. So he was like, what if we did short form content with you guys? And we kind of just, like, pitched him the entire world Yeah. That night. A week later, we got on a call with their whole c suite team, and they offered us a full... So they offered to match our consulting salaries plus the $50.50 on rev split. Amazing. And we literally never looked back and just went for it.

Speaker 16: Yeah.

Speaker 9: Wow. Consulted and did, and created shows for them, so we came up with two new shows. And that's kind of like, since then, we've just never really looked back, and we've just doubled down on the content, and then the experiential side of the business has been really a big part over the past two years.

Speaker 2: Quick side note, Sports Illustrated, did you know that they're sitting on an absolute gold mine? Yeah. Si.com. If you're gonna rebrand to super intelligence, someone's going to have to pay a billion dollars for that domain at some point. Anyway Right. Focus, focus, focus. That's the mantra. Eventually everyone realizes that there are opportunities but you got to be really careful not to get over your skis and ruin the golden goose while you go and explore the next thing. What was the first side project or line expansion that you got enough confidence to actually go after aggressively and know that it wouldn't degrade the core product.

Speaker 9: Yeah. It was our festival because we spent the first two ish years doing at that point probably like a couple billion views, and we were doing all these cool things and seeing all these different foods and tuna cuttings. And we're like, this is all awesome. What if we can bring this together? And not only have people watch it, because I wanted to prove to ourselves and our team, me and Liam, that we're not just creators that live online, but we can actually move bodies and create real community, because there's such a difference between people that can go viral on the internet, but people that can actually create communities and move people together. I've always said, I think it's harder to get 10 people in a room on a Tuesday night than get 10,000,000 views on a video on a Tuesday

Speaker 2: night. Yep.

Speaker 9: So our food festival, we kind of took all the cooler things that we saw and restaurants that we loved, and, you know, tuna cuttings and different moments, and put it into this experience and made content about it just like we made content about everything else. We're like, we have the Yes Chef Food Festival, and we sold out on like two posts, and that was our first ever festival in New York about... That like, that was two years ago, two and a half years ago, and since then, we've sold that 10,000 people again. We did New York the year after, then we moved to LA. We did LA. We just did New York recently, but we had to move because of the storm. But experiential for us is so important because it doesn't take away from what we're doing. I actually think it builds a stronger connection and community into the people that watch the content, and they feel like it's more real. And we try to think about events on, like, a way that we could hit different consumers in different parts of their journey. So we have Yes Chef Tailgates that we just launched this past weekend with Pepsi on... In Penn State. We have Penn State University of Florida and Texas A and M, and then we're doing an NFL one with them. That is geared more towards, like, the college sports crowd. We have the festival, which is 10,000 people, and the demographic is awesome because you you have every type of person there. We have Yes Chef Reserve, which are, like, these super invite only premium one on one dinners that we do with super high end guests and celebrities, billionaires, athletes. We have the wrong club that we do that focuses on, like, the health space. So for us, we're like, food is this underlying connection. Like, everyone in the world eats, so essentially, your total addressable market is 8,000,000,000 people.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I was about to ask I was about to ask about Tam because it's funny, like, I'm I'm not a foodie at all. Like, if I'm traveling somewhere and I have a night... A meal that I actually like, I'll just go back to the same restaurant, like, three or four times because I don't I don't even care to try something else. I'm like, I like this. It's solid. I don't wanna I don't wanna roll the dice and like have a bad meal. Yeah. I'd rather just stick with with what I know. So I've never I've never been I've never been a foodie. But like, what... I'm curious of like what percentage of people actually describe themselves foodies and like is that actually... Relevant. The TAM feels a lot bigger because like, if you guys do a pop up at like a sports, you know, sports event or something like that, I feel like a bunch of people will just happily participate even if they are not like self described foodies that are just I obsessing over it day to

Speaker 9: think it's unique because you guys have talked about how you knew your audience is finite, and you wanted it to be that way because you have this super niche, you've done such a good job of that. I think in some ways, I guess it's the opposite for us. I truly do think that tan is the whole world, and if maybe, you know, you're not the biggest food guy, but you love sports, you know, when you go to sports, you're still eating, and you can pair it. So food's kinda like this underlying connecting layer to food and music and travel and sports. So, know, you I I like to think of it as as food and food being the part that everyone can connect on initially.

Speaker 2: Totally. How do you think about when you launch a new product or event or series or something that's gonna have its own name, its own brand? Are you the type where you effectively want to be the CEO of that project and you're maybe hiring younger, more up and coming talent? Or are you trying to bring in a general manager, someone to run that process? Like, what does the team building look like as you're expanding into different areas?

Speaker 9: Yeah. That's a really good question. We... No. I mean, in order to scale anything, you're you're only as good as your team. I think it's really important that as we look to this next year, and we're really kind of focusing on the content side of things. So for us, it's one of our first partners that we brought in was a live events expert who did that for ten years, and through, you know, Drake and Justin Bieber, Super Bowl parties, and other huge concerts and events. So we like to bring in partner with people who are really good at what they do. One of our big focuses, as I mentioned, is content and also stepping into long form. We just announced this really big deal with one on one studios, David Glasser, Tyler Sheridan, who do Yellowstone, Landman, Linus, Tulsa King. Our thought is, like, sure, could we spend the time to maybe try to go create it ourselves over the course of the next five or ten years? Like, maybe. Yeah. But if... To do it really, really well and kind of break through the noise of everyone else making content in the world, you have to partner with the best in class. And that's why we partnered with one zero one to launch Yes Chef Studios, which we feel like, for us, like, I think that's gonna be the next food network where people grow up, bring in new talent. I wanna be... You know, we have an incredible team, and, me and Liam are so involved in all the processes and main decisions of why certain brands launch, but ultimately, you know, I would love to have people on the team, like, run and manage these things on their own, and I'm focusing on the content side, still being involved, of course.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 9: But I think it's always great to add people who are, like, focusing and specializing in those areas to help them drive so we can expand and scale up other parts

Speaker 1: of the business.

Speaker 2: What is the state of live streaming in food? I feel like YouTube is really well to, you know, like defined in terms of you can do everything from like food challenges to specific recipes that you follow very closely.

Speaker 1: We on we went on a show and we were like we we thought that like TBPN for cooking would be an interesting niche like a daily live show where it tells you a day in advance, hey, at 05:00 every day I'm gonna cook, you know, this Yeah. The funny thing is I think someone in tech watched it and then they made it tech podcast cooking show.

Speaker 2: We were

Speaker 1: like, no, no. He's an actual amazing

Speaker 2: chef actually and you can watch them step by step, make the whole thing. They got to be entertaining enough to talk about it. But with us, the reason we went live was because like the tech news happened so fast. There's like a new release. There's a new financing like being the live matters. But with food, I don't think foodies are like there's a new cut of beef dropping. I got to get a review right now. But maybe I just don't follow it closely enough. I mean, for restaurant openings, maybe you want to know that minute. But what is the state of live streaming in food? Where do you think it'll go? Where are the opportunities? Or is it maybe farther off?

Speaker 1: Is it cooked?

Speaker 2: Is it cooked?

Speaker 9: No pun intended. I think there's definitely an opportunity for live. I mean, we've gone live as we travel a bunch to and Japan and these different markets, we're walking around and showcasing these crazy things, because a lot of people too are so interested in these other places. And obviously, you can get that from videos, but I think there is a value of seeing it live there that you can kind of get the surroundings and understand where the person is that you can't get just from other content. So it's something that we definitely think about. You know, we, in Barcelona, recently, were at dinner. We were shooting a short form video, a YouTube video, and we're simultaneously live on x, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, all at the same time. Yeah. So it was just like, like, a content overload shooting out to millions of people. So I think that there's, yeah, there's totally room for that. As every genre of content and topic innovates, I think there will be ways that live finds its way in the food space. And I think live cooking thing is cool.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I could imagine it working, but you've to have really good talent, for sure.

Speaker 1: Would would you guys ever create like Yes Chef kind of cafeteria, like an ongoing physical space that had basically like individual food stands? There's a place where I went to college where it was like one one building and there was probably like 10 different restaurants in inside and and each one was like a very opinionated, individually operated. So it wasn't like... It wasn't the building being like, oh, we're gonna make 10 different, you know, restaurants inside. But it feels like over time you go from like, okay, making videos that people love to events that people love to eventually like a, you know, maybe it starts as a pop up, but then like a sort of ongoing durable thing.

Speaker 9: Yeah, definitely. I think I've always thought about this golden triangle of content, community, and products, and if you can pair that kind of like the famous Disney flywheel, each part helps the next. So, yeah, we... We've ideated a bunch on some different brick and mortar concepts and different CPGs that we have, but I think it's really easy to think about a million ideas and to, like you've said, you know, forget about the golden egg for us right now that is content. That's why we're so focused on the studio deal. We're, you know, like, we're looking to hire the best in class Yeah. Editor and videoographers to add to our team so that we can really double down, and I think the more... This world, I think you guys have seen it, is really just like it... Whoever gets the most amount of attention wins. If you can get the most amount of attention, then eyeballs, then you have all these... You have all these, like, AI companies, and, you know, Instinct, and

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 9: The other one that, they have... Their their values go from 50,000,000 to 500,000,000 in two weeks because a million people use their app, they don't even monetize, but the, you know, the public thinks they can monetize in the future. I think it's... How we view it is, like, we're building the largest and most engaged food community in the entire world, and we don't need to rush to monetize that right away. We want to really thoughtfully and carefully come out with things that we're passionate about, so everyone launches a product and sells you something. Like, we don't want to just do something to do something, and we know that long term value of what we're building with the studio, and the NextGen Food Network, and the content, and these events and experiences of like, we want to just continue that. It doesn't need to happen overnight and tomorrow. We know the value that all of that is going to kind of combust and explode over time.

Speaker 1: Hopefully not explode, but launch into the strategy. Not in

Speaker 9: good way.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One more. Are you seeing any interesting technology in kitchens? Like, people have... You know, some of the QSR concepts have been promoting their robots for a long time now. Unclear, like, very unclear as somebody who's, you know, far from the industry like how how much adoption these kind of tools are getting. One thing's for sure I don't think consumers are going to care. If anything it'd be a turn off. It's like, hey, this sandwich was made by a robot. Like kind of an interesting novelty thing. Gimmick. But like, you would think it would be hitting in coffee so hard by now. Like, you'd think we'd have like Yeah. Really good coffee robots and yet, like, people want to go to a barista that they know and that that seems pretty Lindy.

Speaker 9: Yeah, I agree. I feel like, especially in the coffee space, you'd see it explode. I'm sure you guys have seen Mark Lohrey from one different... He's a friend, and he invested a ton of money into the robotic systems to automate all the food. I'm curious to see how that plays out, because if it works, I think it's great. Like, I don't know. There's so many people that every day at work, you don't care. Like, if your food tastes good, you don't really care who made it or how fast it was made for a large part of the population. But on the other side, I do think there's a huge population that does really care and doesn't want to just, like, let a machine make their food. I think it's an interesting balance. I don't know. I think that technology has killed lunch, though. Like, lunch lunch is dead. No one goes to lunch anymore. You know?

Speaker 2: It's all

Speaker 9: swappled. Like, technology literally, lunch used to be a thing. Lunch does not exist. Like, RIP, lunch.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Used to you used to have, like, you know, some some... A nice salad, some salmon.

Speaker 4: Three or four cocktails.

Speaker 2: Three or four cocktails.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Maybe a cocktail. You walk

Speaker 9: around in London and everyone's pounding Dennis. I'm like Yeah. Where did

Speaker 16: where did

Speaker 9: that go? We forgot that. Did that go? Like, we're too locked in,

Speaker 2: I guess.

Speaker 9: Locked in, capitalism is overtaking Totally

Speaker 1: agree. We gotta bring it back. My last question for now, should your metabolism be studied? Do you think there's I any sort of like Yeah, your personal metabolism.

Speaker 7: Do you

Speaker 1: think there's be any sort of like breakthrough, scientific breakthrough that we could get by understanding how you process such a high volume and diverse set of foods?

Speaker 9: Potentially. I I guess I'll... First of all, thank you. I'll take that as a compliment.

Speaker 2: It was a huge compliment. It came in the And

Speaker 9: there there actually is a... There's something that we're we're working on.

Speaker 4: Woah.

Speaker 9: That that, you know, is... It kind of it kind of helps digest and something that I think would be valuable to a lot of people that

Speaker 1: Yes, chef. GLP one slash testosterone blend.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. Last question.

Speaker 9: Not crazy. Crazy.

Speaker 2: Last question. AI, I think we've all had this experience where like the model progress is really good. Everything's like, woah, this is amazing. And then you go and you talk to the models about the thing that you're the expert in and you're like, ah, like it's not good at the thing that I'm good at. Geordie always has this with like surfing and cars. It'll make weird recommendations. Are you seeing that in food if you ask for recipes? Like we noticed with music, the lyrics will always have the word glass in it, which is just an odd thing that doesn't need to be in every song. And I'm wondering if there's like, you know, you're absolutely right or it's not this, it's that, but for food or for recipes, have you picked up on any telltale signs that a recipe is AI or AI is in the food world or something like that?

Speaker 9: I think when it comes to recipes, it's fine and works because recipes are pretty simple to follow, but when it comes to actual recommendations, I think there's a, yeah, there's a huge lacking because it kind of just pulls what it sees, but then you go on Uber Eats and a lot of people pay for reviews. It's not... I can't really act... You can't intuitively think about, like, who this chef is and and what they're doing and so the I think it kind of spits out, like, not great recommendations. I think there's a huge area for growth

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 9: In the food world that is very interesting to me. But, yeah, I don't I don't think it's, like, perfect

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yet. It goes a back to, like, often the models are good at like what the researchers care about. If they don't care about going to lunch, it's not going give you very good lunch recommendations. They care about chess. They care about math. It's really good at math. Really good at math. Whipping up the best possible, the super slot bowl.

Speaker 1: Power lunch. Super. Power lunch. Yeah.

Speaker 4: I think

Speaker 9: it has some room to catch up.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So well, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Great to have you on. Yeah. Amazing business and And and I love when we meet a company that's crushing it and yet it feels like there's just a million Yeah. You know, new opportunities and and ways to expand. Come back on soon and... Great. Yeah. I'd love

Speaker 9: to come back on and

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 9: Thank you guys for inspiring our team from afar.

Speaker 2: It's been awesome. It's been awesome.

Speaker 9: Growth and journey. Hope we will meet in person and get some food Yeah.

Speaker 1: That'd great. Talk to Give our best to the team.

Speaker 2: Have a

Speaker 1: good one. Jack.

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