Strong communities are built around local, real food. Food we trust to nourish our bodies, the farmer and planet.Collection: Trust
I did a business in a box called College Pro Painters. They taught you how to paint houses, how to hire and fire, how to sell, how to deal with customers. You got a one-year franchise. It was the hardest year of my life in terms of hard work. I won manager of the year. It was very successful.Collection: Business
The idea behind fast food is great - people want convenience.Collection: Food
I had this attitude, that Silicon Valley obnoxious attitude, that I know what I'm doing, and the rest was going to be pretty easy.Collection: Attitude
The one lesson I've learned from technology and food is the only time you know you're doing the wrong thing is when you're doing what everyone else is doing.
My advice for any entrepreneur or innovator is to get into the food industry in some form so you have a front-row seat to what's going on.
We have been growing more food than we need since the '60s... what we have is a terrible distribution problem.
I was totally humbled by how hard it is to create a product every day that needs to be made from scratch.
I really believe that people don't have to eat healthy; they just have to know what they are eating, and then they'll eat better. That is really the movement we are behind.
I was very afraid of failure because if you fail at something you love, then you ruin what you love.
After my accident, the stuff that mattered was stuff that made a difference in the world, not the stuff that made money.
Back in 1995, I saw an incredible wave coming. The Internet. I knew I needed to be a part of it no matter what I did.
I went to New York to train as a chef, and I had the good or bad fortune, depending on how you describe it, of being right there during 9/11. It was one of the best and the worst experiences.
The problem is not actual number of calories we are producing - we have food waste issues. The problem is industrial food.
Twenty-first-century food is going to be real food. Real food is food that is truly nourishing for the consumer, the community, and the planet.
We want kids in communities to know real food, and we want them to have a choice between real food and industrial food.
If you come to The Kitchen and get a pork chop with polenta, which is our kind of food - simple - there is only one way it should taste at The Kitchen.
My goal is to go from the industrial food system toward a real food system where you understand what you are eating.
Newspapers have an extraordinary amount of local content, including real estate listings and restaurant reviews.
The problem is that restaurants have assumed that kids don't want to eat anything other than chicken nuggets or fast-food burgers, but they do. They want to eat things that taste good.
The support we received at OneRiot from the beginning has been amazing. Everyone's door was open, and everyone was rooting for our success. In turn, our team at OneRiot has done everything we can to return the favor.
The Kitchen, which my wife and I opened with our friend and amazing chef Hugo Matheson, was quickly recognized as the pioneer in 'green' restaurants across the country.
Boulder was not the small town I had expected. It is a vivacious community of sophisticated people, who have the same aspirations and expectations you find in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Nikola Tesla, one of Colorado's famous residents, always believed that the gasoline engine made no sense.
Tesla Motor's original business plan had a copy of a letter from Nikola Tesla from the late 19th century talking about the challenges inherent in gasoline engines and the promise of the electric engine.
But for a few twists of fate, the gasoline engine we know today might have just been a small footnote in history.
My brother is about energy. SpaceX is his passion, and I love being a part of that company. Energy is where he spends a lot of his time and thinking in terms of having an impact on the world.
For me, creating a supply chain of what we should be eating is incredibly complicated. It's complicated to figure out how to change the food system in America.
Food never ends. It's one of the greatest things about working on food - we're always going to need food.
The problem with industrial food is zero transparency. The system thrives on the fact that there is no transparency.
Growing up, I cooked in the house, and when I cooked, everyone would sit down and eat, and it was just kind of the way I connected with my family.
I used to throw cooking parties in university. Everyone would come over - sometimes you'd just do a mac and cheese, but if you do that better than everyone else, you can get people to come to you.
When you think about basketball, and you watch someone like Michael Jordan play basketball - even if you're a baseball player, there's still a lot to learn from there.
I'm going to work on food culture and help food become fun and part of peoples' lives again. The traditional restaurant is more commercial-oriented. But I want community through food.
It's pretty rough in South Africa. It's a rough culture. Imagine rough - well, it's rougher than that.