Looking Back, Looking Forward

The idea is the easy part. And "easy" is a word I don't like using. Remember when teachers told you math was easy? Or when authors of coding books tell you writing this or that script is easy? Right. Easy for them. Hard for you.

But ideas, sometimes they seem too good to be true. They come quickly, they come out of thin air they come at seemingly no cost, and they're all yours. They're glorious. Especially when they live in your head. Unfortunately, the speed with which ideas come, their Athena-like birth, and their biased insularity also make them temptations to foolishness.

Go ahead, take that idea and do something with it without talking to anyone else about it. See how that goes.  The idea graveyard makes the world's biggest cemeteries look like a studio apartment in Manhattan.

In January 2014, we had an idea. We called it Cookbook Calculator. But rather than spending a lot of time and money taking that idea straight to market, we did something else. We spent that time reading The Lean Startup, reading Running Lean, and reading Thinking, Fast and Slow. We took notes. We shared them with each other. We drew up ways how we could use the lessons from these books in our work.

We took advantage of UNC-Charlotte's Venture Launch program where we focused on identifying our customer before we even had a product. Every week teachers, classmates, and potential customers questioned our idea and our business model forcing us to better define our business and who our customers would be.

Next Queen City Forward, a Charlotte-based incubator, accepted us into their ImpactU program. They continued to put our feet to the fire. Here we pivoted and became Giusto, dropping the parts of Cookbook Calculator that users didn't respond to and keeping the part to which they did respond, in particular, a shareable food profile.

That summer Sophia Smith, a rising junior at Davidson College, joined the team and immediately made an impact. She set up our website and did a lot of great research, but more importantly, as a woman on the team she gave us greater credibility with her perspective, her insight, and her candor. 

In September, Davidson College asked us to cook for the student body. We prepared a meal in honor of our time cooking for acclaimed NYC Chef Michael White. That night Sophia introduced me to Becca Rinkevich, a Davidson senior. Adah Fitzgerald, a former science teacher at The Woodlawn School, also helped out that night and started her time at Giusto as head of testing. Shortly thereafter, we met Nauman Bukhari at an art opening and took him on as our first CFO. Charlie Toder, the manager of Davidson Beverage Company, has started a "best beers for big games" blog for us. And thanks to great work from Toronto's Phuse and Austin's CabForward, we now have a Minimal Viable Product; one that we've already learned a lot from, one that already has over 140 users.

For as proud as I am of the product, I am far more proud of our team and our advisors. It is a group of people who bring unique and insightful input to every meeting and conversation we have. They are all in. They take pride in their work. They work as hard as I do and, as a founder, what more can you ask for? They have not only helped bring an idea to fruition, but have given the idea credibility by backing it with their time, effort, and voices. 

While my motivation as founder is to see the idea through, it has become more than that. I want to see my team members succeed. I want Nomi's parents back in Pakistan to be proud that he's in America doing well. I want Adah's kids to go to good schools because she can pay for them to do so thanks to her work at Giusto. I want Charlie to publish an e-book of his articles at the end of 2015 so he can move up in the craft beer world.

2015 poses serious challenges. Can we correctly fix our user experience issues? Can we establish working partnerships with groups that can build up our user base? Can we turn that traction into investment, or, even better, profitability?

2015 also has a lot to look forward to. We hope to dive into A/B testing. To roll out new updates to Giusto that make it more user friendly in response to the testing we've done thus far. To do more testing. To launch blogs about specialty foods and caregiving. To offer an API to partner groups to drive user acquisition and revenue. And to finish reading The Founder's Dilemma. 

I look forward to these challenges. The Giusto Team looks forward to these challenges. It is an exciting time.

Happy holidays and all the best in 2015!

Randall Mardus
Founder, Giusto

Choice Thanksgiving Day Football Craft Beer Pairings

by Charlie Toder, Giusto's Craft Beer Writer

November 26, 2014

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday for drinking beer.  What better time to enjoy a brew than on a day dedicated to watching football, and eating yourself into a blissful food coma.  I’m here to walk you through the Turkey Day football action with beer suggestions for each team’s fan base.  

In my efforts to chose an appropriately delicious local beer for each team, it was impossible to find beers that are distributed to all 50 states.  All of these beers are sold regionally and quite a few see national distribution.  To see if these beers are distributed in your area, check out seekabrew.com or ask around at your local beer store.  Without further ado, here are my picks:

Chicago Bears vs. Detroit Lions  12:30 pm EST

This is right around the time of day my house starts buzzing with Thanksgiving dinner preparations.  The turkey has just started cooking, the table is being set (remember guys, salad forks go on the outside of the main fork), and sides are being prepped.  This game is a perfect excuse to temporarily shirk your prep duties and start your day of quality beer drinking.  This game needs a beer because this matchup is ugly.  I know Detroit has struggled recently and Chicago has won a few in a row but do not be fooled.  The Lions have lost to the two best teams in the NFL and the Bears have escaped against two of the worst.   Detroit still boasts the first ranked* defense in football anchored by the terrifying Ndamukong Suh, and an equally scary remaining front 7.  Calvin Johnson is finally getting healthy, Matt Stafford is rounding into form and the rest of the offense looks solid.  The Bears, well… the Bears stink.  The defense is one of, if not the worst in football, being the first team in 91 years to give up 50 points in consecutive weeks.  The offense is also a mess with a banged up receiving corps, no running game, and Jay Cutler turning the ball over a ton.  Expect a lot of Detroit sack celebrations and close-ups of Cutler’s sad duckface.  Prediction: Detroit 45 Chicago 17 

*All of my rankings come from Football Outsiders DVOA statistics, which is the definitive source for football advanced metrics.  An explanation of DVOA can be found here.    

On to the important stuff, the beer!

My beer suggestion for Chicago fans: Off Color Brewing, Scurry.

Off Color is one of the many excellent breweries that call Chicago home and one of the few that distribute outside Midwest.  Their Scurry is a dark honey ale based on the rare German Kottbusser style.  Malty and rich without being too sweet and boasting an approachable 5.3% ABV, Scurry is a great beer to warm your bones on a brisk Thanksgiving afternoon without being sloshed by dinner.

My beer suggestion for Detroit fans: Founders Brewing, All Day IPA

Few beer styles have enjoyed more success in 2014 than the session IPA.  The American obsession with hops has been carried over into the low-alcohol realm, with extremes of the style reaching an absurd 2.7% ABV.  It is no surprise that the fine folks at Founders in Grand Rapids, Michigan make one of the best session IPAs around.  In fact, every single beer I’ve had from Founders has been good, they are model of consistent quality.  All Day boasts big citrusy hop character at an easy 4.7% and is a fine choice for the afternoon hophead.

Philadelphia Eagles vs. Dallas Cowboys  4:30 pm EST   

By 4:30 in the Toder house the finishing touches are just being applied to the Thanksgiving feast.  I’ve tasted my garlic mashed potatoes for seasoning approximately 317 times and my Dad and I are fighting over who gets the tail of the turkey.  My Mom, now wielding a large chefs knife, swipes at the vultures (my brother and I) hovering over and picking at her beautiful platters of food.  As we move into the height of Thanksgiving festivities we get the best football game of the day.  Both Dallas and Philadelphia have struggled to keep their quarterbacks healthy but excel in other areas to compensate.  Dallas running back DeMarco Murray has been historically excellent, rushing for over 100 yards in all but one game this season.  In Philadelphia, the defense has stepped up (they rank 8th in the NFL) to support Chip Kelly’s fast paced offense.  This shapes up to be a great football game, one worth craning your neck over Uncle Bryan’s shoulder at the dinner table to glimpse the television.  I think Tony Romo takes just enough pressure off of Murray to overcome the Philly defense and Dallas takes a tough game at home. My prediction: Dallas 23 Philadelphia 20

My beer suggestion for Dallas fans: Jester King Brewery, Noble King

There are few breweries in the country generating as much buzz as Jester King Brewery in Austin, Texas.  Specializing in farmhouse and sour ales fermented with their own wild yeast, they make some of the most sought after beer around.  Luckily, they distribute a few of their less adventurous offerings including the delicious Noble King.  Noble King is a farmhouse ale (also known as a saison), a style of wheat beer often brewed with wild yeast for a noticeable funk or tart flavor.  Noble King pairs this funk with a generous helping of Noble hops to add bite and slight bitterness.  This is a great beer to cut the richness of traditional Thanksgiving fare.  Each sip wakes up the palate and readies you for another bite of turkey or mashed potatoes or green beans or stuffing or sweet potatoes or green beans or …

My beer suggestion for Philadelphia fans: Troegs Brewery, Troegenator Double Bock

I am doing my very best to singlehandedly promote and spread the love for one of my favorite (and oft overlooked) beer styles, the dopplebock.  Dopplebocks are just a double bock (a german lager), doubling the strength and flavor of the classic malty spring beer.  Dopplebocks are dark, but have a light enough body to not weigh you down during a meal and enough bitterness and roast from the malt to stand up to Thanksgiving food.  Troegs Brewery out of Hershey, Pennsylvania makes a wide variety of delicious beers and their Troegenator is one of the finest American made dopplebocks.  Troegenator works as a great transition from main course to dessert with its slight malt sweetness and coffee-like roastiness.

Seattle Seahawks vs. San Francisco 49ers 8:30pm EST

At this point in the evening I am lucky to be awake.  The pie and turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes have thoroughly defeated any desire to be a functioning human being.  But this is no impediment to more football and beer!  The late west coast matchup features two up and down teams from the shark tank of quality of football that is the NFC west.  Both Seattle and San Francisco have lost contributors to their successful 2013 campaigns and Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick have regressed throwing the ball.  Despite this, this is still a rivalry game between two teams with talent on both sides of the ball and good coaching.  Seattle has gotten back to their rushing ways with Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson as an effective duo running the read option.  And though the defense is not at full strength, it still is a top 10 unit. San Francisco’s strength also lies in its defense, currently ranked 4th in the NFL, despite significant losses at linebacker.  And Colin Kaepernick is a dangerous dual threat option at QB, extending plays with his legs and excelling at designed runs.  This is going to be a hard fought game but San Francisco just has too many injuries to keep up with the Seattle offense. My prediction: Seattle 17 San Francisco 13

My beer suggestion for San Francisco fans: 21st Amendment Brewery, Fireside Chat

This time of the evening calls for something rich and comforting, perfect for sipping by a fire.  This winter warmer fits the bill perfectly, with a nice chorus of warming spices accentuating the strong brown sugar notes and strong ABV.  Surprisingly, Fireside Chat is not overly sweet, avoiding the pitfall of most spiced ales.  21st Amendment is one of a slew of great breweries that make their home in the Bay Area, knocking out well made beers in stylish 12oz cans.  Fireside Chat is my favorite 21st Amendment beer, but their core lineup and other seasonals are rock solid.

My beer suggestion for Seattle fans: Elysian Brewing Company, Dark O’ The Moon

Thanksgiving marks my unofficial end to pumpkin beer season, and Elysian Dark O’ The Moon pumpkin stout is a fitting end to the fall season.  Elysian is rightfully lauded for their pumpkin beers and is one of the few breweries in Washington to distribute outside of the Pacific Northwest.  Elysian’s Night Owl pumpkin ale is better known, but I love how the stout characteristics of Dark O’ The Moon balance out the pumpkin spice flavor.  For me, nothing marks the end of a great day like a nice dark stout, and this one would make a fine conclusion to Thanksgiving.

Enjoy Thanksgiving and cheers!  Look for my beer picks and game predictions for the upcoming NBA slate on Christmas Day!

Free food!

inner at Daniel is nice, but there's just something about free food. Somehow it tastes better. It combines that feeling of getting away with something with the joy of food the way ham goes with cheese, peanut butter with jelly, beer with anything...

Unless, of course, the free food is something you don't like or can't eat. Then you're not only SOL, but you have to pony up for food elsewhere. A travesty.

Here's Giusto's offer: Got an iPhone? Live in the Charlotte, NC area? Want free food? Sign up for our beta here and we'll craft something for you according to your food preferences. Already signed up for the beta and want to test it out? Then tweet #freefood! at @appgiusto and we'll do the same.

Sunday Cookin'

Since starting work on a food tech startup in January I have spent significantly more time on the tech and less time on the food. Since then I've prepared old dishes over and over. My girlfriend hasn't said, "Spinach and sausage pasta...again?" yet, but her enthusiasm over a new dish the other night resounded loud and clear. I hear you, girl.

All the tech time has meant a lot of me sitting on my ass at the computer. By Sunday I need to shake up the routine, get off my ass, and step away from the machine.

So I'm setting aside Sunday afternoon as time in the kitchen. A good day and time to put on some music and to make pizza dough for Wednesday night, stocks for risotto and other dishes, sauces or butters to doll up poultry, and maybe even a little pastry to get us through the week.

It's also a good time to prep for Monday night Giusto meetings with the rest of the team. We've allocated Monday nights as our get shit done time. While Adah, Becca, and Sophia focus on usability testing, marketing, and SEO in the living room, I make dinner according to their Giusto profiles. It gives us a chance to test Giusto, spend time together, and make progress all at the same time.

If this leads to empty plates on Monday night, Giusto's done it's job.

Marea's Pinstripes

As a kid I wanted to play second base for the Yankees. I knew centerfield and shortstop were long shots, but second, second I had a chance. If Billy Martin could play second, I reasoned, with nothing but spit and vinegar so could I.

Needless to say, second base for the Yankees didn't pan out. But a few years ago I got to cook at Marea in Manhattan and for me that was like playing second base for the Yankees.

That first year at Marea was like playing on the 1927 Yanks. We had guys who had come up with our Executive Chef Michael White (Jared Gadbaw, Adam Dooling), the most decorated Italian chef in the U.S.. We had cooks who had come through Gramercy Tavern (Asi Maman, Ronen Tenne). We had Jimmy Everett who had worked at WD-50 under Wylie Dufresne. David Chang brought us Jared Forman. Most of pastry had done stints under Johnny Iuzzini at Jean Georges (Heather Bertinetti, Jade Riggin, et al). And that's just some of the back of the house. Never mind the front of the house.

But winning is not what I admire most about the Yankees or why I enjoyed my time at Marea. I admire the Yankees for the standard that they set, the standard they play up to, and how timeless they are whether it's their uniforms which have never changed, their team before player philosophy which translates into no players names on their jerseys, or their respect for tradition.

For the first time in my professional career, I found the same ethos at Marea. A high standard that won us the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in the U.S., three stars New York Times, and two Michelin stars. A standard that we played up to whether we were serving a handful of people that first summer or 300 after the reviews hit. And, believe it or not, our aprons.

Unlike many famous uniforms - be they for athletes, the armed forces, police or fire - most people never saw us cooks in our dark blue navy aprons. But for me, putting on that apron felt like putting on the pinstripes.

Each morning I walked across 58th Street to Marea where I entered through a service entrance, my ears full of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" as I'd fist bump the rest of the staff as we prepped for service. I walked tall across the city knowing I worked at one of its best restaurants and I took pride in the work we did.

This fall I am honored to recreate Marea's menu at my alma mater, Davidson College, for a night. And, thanks to Amador Acosta, Chef Michael White, Omar Hanhan, and the staff at the Altamarea group, I am happy to put this back on.

Pick UP!

Giusto

Over time we molt skins, we live multiple lives, and we change direction. The same applies for businesses. Long-time insurance behemoth Lloyd's of London started as a coffee house. Nintendo started out selling playing cards and vacuum cleaners. And long before it sold motorcycles, Suzuki moved looms. Likewise, the time has come for Cookbook Calculator to shed its first name and purpose and to take on a new identity more in line with its focus.

Somewhere along the line people got the idea that Italians make good food and that they like to eat it together. While my family's gatherings typically occur around religious events, what brings people out is the time with each other and the food they have brought with them out of love. A little something of everything so that everyone had something to eat, whether it was finicky eaters like me as a kid or cousins that had gone vegan, there was something there for you that was made just right.

While short on communal eating, cooking at Marea taught me about the high standard of culinary excellence. The chefs at Marea taught me how to make food "giusto", just right. Now I can not only bring something to family events, but can make sure it's just right.

Or so I thought.

With a big family it's hard to keep track of who's eating what, who's on what diet, and who has what allergy. It's become harder to make something just right for everyone.

Which leads us from Cookbook Calculator to Giusto. The business' focus has changed, and now, so has our name. We desire to help people eat together, to share the foods they love with the people they love, and to cut down the $25 billion caregivers in the U.S. lose annually from either lost wages or in health care costs due to trips to the emergency room for food allergies. That's time and money that could be spent eating well with good people instead of interrupting Thanksgiving with an epipen. That's Giusto.

Kung Fu

If I neglected my fantasy baseball team and QuizUp as much as I have neglected this blog, my girlfriend would be pretty happy.

Two months of intensive coding courses will do that. I've studied seven languages, but nothing like computer code. As a classmate said three quarters of the way through our eight week course, "It now feels less like Chinese and more like Portuguese." Well said. Total mind fuck, but when you come out of it and start to realize you can start downloading existing knowledge straight to your brain like Neo, watch out.

That program done, it's on to the next. In this case, Queen City Forward's summer startup incubator program. Another eight weeks, another sprint in the larger marathon of life leading up to Pitch Day on August 6th.

We continue to search for our user and our customer, but we're closer. We'll spend a lot of time the next eight weeks on that hunt. In the week ahead we'll canvas the companies that reside in Packard Place and then follow up with the local take-out places that they frequent. Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm and its use of D-Day as a metaphor has helped us visualize the process. While we're not ready to storm Normandy yet, the metaphor is apt and provides a clearer path forward.

The product continues to evolve as we continue to talk to people and feel out demand and interest. We've drawn up a series of wire-framed screens that we presented yesterday at a local farmers' market to solicit feedback from strangers which lead to a number of good referrals.

It isn't Kung Fu yet, but it's progress.

Good Science as Good Business

We’ve heard the scientific method since grade school: ask a question, conduct background research, construct and test a hypothesis, analyze data, and draw conclusions. Repeat for maximum results. This method is frequently repackaged to fit other disciplines. Most recently, thanks to Blank and Dorf, the latest discipline is the business sector. The scientific method controls variables and determines optimum results through step-by-step testing. As lab researchers frequently states, “data is data” and it is hard to argue with the facts.

Sadly, it’s not hard to ignore facts. Unfortunately, there are graveyards of nascent companies that have failed to put their businesses through the rigors of the scientific method or to listen to the facts they encounter. Rather they've fallen in love with their products or are afraid to talk to people about them. 

Cookbook Calculator has learned early on from the mistakes of these failed ventures. The data we collect drives our future business. Background research is conducted by talking with potential users and customers.

Instead of donning white coats and dealing with beakers, we’re setting up tables, picking up the phone, getting in the car, or showing up at offices and simply talking to people. Along the way we learn which questions resonate with people, which fall short, which need to be tweaked. It’s business evolution in real time.

As most research scientists will point out there is often a great disparity between the projected results and the actual results. How well one learns from this disparity and can figure out a way to minimize the gap quickly, cheaply, and effectively is now proof of a good entrepreneur. It involves not being afraid of failure, but going after a result full force.

For us, this involves investigating the disparity between what we perceive as a good idea and what the needs of a community are. Chances are high that it will be necessary to reevaluate the original set of hypotheses, that’s how good science works. And that’s how we plan to make good business work too.  

Lean, But Not So Mean

In the past two weeks we've read and taken notes on Eric Ries' The Lean Startup and Ash Maurya's Running Lean, two books that focus on helping startups economize time and financial waste. The former does a particularly good job of laying down the groundwork of what it means to work lean while the latter offers a more specific blueprint.

No matter which you read, they agree on the most important first step - getting out of the building to talk to customers -  and what the biggest mistake is - building a product before even listening to said customers.

To that end, we are now beginning a startup's most important phase - customer discovery. And we'll do it by dipping our toes in the customer waters by directly reaching out to and talking to locals.

Packard Place

Cookbook Calculator's first major foray into the world occurred yesterday when we applied for a three month residency at Packard Place's RevTech Labs in Charlotte.

Packard Place is Charlotte's entrepreneurial hub and RevTech Labs is the group's startup incubator, an annual three-month long accelerator culminating in a pitch meeting before local and regional funders. Doesn't hurt that Charlotte is the second biggest banking city in the U.S. behind NYC. It's a unique opportunity to make meaningful progress and to meet and share experiences with other folks in the area who are in the same startup boat.

Time at RevTech would certainly give us some street cred. While our fingers are crossed for a spot there, we will continue to take steps forward.

The Story Behind Cookbook Calculator

At first, I laughed it off. My sister dubbed me Uncle Chubbs and my newborn nephew quickly came to know me by the name. Yeah, I had put on 15 pounds, but hey, I had been a bag of bones since I was a kid. I could use some filling out. Not a problem.

Plus, I knew why I was gaining weight. Stress. It started when I lived in a bad housing situation with neighbors from hell. It got worse as I served on my building's co-op board and the insanity that brought. Throw on a couple lawsuits and yeah, stress mounts and good habits go out the door.

Not that I had good eating habits before, but I didn't eat the same bad foods everyday. This became pizza or fried chicken, ice cream, and beer daily.

After a year and a half I started to address the stress. First, I physically removed myself from it. I put distance between it and me. Second, I did not run for re-election on the board. Third, the legal BS ended. That only took another year and a half during which time the 15 additional pounds became 26.

That's when I saw a picture of myself from this past summer. I didn't recognize myself. I was shocked at how big I had become.

I had read in The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg how some people had quit smoking by keeping a daily tally of how many cigarettes they smoked. The simple act of taking note, of seeing the numbers for themselves, and the shame of marking another one off over time helped people quit. I set out to find a smartphone app that would help me do the same thing with food.

I found MyFitnessPal. I cannot recommend this free app enough. It helped me not only keep track of my daily food intake by setting a specific calorie goal per day, but to learn the caloric values of the foods I ate. I quickly saw that the fish and chips I ate every Tuesday night out at trivia alone put me over my daily limit. Out went the chain restaurant fish and chips.

It also forced me to starting looking at nutritional fact labels. That cup of whole milk I drink at breakfast? That's 150 calories. A cup of almond milk? Half that. A tablespoon of Nutella on my bread? That's 200 calories. A tablespoon of Loacker, a dead-on Nutella substitute? 160. That's a 20% difference. These things add up.

I also started drinking out of a Ball's Mason jar. Why? Because they delineate portions by cup. Now I know exactly how much I'm consuming. I used to think a tall glass of milk was one serving. Wrong. It was more like three.

But life on 1,620 calories a day isn't great. So I woke up an hour earlier and hit the treadmill. 30 minutes a day five days a week. At first I took it easy burning 110 calories or so. Eventually I got up to 339 in the same 30 minutes. That turned my daily calorie allowance from 1,620 to a more manageable 1,959. I didn't have to starve myself to lose weight.

I also had a good conversation with a health consultant at the local YMCA. He gave me a reasonable idea of what to expect and what to hope for. Shoot for losing a pound a week, he told me. More than that and you shock your system to the point where it thinks you're in survival mode and it will make it harder for you to lose the weight.

So I didn't lose 16 pounds in a night, a week, or a month. No, it took 3 months, but once I knew how long it would take I could relax and not stress unrealistic expectations.

The only downside was that I couldn't use any of my cookbooks or recipes I had picked up from family or some of the best cooks in NYC that I had worked with. Michael White's Classico e Moderno and David Chang's Momofuku cookbooks, which I had just gotten over the holidays, did me no good as they didn't have nutritional facts that I could plug into MyFitnessPal. Sure, I could fudge it, guesstimate, but I could be off by 10 calories or a few hundred. I'd only know when the weight didn't come off.

Rather, I had to find new recipes that did. Fortunately, sites like Yummly.com have some such recipes, but I there are so many other recipes that don't and I don't want to give them up, especially if they are, in fact, good for me.

And so I am slowly setting out to create Cookbook Calculator, a smartphone app that will allow people to calculate the nutritional facts of their recipes, save them, and export them to apps like MyFitnessPal.

This blog will follow Cookbook Calculator's progress from idea to app.