Functional Food For Entrepreneurs

What is the problem with the functional food industry? 

Where are the opportunities for chef & food entrepreneurs?

My guest this week was Chef James Barry, whose 16 + years in the culinary field started as a private chef. His inauguration into restaurant-style cooking came later when he was the vegan/vegetarian chef on the Van’s Warped Tour, which traveled to 50 North American cities in 60 days. 

Upon returning to Los Angeles, James continued to private chef and had the fortune of cooking for celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Mariska Hargitay, George Clooney, Gerard Butler, Sean “Puffy” Combs, Barbra Streisand, and John Cusack. 

James also co-authored the recipes in Margaret Floyd’s book Eat Naked and co-authored the follow-up cookbook The Naked Foods Cookbook. He most recently co-authored the recipes in Dr. Alejandro Junger’s book, Clean 7.

Not wanting to limit the audience of his healthy and tasty style of cooking, James started Wholesome2Go, a healthy, high-quality food delivery company that served under his leadership in the Los Angeles area for 8 years. Most recently, James launched his first functional food product, Pluck, an organ-based, all-purpose seasoning. It’s the first of its kind and an amazingly easy and delicious way for people to get organ meats into their diet.

Enjoy 10% off your first purchase of Pluck using the discount code DRB10.

In this episode, James tells the story of Pluck, shares insights into marketing strategies, and also highlights the most important component of any business plan.

James featured on day 78 of my 90-day challenge for new Health Entrepreneurs. As you’ll see with the episodes so far, I’ve had 2 goals with this challenge:

• The first relates to my personal experience with mental health. When I experienced burn out as a physician, I did some research to learn the strategies that help us feel and perform better, so we can thrive in our work and relationships. That’s why I’m teaching the tools and strategies I’ve found, to help all Entrepreneurs excel and be more resilient.
• The second is what is at the core of The Entrepreneur’s Doctor. I’m highlighting the stories of Entrepreneurs from ANY sector that are turning their health problems into a business or startup with solutions, ranging from digital health, healthtech, and medtech, through to edtech, coaching, education, e-commerce, and more. The options are limitless…

You and I are both after the same thing, better health & wellbeing. As an Entrepreneur, you may have seen or felt problems with your personal experience of healthcare. Given your mindset, expertise, and skillset, you now want to do something about it. You may be worried that you have no prior knowledge or credentials within the health sector.

As The Entrepreneur’s Doctor, I specialise in supporting you to translate your unique knowledge, skills, experience, and mindset, into innovative solutions that promote health and wellbeing. I do that by prescribing a dose of Startup Therapy, empowering you to self-assess, diagnose, treat, and better yet, prevent issues facing your health startup or business.

I’m Behrooz, a Harvard & Oxford trained preventive medicine / public health doctor, with over 20 years of international experience across direct patient care, wider public health service, policy, industry, media, research, education and training. I’ve supported and mentored Entrepreneurs from non-health backgrounds to enter and navigate the health sector.

While the future of health and care may be digital and enabled by healthtech, most entrepreneurs are merely focusing on the symptoms affecting healthcare. I can help you dive deeper to tackle the underlying causes affecting health and wellbeing, highlighting strategies and opportunities for real impact.

Sadly though, many Entrepreneurs and startups fail, often due to problems securing investment, gaining adoption, and poor product-market fit. Sometimes, what limits the scalability and sustainability of the business is the physical and mental health of the Entrepreneur him/herself.

That’s why I’m creating the free resources here to help get you off to a flying start. After all, we need more innovative solutions to the problems we face in the health and care sector. So what are you waiting for?