Emmanuel Laroche on Turning Ideas Into Concepts and the Power of Flavor

 In this episode of GlobalEgdeTalk, Alex meets Emmanuel Laroche in a beautiful Italian restaurant in the middle of Manhattan.

Emmanuel Laroche is VP of Marketing and Consumer Insights at Symrise and an inspiring host of the "Flavors Unknown" podcast, which helps him identify new ways to get inspired and turn ideas into concepts.

Over the 20 years of his professional career, Emmanuel has worked internationally, and through the work, he's provided pragmatic and forward-thinking creativity to bring awareness to the power of flavor.

One of his greatest achievements is the upcoming book called "Conversations Behind the Kitchen Door", which is Emmanuel’s collection of dialogues with award-winning chefs from various backgrounds and cultures, sharing their personal experiences of where and why food culture is where it is today.

Listen to our podcast to learn more about Emmanuel Laroche's passion for the work and the insights of the upcoming book!

Transcript

Alex Romanovich: (00:18)

Hello, this is Alex Romanovich, and welcome to GlobalEdgeTalk. Today is August 17th, 2022. And we're here with Emmanuel Laroche. I will tell you more about Emmanuel in just a second but welcome to our podcast channel.

Emmanuel Laroche: (00:36)

Thank you very much. I'm very honored to be a guest on your show. I mean very excited to have this conversation.

Alex Romanovich: (00:45)

And the conversation we will have will be very exciting. First of all, we're here in the Midtown Manhattan restaurant called SERRA by Birreria. And in the minute, I will tell you, my beloved audience, why this is all relevant. Emmanuel is a Frenchman in New York, a Frenchman in the United States, born and raised in France. He has a very interesting and very diverse career in food and sense. We'll talk more about that. He's a global and North American chief marketing officer and digital marketing officer in a company called Symrise. More about that later and in our notes related to this podcast. And he has access to some of the world's best food, wine, cocktails, and some of the most amazing people he had the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing and talking to.

Emmanuel Laroche: (01:51)

Can I make a break for you? Sorry for supposing, but I'm not a global chief marketing officer. It is like the people at Symrise listen to...

Alex Romanovich: (02:00)

Absolutely. He's been a little shy because he is a chief marketing officer in North America, but he obviously knows a few things about global. And again, we'll talk more about that. Emmanuel just published the book recently called Conversations Behind the Kitchen Door, when he painstakingly interviewed 50 top American chefs who told them a lot of secrets about the full today's culture, what's been happening in the food industry, and a lot more. He's also a founder of a very interesting podcast channel called Flavors Unknown. And we'll talk more about this as well. Emmanuel, welcome again. Tell us about being a corporate officer for 20 years in a multibillion-dollar company. What possessed you to develop such an entrepreneurial idea to have a podcast, write a book, and interview 50 American chefs? Tell us more.

Emmanuel Laroche: (03:14)

That's a big question. Alex, I think I arrived just at the time of the pandemic. I was having a little reflection about myself. I have dedicated, as you just mentioned, rightfully so, 20 years. A lot of focused on my career at Symrise, and I thought it was the time for me to step back, like a lot of other people did, at the beginning of the pandemic and thought that it was time for me to think about myself and what I wanted to do next and I cannot hide it. I'm very passionate about food. I have always been obsessed with food and very curious about food. I love to travel. I love to taste the food. I love to meet other people and other cultures. And I had the chance to really meet a lot of people through my role in marketing at Sunrise and meet a lot of those extraordinary culinary leaders around us.

Emmanuel Laroche: (04:28)

And I had this podcast, and we can talk about that later. But at the beginning of the pandemic, some people listening to the podcast suggested that why don't you write a book? And so I thought it was the right time. Obviously, I was not traveling anymore. A lot of people were staying at home at the beginning of the pandemic. So I had some extra time, and I used that time to start thinking about the book and how I could translate into writing all the conversations I had with those community leaders.

Alex Romanovich: (05:16)

Great story. We'll get back to it more. Tell us a little bit about yourself. We don't necessarily have to go to childhood, but it will be very interesting to hear more about your career because you had a very interesting global career working for some of the top global companies in France, in the United States. So tell us more about what career paths you took and why.

Emmanuel Laroche: (05:48)

Sure. So, as I said, I'm not going back to childhood, so food was always important. Like the company I grew up in, my mother and my uncle owned a restaurant in a hotel. And then my siblings, I had a big age difference. I have three siblings, and I'm the youngest one. And so I've always seen people cooking. So cooking was always a big crit in the family. So it was always in the background. And then studied, I focused on the things that I disliked less. And this is the time where it's funny because when I talk to my kids, they were like, "Oh, I'm not sure when I wanna do it." And I'm like, "Hey, I know what it is. I was in the same boat."

Emmanuel Laroche: (06:38)

So I selected chemistry, geology, and biology because I liked those topics and was pretty good at them. So that's what I did. I focused on chemistry, and after that, I got an MBA in business and marketing. To validate my MBA, I had to take an internship and I was living in the south of France. So not far away from Grasse. It's one of the hearts of the flavor industry in France. And I was lucky to get an internship at a flavor company at that time called Sanofi Bio-Industries. That company doesn't have that name anymore. But it was something outstanding. I fell in love with that industry. I think I bothered all my family and friends during the summer talking about flavors.

Emmanuel Laroche: (07:42)

I didn't know that it existed. I didn't realize that space existed. Obviously, I was eating food. I was kind of going to restaurants. I was buying food and retail but had no idea that some companies like Sanofi Bio-Industry and others were creating all those terrific flavors. So that's what I did. And I never left, in fact, a very strange profile of an individual nowadays that I've stayed in this industry all my career. I had the chance to travel all around Europe, Western Europe especially. So I tasted anything from Scandinavian to Spanish, Italian, British, Dutch, and so on, and German food. And I had a chance in early 2002 to take a leap of faith and come to the US. It was always something that I wanted to do. I had an experience. I did an internship in the US early in my career. I loved the pace of business in the US compared to Europe. And yeah, I came to the US to create the marketing team in 2002. So now I work for a company called Symrise, a flavor and natural ingredient company. So it's very exciting.

Alex Romanovich: (09:16)

Tell us a little bit more about Symrise, a few words, and the nature of your work. Obviously, you're heading marketing for North America, but what do you do daily? Seeing that Symrise is behind a lot of the very interesting research, very interesting products that make their way into the food industry.

Emmanuel Laroche: (09:42)

My work is really with my team to stay connected to the latest trends in food and beverages, consumer behaviors regarding food and beverages, and how we can support the innovation process of food and beverage manufacturers. So we have developed a lot of tools. I like to talk about the toolbox we have because every situation supporting our customers' innovation, you know, every situation is different. And with a toolbox, you can put together tools depending on the scenarios you face. So we spend a lot of time engaging with consumers. Even in a B2B space, we love to focus on the end consumers trying to understand the drivers. What makes consumers select one product versus another? Knowing that flavors first is a very important repeat, an element of the repeat purchase. And then obviously, as we are into the functional natural ingredient space, functional benefits through food resonated a lot with the younger generation of Gen Z and million meals.

Alex Romanovich: (11:10)

Great. So you are inside of a large organization for 20 years. Can you wake up one day and create a podcast? And then you wake up one day and say, "You know what, I have to do the book. And not only do I have to do a book, but I also have to interview 50 American chefs and get to the bottom of the food culture and so forth." What's the impetus? Why did you decide to do this?

Emmanuel Laroche: (11:36)

It's getting very personal here, especially for the podcast. So I have to talk a little bit about my personal life. I think the years of maybe 2017/2018 were like difficult times. I'm separated from my wife, and I have three children, so I focus a lot on my work and my children. Children are growing up. They are becoming young adults, they're becoming very independent, and then you are facing a situation saying, what are you going to do with your life? And it's a sad moment, and discussing with professional, they said, "Hey, you should find something that you like, something that you love, that you can express yourself through." And as I mentioned before, food was an important element in my life. And as well, what we are doing today has been interacting with people, having genuine conversations, learning from others, and sharing this with a larger audience. So I was always carrying the idea of creating a podcast, and I decided to jump. So in 2017, this is where I put all the things together and started the podcast flavors and known in 2018.

Alex Romanovich: (13:04)

Great, great story. And it is always personal, right? It never just happens without being personal, emotional, being passionate. So let's talk about passion. Let's talk about the book for a moment. So what did 50 American chefs tell you that otherwise, people would not know? And obviously, it's in the BOOK. So we would be strongly suggesting that folks will buy the book or get an audiobook. Tell us briefly, what did you discover with the 50 American chefs that the general audience otherwise would not know?

Emmanuel Laroche: (13:49)

So I have to start from the beginning. I didn't get the essence of the 50 chefs. First, it all started with the podcast. And I was in three seasons of the podcast, and I do it every other week. So I had like 80 chefs or junior leaders because I have CEOs and pastry chefs. And I focus on people that are the claim and awarded. So they have been successful so that they can talk about their success. They can talk about how they went into that space. And yeah, so the idea was to set that I have this back to marketing. I have all this content, and what do I do with it? There are many interesting common threads between my conversations with those individuals.

Emmanuel Laroche: (14:51)

So when I had this idea that I'd been suggested to me by people that would listen to the podcast, just because a lot of people listen to two or three episodes because they know the guests because they live in the city of the guests. But I wanted to bring more people to the podcasts and share with a larger audience. That's why the idea of the book came about. So I spent a lot of time. I had to sit through 60 to 70 hours of recording. I worked with my brother in France, which was kind of a funny story because he doesn't speak English. So I had to translate a lot of things for him, but I would need to have a soundboard, someone I could bounce ideas from, and start the idea of how I should structure this book because there's a different way.

Emmanuel Laroche: (15:44)

And I never wrote a book before. So that was the idea of the first. How should we structure it, and who will read that book? So to understand the book's content and when I focus on learning, I need to talk about who are the book's target readers. So, that book has a large audience for police like myself. They are for people that are maybe in junior school and want to develop their career in that industry. They are for cooks that are there already. Then I wonder how they can grow within an industry. They have fun. I would say chefs because they want to read or listen to others and peers and understand what they are doing, and yeah, young entrepreneurs who want to develop their business in the food industry. I have to be in the restaurant. It could be a foot track.

Emmanuel Laroche: (16:58)

It could be a growing kitchen or a delivery company. So then, through all my conversations, there are learnings for all those target people. When you think about the food, food enthusiast, or foodie, it is about how I have access to quality ingredients. Because if I want to have a great meal experience, I need to cook a high-quality product, and how do I develop relationships with farmers? For instance, how do I even go foraging at your farmer's market? That could be another way how to have access to ingredients. So when you think about a culinary student, it is about listening or reading from all those 50 culinary readers, what is important for them to develop their career, which is, for instance, as a takeaway, developing short-term goals and long term goals and checking those goals when they are achieving, moving to the next one and as well, identifying great mentors that are going to be able to guide them and challenge them when it comes to cooking.

Emmanuel Laroche: (18:29)

It's all about where I am already in that industry. What should I do to grow in that industry? So how the idea of interacting with other Korean relationships listening, to what is happening in the kitchen space, owning the space where I work in the kitchen, being responsible, moving to the next level, and so on. So I can continue, but it could be a long story. People need to read the book, by the way. It's called Conversations Behind the Kitchen Door.

Alex Romanovich: (19:00)

Yes. Conversations Behind the Kitchen Door is a fascinating topic, especially for very diverse roles within the food industry. Nevertheless, give us a couple of examples of something you have discovered that maybe it was a wow moment or surprise or something like that.

Emmanuel Laroche: (19:20)

Sure. I mean, there are always intriguing moments and stories with a lot of the guests, and there're 50 chefs in a book. There are more than 50. My publisher thought 50 was a good number for the title or the subtitle. But so I'm going just to mention some examples. I think everyone knows the name of David Burke, a celebrity chef in the New York, New Jersey area, but he has restaurants around the country. And he has been in this industry for many, many, many years. And he became a mentor for many other celebrity chefs today. But when I had a conversation with him, it was fascinating to see this man's passion after so many years.

Emmanuel Laroche: (20:16)

And he's still driven because he always wants to innovate. He's not about cooking and being on the line daily, which is very boring for him. He wants to come up with the next innovation and how to be different from another restaurant that could be located on the same streets, which should speak to a lot of what we do in marketing. So it's different and unique. Another fun story was about chef Fiore Tedesco from Austin, his restaurant L'oca d'Oro. And he mentioned how we went into this industry. So before being a chef, he was a musician. He was a drummer in a band. And he remembered a story that happened when he was touring in Italy.

Emmanuel Laroche: (21:15)

And before the concert, they had dinner with someone's family member from the band, and he had a fantastic dining experience. It was so fantastic that after the show, he dreamt about it. He could not remember the exact experience. Everything was kind of like cloudy and so on, but he still remembered the taste, and it was such a fascinating moment that when he woke up in the morning, he talked to the other band member and said goodbye. And he went into the culinary industry and started cooking, and he's becoming one of the great chefs in America today. So I have a lot of those unique moments, like the last one. I will mention it to the people in New York.

Emmanuel Laroche: (22:11)

There's a great two Michelin stars restaurant called Gabriel, famous for the chef Gabriel. He is originally from France. So we had a great, quick connection. And he mentioned that when he won when he was barely 18, one of the top competitions in France was called Meilleur Ouvrier de France. And he had to come to Paris for the final, and he won it. He won the national competition. And as a series of awards, he was treated to having dinner at many different Michelins restaurants. He still remembered that he could not enter two restaurants that he should have been to and experienced because he didn't have the dress code. You know, we didn't have a tie, didn't have a jacket. So they refused access to the restaurant to him. And he was obviously frustrated. And as of today, many, many years, he still remembers it, and he makes sure that no one is experiencing this Michelin star and that he's making outstanding food. Anyone can enjoy it.

Alex Romanovich: (23:38)

You've been exposed to so many amazing entrepreneurs in the food industry, chefs, and others. While inside a giant corporate company inside of a company, a global company. What lessons have you learned about entrepreneurship and how do you take this experience, maybe other experiences, and apply it internally? I mean, how do you innovate? How do you take this to the next level of innovation inside an organization?

Emmanuel Laroche: (24:16)

This is a fantastic question. And in fact, yes, there's a lot of learning from this book. And I think that the first learning is that the future is collaboration. So that's what I heard from a lot of the chefs. And especially the new generation of chefs. A lot of people have this image of a chef being very secretive, protective of their recipes and not being in a sharing mode, and so on. Maybe this is valid for a former generation of a chef like the one we describe, like yelling in the kitchen. I think that the world is changing, which is great. And every young chef that I talked to, male and female, are very much into collaboration, and they attribute a part of their success to collaboration that they can make within the industry, but I would as well outside of the industry. So I think for everyone, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're in the corporate world, a path to success is really collaborating within your team, collaborating within the organization with other teams, but as well, reaching out to suppliers, reaching out to partners, reaching out to even other industries that can share best practices and, and that you can apply.

Alex Romanovich: (25:51)

That's a great insight. We're coming out of COVID, and so we're hoping, and the food industry, just like many others, was impacted dramatically and tremendously by the COVID pandemic. And now, in 2022, things are coming back slowly in some places faster. And so, what have you learned about the industry itself? Number one and number two. What have you learned about the value system that has changed with you and with some of the folks you've interviewed? What values are they prioritizing right now and keeping at the top of their mind?

Emmanuel Laroche: (26:50)

Okay. So there are a lot of elements here in your cash menu questions because in my professional environment, obviously, the impact of COVID, what's tremendous in the food world, on the food service, as we know, we all experienced that. But as well in retail, consumer behavior changed dramatically. We know from psychology that you just need to have about 60 days of being exposed to a different factor for different external elements to change behavior for a long period from consumer behavior. COVID-19 is a pandemic. We are talking about at least a year and a half, which impacted consumer behaviors.

Emmanuel Laroche: (27:46)

We have seen this change in our conversations with our customers, as well as when we could observe our interaction with consumers. So that means that we had finished speaking. We had to change. We had to look at what is the category of food and beverages that are really rising to the top because that dynamic and the categories change from before the pandemic to during the pandemic. And it's still like a longer effect after the pandemic. So that's one element. The second element is, I think, from a group dynamic and a team dynamic as a team manager. I think that the other things have changed for the better. I mean, you and I are probably the same generation. When I started working, it was all about the work.

Emmanuel Laroche: (28:44)

There were no questions about my personal life. It didn't come into the picture. I didn't even have the idea to mention anything about the work-life balance. The pandemic has changed that we had to adapt during the pandemic about people, you know, with them. People that had families, people that are more early birds, other than our late hour to make sure that we are all at the same time, collaborating. And then nowadays, it is very important as a manager to think about the work-life balance of the people that work in my team. So this is something which has changed dramatically. So now, when you think about the people I interviewed, we know that the pandemic has terribly impacted those people.

Emmanuel Laroche: (29:48)

They have to be very resilient. They are always constantly challenged. They challenge themself. They put a lot of pressure on themself. I was mentioning David Burke, you know, they always want to be different. That's already he decided to put that pressure on himself.

But on top of that, the pandemic arrived. And then that changed completely, like the space. A lot of restaurants closed. People decided to leave the industry, and now we consider as well how they are going to manage their restaurants and how they are going to manage their workforce when they can have access to a skilled workforce, which was one of the biggest challenges.

Alex Romanovich: (30:33)

There's just so much wisdom and so much knowledge. I mean, specifically in the food industry, but I'm dying to ask you this question. All these learnings, all this experience. If you go back to a man of 20 years ago, what advice would you give that man sitting from where you're sitting right now?

Emmanuel Laroche: (31:01)

That's funny because I always ask those questions in my podcast to the chefs. So now the role is reversed. I have three pieces of advice that I will give myself because no one gave them to me, and I wish they would've given that to me. I think one comes from my conversation with the chefs, and we can all apply that throughout your careers. So I should have found mentors who could have guided and challenged me. You think about it at a certain time of your career, maybe you do it, but I believe that we should really have a plan. We should think about it at every moment of the career year and find different profiles of people who can challenge you and guide you.

Emmanuel Laroche: (31:56)

The second one is the importance of networking. So, of course, I'm doing this. I'm in marketing. I understand the concept, but I think I discovered it later in my career. So now that I have kids who are 30, 26, and 24, that's what I told them. I said, as soon as you start your internship, build those connections because, yes, your education is important now, at the stage where you are. Second, it's going to be your experience. But by far, what is the most important is networking. So no one explained that to me when I started back in. I don't even want to say the year. And I discover it by myself. I would say that it could have been much earlier that would've probably helped me. And then the third one is learning from the fact that I'm publishing this book now on November 8th, which is don't be afraid of trying and failing because if you put the energy, if you put the effort and you're focused, everything is possible and achievable.

Alex Romanovich: (33:12)

Another question that I would love to ask is, at the top of your career inside one of the most successful companies out there, you have a book that is doing extremely well. You have a podcast that is doing well just as well.

Emmanuel Laroche: (33:30)

We hope on the book. It's not out yet. 

Alex Romanovich: (33:33)

It's not out yet. I see. Okay. Got it.

Emmanuel Laroche: (33:39)

I'm sure.

Alex Romanovich: (33:39)

It's going to do extremely well. What's next? 

Emmanuel Laroche: (33:46)

Oh, wow. What's next? So, first of all, I'm very excited about the space where I'm professionally. I think the company Symrise is expanding outside of the flavor world. The functional space is strategic, as looking at benefits and health benefits through food and beverages is here to stay, especially with the new generation. There's a different behavior. If I just want to put a little Symrise between the younger generation and the older generation. Older generations are looking more at functional benefits through the supplement. We are like the younger generation, Gen Z and millennials looking at functional benefits through food. So that's why I think there are a lot of things to develop here. I'm excited in a way as well that I think that age of retirement is going to change. There's no way that I'm going to retire at 62. And I don't think I will ever stop doing something or working, so the next step in a few years of being a consultant probably is the idea of the podcast and the book to start creating the positioning and the brand of Emmanuel Laroche, probably. So that's probably like the first seeds of something I want to do several years later. Maybe there will be the second book as the next step.

Alex Romanovich: (35:30)

Awesome. This is great. I want to thank you for being with us. I want to thank you for having a great conversation, but before I let you go, just as insight from a Frenchman...

Emmanuel Laroche: (35:49)

American. I'm French and American, by the way.

Alex Romanovich: (35:50)

 But somebody spent most of his career in food and his life almost in food. So how do we stack up Americans in comparison to the French in terms of food?

Emmanuel Laroche: (36:07)

I think that we should stop making a comparison. I think this is all about culture. Everyone is different. One of the reasons I wrote the book is because I'm really fed up with my friends and family every time saying this to me. I just came back from France for two weeks vacation, and I still had people in Burgundy that I met for the first time there that said, "Well, we don't understand the wave of the podcast and a book on American food because it's all about burgers and hotdogs and pizzas. And so I just have to pose and breathe. Those stereotypes seem like they never die. So I have to say that there's a fantastic food culture here, enough in the US. When I arrived 20 years ago, I really started to look beyond. I would say everything that you see from fast food and all those national chains that some of them are my customers.

Emmanuel Laroche: (37:13)

The idea is that there are a lot of other things there. There are a lot of traditional dishes. There's also a lot of originality here in the US and specialties. There are treasures. If you want to, you dig a little bit. And yes, the food culture in America is linked to the story of immigration. And I have a whole chapter about this in the book because I had 15 plus of the chefs I had on the podcast that are either immigrants or sons or daughters of the immigrant. And they are doing a fantastic job with the food they are putting and serving us. And their story is about mixing their roots with the food they have been exposed to since they are in the US, or if they are the second generation they grew up with, and this is what American food is. The culture in America is the result of immigration, the story of the US.

Alex Romanovich: (38:23)

Great points, great stories, great interview. Thank you for being with us. And I want to remind our audiences that we will have the book copy. We will have the book Conversations Behind the Kitchen Door, 50 American chefs, chart today's food culture. So we'll have a picture of it. We'll have the links to Amazon, and then on other channels, we'll have the links to the podcast from Emmanuel and a lot more information, pictures, great stories, and so forth. Thank you so much for being with us.

Emmanuel Laroche: (38:59)

Thank you so much. People who want to follow me on Instagram. It's easy. It's Flavors Unknown. I'm on Facebook as well. I was delighted to be a guest on your show, so thank you.