Written by Christopher Kelly
Feb. 26, 2015
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Julie: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. I'm Julie Kelly. And today, I'm joined by Yrmis Barroeta, who is one of the creators and founders of Mission Heirloom, a new eating experience in Berkeley, California. I am very excited to have her on the podcast. I've known Yrmis for several months now and we've been nagging and nagging and nagging her to come on the podcast and she's finally here. Welcome, Yrmis. Thanks for joining me.
Yrmis: Thank you, Julie. It's really, really a pleasure to be in your podcast and it's not that I didn't want to be here. It's that running a restaurant is 100 times more work than I ever, ever, ever imagined in my life. Trust me, this is more fun than anything else that I've been doing.
Julie: Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, I've said several times before we started Nourish Balance Thrive, I toyed around with doing some food businesses and ultimately kept coming back to the same conclusion, that it was just too much work.
Yrmis: It is. It's a lot of work. I have a complete different level of appreciation for restaurants at this point.
Julie: So, tell us what is Mission Heirloom? I mean, I know all about it. I know all about the concept. But for our listeners, in a nutshell, in a brief explanation, what is Mission Heirloom?
Yrmis: Mission Heirloom is our intent to create a platform for people to carry on their health journey and elevate joy, elevate food and elevate performance. Everybody is different. Everybody has different dietary requirements. And we're here to support that. We believe that there should be different diets for different people and that's what we're trying to provide. It's safe space where people don't need to come to the restaurant with a million questions to feel safe or to actually figure out what they can eat. But find a menu that's very easy to navigate and filled with options for them.
Julie: That's incredible. What was it? I mean, what did you go through? When you were first starting out, what was it that was presented to you? Was it your own health? Was it your family's health? What was it that said, "This is something I need to take to other people."?
Yrmis: Well, five years ago, my husband and I were in this crossroad of wanting to find more purpose in what we were doing, which is design and it's a very enjoyable but we were lacking that sense of purpose. And in that search of purpose, we started tinkering with our own health and discovered autoimmunity in our daughter, autoimmunity in myself, and my husband as well. The three of us had complete different cases, which pretty much comes down to the same when it comes to autoimmunity.
I started understanding that we had the motivation, we had the triggers, but we were lacking the ability and our social life pretty much sunk. And not only because it took away the pleasure of going to a restaurant but because even our friends were embarrassed to go with us to restaurants when we had to ask so many questions because we legitimately get sick. So that's what we encountered. At the end of the day, we said there must be more people with the same problem.
And what else would have a higher purpose than actually feed people correctly so they can up their brain performance? And once you up somebody's performance physically, mentally, they take of their problems. They take care of their ailments because they are fully empowered. And individuals are usually so full of dignity. They want to earn their living from themselves. But for that, they need to be empowered first and fully fueled.
Julie: Yeah, that's incredible. I've been to both your production kitchen and your café and the production kitchen blew my mind. There's just the level of attention to detail in terms of creating the space that is not only -- Gluten free is the most minimal way that I could describe the kitchen. It's completely free of gluten. But it's also free of so many other things that are so difficult. Can you walk us through some of the things that you face when designing the kitchen space so that you could create this food for all these people that have all these different dietary requirements?
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Yrmis: Yes, absolutely. What we're trying to do is actually create a more virtuous food chain. So it's not only about a diet or dietary requirements. It's about how we source ingredients, how do we treat the ingredients once they enter in our kitchen. Treating means, do we expose them to chemicals? When we store it, when we clean the kitchen -- And how do we cook them? Are we tampering with the protein molecules, the fat molecules to create toxins or not?
After that, how long are we preserving them cooked? Are we eating them fresh enough to get all the nutrients? Are we packing them in containers that are toxic free, et cetera, et cetera? It's maybe 15 different layers of what we have to do to the food.
Julie: Yeah. I mean, I was blown away with, I mean, from the water filtration system to the attention to how food is stored and everything is in glass. Nothing is in plastic. The air filters that you had in the kitchen. I mean, there's the level of detail and work and effort that's gone into making sure that everything is pure and healthy and good, I was really impressed with. How much of that do you do at home?
Yrmis: Well, now that we're working so hard and I have no time to cook again, I only Mission Heirloom. People ask us how do you guys endure this? And I said, "Hey, it's food."
Julie: I mean, it is. It's so important. I mean, in our practice, that's the first thing that we get people to do, functional medicine. The first thing we get people to do is shore up their diet and make sure that they're eating really nutrient dense food because nothing else that we do for them will work if their diet is not right on track. It's a huge benefit to you guys to have that at your fingertips, to be able to eat that on a daily basis. That's great.
Yrmis: It's true. It's true because it makes a huge difference because we really know that if by any chance you react to any of the ingredients, it's because you are having a reaction to that ingredient itself and not because there's chemicals or because the way it was treated or cross-contamination issues, et cetera. But we feel great in terms of diet wise, thank goodness. We have the option.
Julie: Yeah. So in terms of the concept of Mission Heirloom, I mean, it's definitely different and it's a bigger deal than just opening a restaurant. You guys have bigger goals, you have bigger intentions for this to take it in different directions. And you tell people what your ideas are in terms of you've got the production kitchen and then you have the satellite café nearby, how do you plan to expand that and what makes it different than your typical eatery?
Yrmis: Yeah. We're trying to set a new standard for restaurants and we're also trying to create a mechanism for people to be able to invest in their food chain. As of now, if you want to invest in any food businesses, you have to do it either crowd sourcing but it's not really investing but more like supporting and then you get something in exchange. Or you have to go to the stock exchange and invest and to be conglomerates, which is probably not what anybody of the people that are interested in this would ever do.
So, what we want to do is actually create a full self-sustainable organism, let's say, in the Bay Area. So this kitchen that we have can support one to four cafes. And then prove this model works and take this and replicate it in different cities. And open it to direct public offering. It's called DPO, which is a mechanism that you work with the state that allows known crediting investors, which means regular people that don't have $1 million invested in the bank invest $25 and up into creating and funding the growth of a company.
And it's incredibly interesting. We're actually working on that now to see how soon can we bring this out to the table and offer it to people. Because we're really looking to create something where the bottom line of the company is not touched by the investment and doesn't change to just a money machine.
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Which, it's one of our biggest frustrations when we find a product that we can buy gets a little bit successful, gets bought out by bigger company, and then the formula changes and we start reacting like we do with any other products as well. And that's what we want to do. It's actually make a dent into a new standard, new way of eating across the United States funded and owned by regular people.
Julie: I think that's huge. How long do you think it will be before people can get involved in that?
Yrmis: I would say six months to a year the latest. We're really moving as fast as we can and we are actually looking into hitting the right numbers that we need to hit with sales. There are sales goals at the café in Shattuck which we've been doing. We hit it in December. We hit it in January. Let's see if we hit it up in February. So, every month, it's a little bit bigger. We need to grow at least 20% every month. And if we can do that, then we're looking at opening three cafes pretty much at the same time so that we can maximize--
Julie: You are crazy.
Yrmis: We are.
Julie: That just sealed the deal.
Yrmis: Okay, cool. I take that.
Julie: Where would those three cafes be, do you know?
Yrmis: We really don't know. That's something that actually will be determined by the investors and how the community really wants it. We could actually put out a few days. We can say we can open in Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa or Santa Cruz and Napa and San Francisco and Walnut Creek, San Jose and whoever funds the first three projects that we open the next three cafés and it will depend on where's the people and where do they want it? So, for us, it's going to be very easy to determine that because we could put up a few options and whatever gets funded, that's where we go.
Julie: That's incredible. I'll start campaigning here in the South Bay now. I know that when I went to the café for the first time, I was really curious. I mean, I was obviously excited because I'd been to the kitchen. I knew what to expect. But I was really surprised actually by what an emotional experience it was the first time I came because for the first time I just felt really relaxed in this situation because I knew I could literally eat everything that you had to offer and I didn't have to ask if I could eat it or not.
I didn't have to worry about the oils that it was cooked in. I didn't have to worry if there was some weird ingredient that I couldn't have. And that was the first time that my husband and I have had that experience in a long time other than cooking at home. And so, for me, as the main cook at home, I was a little bit overwhelmed. I think I ordered one of everything at the first day I went to, which is probably not uncommon, I guessing, for people's first.
Yrmis: No, we get a lot of that.
Julie: But was my question is: What has the response been? I'm curious how many people are coming in right off the street not knowing anything about the restaurant and how many people are finding out about you elsewhere and seeking you out?
Yrmis: There is a very, very big spectrum of people that we get in. I would say that a lot of people are finding us by Googling autoimmunity and paleo and they are looking for organic places and they find us. So, the consumer that comes in already knowing that they have an autoimmunity or they heard about us from a doctor, they come in and cry. We get different types of reactions. We get the people that grab the menu and they start jumping and they get a little nervous they don't know what to do with their emotions, "Oh my goodness, I can have everything on the menu."
Or you see them with a little finger pointing at the things, "I can have, I can have, I can have, I can have. Oh my god, I can have, I can have. What am I going to order? What do you like?" It's this incredible reaction and some people actually cry and some people asked us if they can hug us. It's amazing. And then there's other people that walk by that they just see the café and they're like, "Wow, this is really cool. Can I see the menu?" And it completely goes over the head, the whole depth of what we're doing.
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And then they are like, "Ah, this is a fantastic culinary adventure." And I think everybody asks what we're about based on how ready they are for the information. And we're ready to deal with that. To people that come in to say, "Hey, we want to see your menu because we want to look how paleo foods look like." And we're like, "Ah, this is just real food. It is nothing weird to look like." And to people that come completely resistant because they're coming from cooperative that's incredibly successful, the cheeseburger around the corner which we love the people from there.
We completely support what they do for the people that can't have gluten. But a lot of the customers come in with their pizza and they are like, "Oh, we just want to come in munching on our pizzas." We're like, "You have to understand, we have the most stranger and gluten-free certification in the nation and we cannot have crumbs over our tables of gluten because we're trying to create a seriously safe space for people that are severely allergic."
And with that people, we have a lot of problems because they already come with a huge wall of resistance and they're angry because they don't find their comfort zone.
Julie: Or they never probably understood. They've never been restricted. They can go anywhere and eat anything. I think they probably have a hard time empathizing with those people that are so restricted.
Yrmis: Yes, I agree. I agree. And these people have no knowledge if they are sick or not sick of -- You could see in a lot of people that they have the symptoms but they haven't make the connection yet that those symptoms are indeed related to the food, so they don't understand. But I would say that 60% of the customers that come to us looking for us, they know already and they jump and they cry. And then all the people, our delivery services with Good Eggs and with Real Food Bay Area, in Good Eggs, I would say, 80% is regular people that just want their food made. They're looking for convenience.
We don't hear much about them. They just like the food and keep buying. And Real Food Bay Area is more Western price based consumer which is very in touch with the quality of the ingredients that they want. They recognize that whether they eat gluten free or grain free or not. They still want a stew, a good stew or a good soup and they appreciate the quality.
Julie: Yeah, definitely. I think that's one of the things that you just -- You can't miss the quality because it's so evident in the meals. Everything that I've tried has just been really top notch. Are you still doing a lot of development in the kitchen in terms of packaging and quantity and sizing and different ways of getting food out to consumers or is that something that you're putting on hold for now as you get the café up and going?
Yrmis: Well, we have a lot or balls juggling in the air, to be honest with you. There's so much bandwidth that we have and absolutely the whole team, we're so thankful to the team because the whole team is so running thin and they are standing strong and going. It's unbelievable. But we are experimenting. We're actually focusing right now into switching gears to dinner and making a really, really light lunch. We find out that a lot of people are, of course, stranded with their jobs so they need a really quick turnaround for lunch.
They have less time to sit down and enjoy the garden, so we want to make sure that we have maybe a couple of soups, salad and some kind of Yucan Crunch dish evoking a bruschetta experience. That can speed up lunch and focus on dinner, which there's not one person that comes to the café that says, "Hey, if you guys open for dinner, we'll be here every night. But I have to do it after work." So, this is where our focus is.
It's like, "Okay, can we now evolve the menu that we've been working with for a while and now everybody feels comfortable with it. And I said, "Okay, cool. Now, we determine the flow, let's change menu so people have new things to try. And focus on that first."
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And then see if we can -- Our idea really is to double the offering of what we're doing for jars but we can just go little by little.
Julie: That's great.
Yrmis: Yes.
Julie: That's great. Just switching gears a little bit, I mean, looking on the website -- And I've definitely heard you talk about this about this a little bit. You talk a lot about free glutamate and vinegars. So our audience is pretty technical and into the science and everything. Can you tell us a little bit about why that's a hot topic for you guys and why you're interested in it?
Yrmis: Absolutely. It is a hot topic because we found out that the way you cook the ingredients, temperature, humidity, acidity, antioxidants play such a role into what you create and the final outcome of food and how it's going to affect you neurologically or how it's going to affect your self-receptors all along to your gut to your digestive tract. It has come to be one of the biggest missing link to my health personally and our daughter.
So, if I backtrack a little bit, going into paleo probably increased our health 60%. And then we stalled. And then digging deeper and then figuring out very specific allergies that we had in particular personally, to ingredients that were paleo approved help us increase another 10%, 15% of our health. And then figuring out that we were eating high glutamate diets help us increase pretty much the rest in a big deal, in a big quantity if not getting to 100% because I don't think anybody is at 100%, maybe get to a good 90%, 95%. It's amazing.
Julie: Yeah. I think that's huge. That really resonates. Because, I mean, that's what we're looking at in our practice. We get the diet right. A lot of people that come to us, they figured out the diet. For the most part, whether it's paleo or autoimmune protocol, but they still have a nagging 5% or so. My work with them is really trying to dial and doing some detective work and figuring out things like that, like the free glutamate, whatever, the last little pieces of the diet.
And then the last part is the testing, looking for the bacterial infections and the parasite infections and things like that or organic acids test. So, I think, that's huge. I think that's important for people to understand is that you're paying that close of attention to the food that you're putting in the kitchen or putting out in your café for people to enjoy. I don't think there's a lot of restaurants that really put that much thought and care even the top five-star Michelin star restaurants.
I think they probably have really quality ingredients but are they really putting that much attention and love and thought into the menus that they're preparing? I don't think so. I think that's great. You guys deserve big kudos for that.
Yrmis: It's complicated. I hear on a regular basis from our team that in the kitchen they go to these restaurants because they're organic and all these kids that work for us in the kitchen they have a true passion for ingredients quality, local resource, organic. They are all millennials and they want to stand behind that ideal. And they come frustrated because they said, "Those restaurants, we see what is being received and it's not what they say it is."
And most of them have come here to work part timers and they put their -- They quit in their other jobs and start coming, working with us full time because they said, "Listen, you guys are not cutting corners." Let's put it this way. None of them really understands at full force the importance of gluten free grain free because they are training to be chefs and they have a passion for ingredients. But then when they're coming here and they see what we can do with the ingredients, the level of the quality of the ingredients that we have, they're like, "Oh, we don't care about not working with gluten and grains if we can do all these with these amazing ingredients and we can stand behind something that's not cutting corners."
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And that is amazing because the more that -- We love beautiful food. It has to be delicious but it also has to be beautiful. And we've been learning a lot about molecular gastronomy and molecular gastronomy is a humongous amount of chemicals, carrageenan, citric acid, of xanthan gum, all these chemicals that there are incredible high-end websites that are selling all these chemicals, beautifully bottled. It blows my mind how restaurants are just focused on flavor and nothing else.
Julie: Yeah. I feel like it's got to -- The tide has to turn. At some point, I mean, I hope that it does, that people realize that it might look a certain way and might taste a certain way but how does it make you feel? I mean, that's one thing that I'm constantly striving to get people to do, to understand how their diet is making them feel, what they're eating is making them feel. Because I feel like people don't -- They live their whole lives, they live 30, 40 years and they've never taken a minute to stop and make the connection between what they're eating and how they feel.
I mean, I just feel like it has to change. But that's great to hear that the people that you're working with are starting to realize that you can actually be pretty inventive in the kitchen without using grains and gluten.
Yrmis: Absolutely.
Julie: Everything I've had there has been super inspired. I've definitely left feeling more inspired to cook my own meals after eating there. I think that that's a good sign especially for someone who cooks a lot. It takes a lot to inspire me these days. So walk me through. Before we go, just tell me what's on the menu this weekend? If people pop in to enjoy a meal this week, what could they be looking forward to?
Yrmis: Okay. They can look forward to an amazing octopus confit. They can look forward to our Sheppard pie. Our Sheppard pie has been the bestseller across the board. People love it because people are looking for those staples that resonate with comfort immediately. When you say, "Oh, we have a Sheppard pie," people know what to expect. So we've been finding out that that's one of the things that people crave the most, the most common dishes.
Maybe the most simple but the ones that they come out having any other place. And somehow are a little bit time consuming to do at home on a regular basis on a regular weekday. The taco salad. The taco salad has been a great success. It's very simple chicken soup, which is incredibly successful with little kids because they just love it and their moms can't believe it, how these kids just eat the whole thing.
Julie: Gobble it up.
Yrmis: Yes. But it's very approachable, so that's really nice. We also have four items in the menu that are AIP compliant. AIP, standing for autoimmune protocols compliant, nitrates free, butter dairy free, et cetera, et cetera free. And they are amazing and people are just blown away by the fact that there's options that are labeled AIP. We have chicken three ways, which is a dish that showcases made in three different ways, which is the chicharon, which is the Latin tem for the crispy skin of the chicken, and a hash with brussels sprouts and the actual meat of the chicken and gizzards.
They're really, really tender and shaved really thin and very approachable. And nice green mousse of chicken liver sweetened with apples. It's been having an incredible reception as well.
Julie: I'm giggling over here because I've literally had everything that you've said. And now I'm drooling because I wanted all again. And the taco salad was great. Ivy loved that. Ivy is my 14-month-old, and she absolutely loved the taco salad the last time that we were there for lunch. This has been great. Just tell people where you are, how to find you, where they can -- If they're not local, where they can get some of your jars of food to make food at home?
Yrmis: Okay. We have different things. We have a café in Berkeley and the café has the full restaurant for lunch and soon for dinner, soon as next week.
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We're open already Saturdays for dinner. We had a little bit of a complicated schedule but we're working on making it very simple across the board. So we have the restaurant where people can come and eat. And in front of the restaurant, there's the market where people can actually buy all the jars and take our meals back to go so they can go home and they don't have to cook. We have that for the locals.
For the rest of the Bay Area and the Tri-Valley includes all the way Gilroy up to, I think it's El Cerrito, there's the Real Food Bay Area. It's a CSA where you can actually choose what you want and they have drop points and some deliveries in house. It changes from city to city. Every person would have to check what's available in their area. But it brings the food really, really close to them. And the good thing is they can choose whatever they want.
And we also have a Good Eggs, which is a fantastic platform of Farmer's Market meeting online store. And they deliver mainly the San Francisco area. I think it's down from Cupertino to Marin or San Rafael. We also have our Yucan cracker that we didn't talk about.
Julie: Oh, yeah. We do need to talk about the cracker.
Yrmis: A lot of people ask about that. It's by far our bestseller, number one bestseller, and we sell that, we ship that national. It's one of the main questions people ask. It's like, "Can I get Yucan crunch?" We ship the Yucan crunch pretty much everywhere in the United States. We are working on cheaper shipping rates. We're desperately working on that because we want to make that product available for everybody. Isn't that fantastic alternative? So there's those three different levels of how people can get a hand of our products.
Julie: That is great. And I am so happy to hear about the Yucan crunch going all over because I'll start recommending that to all of my clients that I get to have to switch to AIP and they're like, "So, what can I eat that's crunchy?" I was like, "Well, not a lot. Sorry."
Yrmis: Not a lot. There's one thing.
Julie: There's one thing. It's one thing and one thing only. It's been so great talking to you. I'm so excited for all that you're doing and I really encourage everyone listening to definitely check out missionheirloom.com. Check out their website. They have a great blog as well. And if you're in the Bay Area, do not pass up on opportunity to stop by and say hello and check out the beautiful space that they've opened up there. Big things coming I hope for Mission Heirloom and also pay attention to when they start opening up their investments because I'm sure there's a lot of people I would love see this succeed.
Yrmis: Thank you so much. If you want to go our website, they can sign up for a newsletter which is where we're going to release the investment opportunities when the time comes.
Julie: Awesome. That is so great. Well, thank you, Yrmis, for being here and I can't wait to get back up and have lunch with you again soon.
Yrmis: Thank you so much for having us in your podcast. This is complete honor, total honor.
Julie: Good. Very good. All right, we'll talk soon.
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