What Fascinates Craig Davis of Tesla? Pt. 1

Bobby: Welcome to What Fascinates You?—conversations with entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries who bring world-changing innovations to life. I'm your host, Bobby Mukherjee. I'm the CEO of Loka, a Silicon Valley-based tech consultancy, as well as a lifelong entrepreneur and all around curious guy who finds inspiration in the people, ideas and technologies that shape our world. This is our final What Fascinates You? of the year, and I gotta say: It's a slam dunk.

Today we'll meet Craig Davis, a Southern gentleman living in Germany who's at the forefront of environmental sustainability in some wildly divergent cutting-edge industries. Most recently, Craig was the European Director of Impossible Foods, the company that created the Impossible Burger, one of the top-selling plant-based meats in the world.

Back in 2008, he was Tesla's first director of Sales and marketing in Europe. This guy basically introduced the Tesla to the European market. Before and throughout that time, he has maintained his own consultancy, Clean Green Fast, where he provides strategic and operational support to companies involved in the electric mobility industry. If that weren't enough bonafides, right out of college, he put in time at the German offices of Coca-Cola and BMW Mini, basically over the course of his 30-year career, Craig has worked for some of the world's most recognized brands and most brilliant thinkers, including Pat Brown, the founder of Impossible Foods, and Twitter conqueror Elon Musk. As you can imagine, Craig's a fascinating guy and he and I had a lot to talk about. In fact, we have two podcasts worth of thoughts and stories, including how a drag race with a Porsche on the streets of Munich led to an early Tesla sale. So we've split this year-end entry of What Fascinates You? into two parts. We have lots to cover, so let's begin.

Hello Craig, and welcome to What Fascinates You? Take a moment and please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Craig: Hi Bobby. Great to be here. Yeah, Craig Davis. I am, as you can hear, an American abroad. Been living in Europe for some years, over 25 to be exact. Came over here to work for some of the bigger companies that sell sugar water in plastic bottles. And then ended up going over to the other side and working on climate technology with the likes of Tesla Impossible Foods and some others.

And yeah, happy to be here and talk about what interests me.

Bobby: Fantastic. I'm so glad you're here. Your story is full of interesting twists and turns and includes time spent at some of the busiest companies on the planet right now, all of which we're all gonna get into during our conversation.

But to start out, I'm just wondering what you're currently up to and what you'd be doing right now if you and I weren't having a conversation right now

Craig: What would I be doing right now f we weren't having the conversation? I would be having this same conversation with other folks that are interested in listening and a lot of people that don't want to listen.

For instance, I decided short term not to go COP 27 as an example, because there's a lot of opportunity to speak about change and climate change and acting on climate change. But you really have to find the right outlets for it, right? So I'm working on projects in Africa at the moment. Also working on some other EV projects, working on projects that actually are, let's say, a friend says “enabling technologies,”  allowing each individual to have a positive impact on the climate. So I will be talking to people that do listen, but I don't preach to the choir too much.

I typically am trying to convert people that are unconvertible into thinking in this direction. And so that's what keeps me busy.

Bobby: I know you're involved with a number of things, but pick one or two right now that gets you most excited in the morning when you're putting in your best effort.

Craig: I'm working on something in Africa right now, a project where we see an opportunity to what we call the Norwegian Playbook to have a country in Africa convert using its profits from the fossil fuel industry directly into a renewable industry, renewable energy economy. That includes, the way I like to describe it is the Democratic sun direct through technology into storage or into direct use in a car or other.

And making sure that countries are able to prioritize movement when they're doing well, not when it's too late. And so as you, you might well know Africa is known for having a lot of resources, but the. Value of these resources doesn't get redirected into reshaping the infrastructure and reshaping their economies for the long term.

So this is like a short term taking, and so this is one of my, I would say, one of the heavier lifts that I can imagine doing. But I think that's what motivates me a lot now, is creating this complete ecosystem. And the reason we call it the Norway Playbook is because basically the Norwegian electric mobility developments that we've seen over the last years have come from the fact that StatOil, the state owned fossil energy provider actually saw that they were not gonna continue to be able to sell fossil fuels and they needed alternatives. And they had a lot of wind, they have a lot of thermal energy, and they wanted to put that, make that more sexy and put that into real time usage.

And that was in electric vehicles. And so we see that electric vehicles can become a decentralized storage for energy, but also can allow us to reduce emissions and keep moving using real-time energy. And so I think that's probably the most exciting thing you can think about doing and that's what I do most of the time.

But doing that for Africa is very interesting.

Bobby: Has the Norwegian playbook been applied in other countries to your knowledge?

Craig: Not like Norway's done it, right? I think Norway was very conscious and very aware, and that's like the most important thing is getting leadership to be aware in advance of these trends.

And so getting that kind of playbook moving in a country where typically the resources are going to a very small percentage of the people. In the country. This takes a lot more influence, if you wanna put it that way. And it also, however, has been supported by the continuing trend that we're not finding a lot more fossil fuels, that our air is not gonna clean itself like auto automatically.

And you look at some of the countries in Africa and they're expecting to have upwards from 700 million to a billion people in some of the countries. And now you know which one I might be speaking about. But basically, If we don't look forward to making those lives better now, then there will be a certain suffering that happens there.

And yeah, there's ways around that. There's ways to get around that using the right climate technology.

Bobby: So that makes a lot of sense to me, and frankly, is quite inspiring. And it makes me wonder, not knowing nearly as much about this world, but imagine I was a tourist and I had the privilege to go to COP 27, and I could talk to people and understand a bit more.

One of the questions I might have would be, why don't other countries that have the potential for the Norway playbook not implement the Norway playbook? So why has “Unnamed African Country” decided to do so? Why does Saudi Arabia not do it? Why does the US, with all its shale reserves, not do it? What motivated an African country to do it?

Craig: Let's point fingers basically where they should first be pointed. I'll take an example from Germany. So our chancellor recently visited another oil-rich country in Africa just before heading off to Cop 27. And there he was preaching. Investing in fossil fuels.

And then he arrived in COP 27 and was preaching, join the Climate Action gang, right? Join the Climate Action group. So you see that regardless of where their pointing of fingers begins, it must always end where you can't pass the buck any further with our leadership. And if the leadership, and I named Germany, because I can be very clear and.

Specific that we know that they're in an energy crisis that Germany's in an energy crisis. At the moment, we know that could have been averted because Germany was leading in many of the renewable resource solutions up to 10 years ago before not focusing on them any longer. And so we know that they have the potential to do this.

However, man speak with forked tongue. And I think this is the biggest challenge of all the COPs, right? I've been to COP 15, the interesting story. COP 15 was back in 2009 and I drove from Munich here from my parking space in my, under my apartment where I charged my Tesla Roadster. I charged. Here, left with the train overnight, piggybacked the car on the train. Got off in Hamburg. Drove over a ferry to Copenhagen on the ferry. I was able to cop a charge. Speaking of COP, I was able to get a charge on the ferry, and then I arrived in downtown Copenhagen on one battery charge in 2009 from Munich. So I've been to COPs before. But the same kind of things that you hear at COP right now, you hear over and over again, the question is when do our leadership actually walk the walk and not just talk the talk?

And so I think that's the most critical thing that must come out of any cop is that it must be a meeting of the wealthiest countries. Together with those that are gonna suffer first. Those are the countries in Africa and Asia and perhaps South America. Parts of North America are gonna suffer greatly and they have to all come together.

They have to open their minds to technologies to changing of habits, to all of the scientific measurements that have taken place. But most importantly, they have to also listen to the activists. That are saying to them, since a very long time, we don't have to point very far. Carl Sagan in 1986 was already letting us know in the Senate, in the United States what was gonna happen to the climate.

And I encourage everyone to listen. You can YouTube it. 1986, Carl Sagan, it'll blow your mind, right? Because you think he had this speech yesterday, years later in 1986. I graduated from high school. So let's not, I don't want to get into that too much. What really has happened since then?

And so I think that's critical and that's what has to happen at COP.

Bobby: The African country that's trying to do the Norway playbook. Taking the positive side of that, they seem to have leadership that is in fact walking the talk.

Craig: Yes, we hope so. Yeah, and we'll see. Basically we'll have to define, first of all, what would the outcomes be? What do they want as an outcome? All of us, not just those providing the technology, not those just providing the carbon credits, not those just saying that they wanna change the world. Really agreeing with everyone, that it's for the people of the country. And it's to find a way around the current situation that they have.

Most African countries are not even having, we talk about having a blackout in Germany and everyone freaks out. But in Africa, at any given moment, the lights will go off. And when you're used to it, you're used to it. But three, four times a day, the lights will go off.

Everything will power down and at night you hear diesel generators running everywhere in the background. So when you're making your nighttime energy using a diesel generator in the middle of a city of 4 million people, then you have to really ask yourself if this planet is up for saving, or are we really just shoving it over the edge, right?

And bailing out for Mars. We'll first, see, we do know that they've invested in these projects before, but now we're gonna check to see if it works all the way down. To the execution, to the driving, to the storage of the energy.

Bobby: Among all the interesting milestones in your career, I see this overarching theme where you have a concern for environmental sustainability, and I'm curious, what is the earliest memory you have of awakening to the importance of sustain sustainability, and what did that then compel you to do?

Craig: There's a trick here. Yeah. So you can see these things early in your life. So I was in the Boy Scouts. This sounds very cheesy, but I spent most of my life outdoors. So sleeping in the summer, in the winter, hiking, camping. I spent most of my time outdoors. I did lots of work creating major outings, paths for people to walk on, things like that.

So people would go out and explore, and I spent most of the time, although my mom hated it, in the creek in my backyard, right? With the snakes and the crawdads and all the other creepy crawlies. So I've always been really close to nature. However, I must say the first time that I really became aware of it was a bit too late when I found myself working for Coca-Cola in, in Europe, and I was realizing that, oh wow, this is a great brand, right?

And I enjoy the people I work with, and I enjoy the action of being a brand manager and brand management around a. One of the most well-known brands on the planet. But then I realized, wow, it actually goes against every single thing that I grew up thinking. And so I would say I thought about that as I was at Coca-Cola very often, which is why I left and went into the digital space.

But that's another topic. And then I would say that the time that it really became aware to me was when I was working at Mini, which is also was my attempt at working in automotive with a sort of a tabular brand, bringing it back from the dead, if you will, low carbon footprint, small car for the city.

Really starting this whole movement towards maybe lower emission driving. And then my first daughter came out into the world and then followed by the second, and then I really started to see the world through their eyes because I realized that what I'm gonna hand over to them is gonna be messy. I even remember as I made the decision to leave Mini to go to work for Tesla, and I had the discussion with my wife.

And she said I totally trust your decision because it sounds amazing, and I hope it works right? Because, leaving b m w with two young children is a bit of a hard edge or a big cliff. But I said, yeah, the whole thing is that if we don't do it right, if Tesla doesn't do it, then who does do this? Who gets this started? Because realistically, I knew already in working with inside the car industry that what is communicated is not necessarily true. And we found this out with Dieselgate. I saw a lot of this in my work, and a lot of it you have to ignore and then you get to a point where you stop ignoring.

And I would say, what interests me, again, bringing back your very interesting way of looking at the world, what interests me is that people ask themselves the questions, is this really worth what I'm doing? Is this impactful and worthwhile doing, or is it not? And if it's not, and I can guarantee you that there is not gonna be much value coming out of it or happiness coming out of it, it doesn't actually offer any really future value for you or for others.

And so that's one of the things that interests me is to look at technology and the products that technology can offer us so that we can not give up or stop consuming, if you will. Not have to give up the things that we want, but at least alternatives to move us more quickly in a new direction so that we don't have to suffer.

Not to suffer in terms of destroying something that we love. Having to live through the pains of that, of being aware of that, but suffer in terms of showering cold or not eating meat that one loves or not driving a car fast that one likes. I think that you have to find alternatives, first of all to change habits slowly, and so I think that the conversation with me was always how to come to terms with nature. The nature you want to live in without having to, using another example, get in a plane, fly to Australia to see the Great Barrier Reef go there, consume a great deal of airplane fuel, and create a lot of emissions to go and see something before it's gone.

Is this really a valuable trip? Does that really make sense? And if you think about that, every single one, it doesn't have to be as big a decision as being a climate tourist and going and seeing something that's being destroyed by actually what you're doing, right? It's actually waking up every day and saying, what can I change? What little things can I change? And which brands can help me do these things in order to make life a little bit better for me and for my family? Down the road. So that's like a long answer to your question.

Bobby: No, but it's super compelling and makes a lot of sense. You come across as a guy that's super grateful and enjoys the blessings you've had, but I think you probably recognize that you have the good fortune of.

Pursuing something that you find meaningful and is mission driven and that you authentically believe in it, and that there are a lot of people on earth that don't quite have that same alignment, which I think is what is your nuclear fission reactor to mixed metaphors into what you drive into your drive into your career.

Going back to those, just rounding out those early days in Germany with Coca-Cola and Mini, it seems like you. Effectively permanently relocated to Germany from North Carolina?

Craig: Yeah. It was not intended, but yeah, it did happen like that. Yeah.

Bobby: And tell us a little bit about that unintentional move.

Craig: When you're a young, aspiring person that wants to see the world, you have two options. You used to have more options used to join the army, see the world, or you would be able to go into the Peace Corps, which is an idea that is unfortunately, sadly missed, gone, but should be brought back.

Being able to see the world in exchange with people in other cultures, which would be a really great exchange with real people in other cultures. The other way was to. Be lucky enough to get on board with an international company, but not as a 65 year old right at the end of the career, whatever.

Really get in, dig in as a young person. And so I just basically threw all of it into getting a job abroad and that was my core focus, which brand? Which direction was less of the focus. More of the focus was to get into a, an environment where I could learn a new language and live in a new culture.

And so that's how I came to work at the United Nations in Austria and then at Coca-Cola, later in Austria. And I had a great opportunity to meet all kinds of Europeans, people from all around the world, but really amazing people that saw things from very different ways than I was used to.

And then I really learned from that. And then coming to Munich for many, that was just the first extension because you think you're an expat, right? You think you're gonna go abroad and come back, spend three years, and then go back. And then I just ended up linking to the next steps.

And obviously I stayed pretty close then to my family that's now based out of Munich and Vienna. And so that's why I'm still here as one of the main reasons, and also because Germany meets and Europe need also this kind of thinking and these kind of people that press on these buttons very often and very loudly will probably come to some people that do this, that you know about and we talked about daily in the press now.

But I think that the world needs to have. Apply direct pressure and raise the injured digit member so that you can make sure that it gets attention. And that's why I've stayed here since.

Bobby: Let's talk about that for a minute. Does your European residency give you, you think a perspective about climate change or environmental sustainability that folks in, in the US would find new or novel or different to how they think about it?

Craig: Yeah. I think that we have to see that, we'll come maybe this to this topic later, but we're talking a lot about free speech lately and journalism. You'll find that Europe, and especially Germany has some of the freest press in the world and some of the most amazing press in the world.

I've often said that where the the US has raised consumers, Europe has tended to raise citizens, right? And that comes from actually being more aware, reading more different kinds of press, being more educated.

There's a scarcity issue here, right? So you know, there's not that much room here. The prices of energy and other things are much higher. You'll hear and see that Germany has a lot more trouble in dealing with inflation and energy issues than, say, the US. You may complain about how expensive your gas is there now, but it's always that expensive here, and it's now more expensive.

Certainly this gives me a little bit of a different way of looking at it than others, and in my work With Impossible Foods. I was directing their expansion here into Europe for 18 months until the war got us. Basically, I was impressing upon them how important it was to talk more about the climate side of not eating meat.

They were really amazed once we did research and saw that. That's really true, that Europeans are much more advanced in their way of looking at climate neutrality at a mission, at nature, at taking care of nature and then also what role animals play. And then in fact, what role do humans play in the natural ecosystem?

So I think that Europeans are very in tune with that, and it comes from scarcity, the economics of it, and then obviously the journalism and the education around it.

Bobby: Since you mentioned Impossible Foods, let's spend a little bit of time there. People have a lot of questions; I do as well. Such an interesting company. When it comes to marketing and branding, a single word can have massive implications. So tell me why it's important that Impossible Foods makes meat and not substitute or something along those lines.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah that's a really good one. I had to come to grips with this as well, right? Being myself, having gone through periods of being a vegan, being a vegetarian, my family being the same, stopped putting myself in these boxes, but did look at the research and did understand that it's like looking at meat and ma making, finding alternatives for meat that taste like meat.

It's critical because you're going after those that are very difficult to convert. So you're not going after the vegans. The vegans have already been doing a lot of heavy lifting for the planet. They got us to move over the course of years towards oat drinks like Oatley. It's not a new company.

It's been around for decades. And then you have a lot of plant-based meat companies out of the UK that have been serving plant-based solutions also for decades. So it's nothing really new. However, they were tasting really good to vegans and, sorry, it's not easy to cook, vegetarian. You need to have some of these emotional triggers when you eat because it is an emotional experience.

And so meat is in our brain, right? Meat is basically hardwired into us. And so what impossible does in creating. Plant-based meat that tastes like meat. This is brilliant because you're going after the 90% of the population and not the 10% that's already thinking in this direction, and that's critical.

It's like at Tesla, not creating a car that is a city car that is low powered and maybe not so nice looking, just so that you can do something to the environment. Basically, Tesla went and said, Hey, let's make a badass car. And by the way, it's electric and you can charge it with the sign, right?

That's the way you have to look at it. In order to convert the unconvertible, let's call them, or the difficult to convert, you really have to go after them with technology. And in that case, Impossible Foods has 450 patents in biotech technology around food. And mainly around adjusting the taste. And so taste is what's gonna be the trigger to get people to change again without having to give up too much.

Like I mentioned before, just like Tesla and having an amazing acceleration and a great looking car helps you get over the fact that it's electric. Until you realize that, yeah, you didn't need that old car anyway. And who needs meat when it tastes the same from plants.

Bobby: So before you had ever. joined Impossible Foods, had you tried an Impossible Burger or any of their products?

Craig: Actually, no. I had never, but I had a very good colleague that was working with Tesla. She made me aware that she had gone there, and I said, that's amazing, right? So I was following them for quite a while and I had never tasted one because I got caught up in the Corona period.

So I wasn't really traveling, and obviously the products weren't here yet. I had all of the other products that were competitors here. The Garden Gourmet, which is the McDonald's plant-based burger. And then Unilever, which was at Burger King. And then after that, I started at Impossible. I had something sent to me and came in trying to be unbiased with having had experience with some of these other ones.

Bobby: When you took that first bite or that first experience with that impossible burger that was sent to you, what did you really think?

Craig: The burger's not my favorite product from them, right? I think their best product is the sausage patty that's at Starbucks, right? And so it's like the best selling Starbucks breakfast ever. I think what I understand from the volume of the sales, and that's what Starbucks says as well. And so I had that scent over to me. I took a bite into it, I put a little bit of vegan cheese on it, and I put it on an English muffin toasted, right?

So this is something that I actually used to eat with my grandmom at her place. But it was with a Jimmy Dean sausage patty, right? Sure. There you go. So I thought, okay, here goes, I'm gonna see how this works out. And I took my first buy and I, it's like time travel, right? Because I hadn't eaten a sausage patty.

I ate no sausage, really? And I was just blown away, right? And it really took me back to sitting like on my grandma's porch, eating a Jimmy Dean sausage patty on a English muffin. And so I would say that's the best product. And if you haven't tried it, try it. And the burger just blows your mind, right? The main thing about the burger is, and this is seriously crazy, is that you throw it on the grill besides some other burgers and no one knows the difference.

That's also amazing,

Bobby: right? We're recording this podcast at like breakfast time for me, dinner time for you. So I'm feeling hungry and I'm gonna have to race out and find, in fact, there's a Starbucks near me, so I'm gonna go give it a

Craig: shot. Yeah, I can definitely recommend it. Yeah.

Bobby: Were you a vegetarian or vegan before you?

Are you a vegetarian or vegan?

Craig: Let's put it this way. For business, I eat meat, so I will test and track, track changes in my impression of meat versus the meats that I know that the technology can now. Offer solution for, but I don't eat meat regularly. So I would only eat it for business, just like I only fly for business.

So otherwise I would always find another arduous way of getting around. And in that case, I would say I'm a free time vegetarian. And I have been a vegan before, but that's a real tough one. Getting rid of cheese and everything is tough.

Bobby: Yeah, I can imagine. So when did you make that shift to being a free time vegetarian?

I guess.

Craig: Probably, let's see, there's some periods around 2011, 2013, I started doing a lot of like serious sports. I basically was just testing what my body needed what I really needed to be optimal, and I found just for my person, for my type that I didn't really need meat. That I didn't need or as nearly as much meat, and then it just just started to decline.

So I think it's really important that everyone decide what they eat themselves, but just have to be conscious of where it comes from, how it gets there, what it is and then what all the alternatives. And then now these days you can go into, I did this years ago before the documentary films on Netflix, like Game Changers or wherever, where they basically do, scientific research on.

What the human body really needs and what animal meat actually does to you. And so I think now you can hear lots of athletes coming out and saying I'm, I don't eat meat from animals. That makes people really turn their heads because you realize these people aren't selling something cuz there's nothing to be sold.

It's just a question of making a personal decision that's right for you and right for the planet. I

Bobby: mean, I think those personal choices do reflect in institutional and political and enterprise level shifts. That's where it starts.

Craig: Always al always a social movement first, right?

Correct. I correct. Most of the things we talk about here are most things start as a social movement and then later they find business case. So like electric cars, right? They started as a social movement for clean air and plant-based is also a, along the same lines, growing out of animal welfare, but also health of humans.

And then we see where it goes from there.

Bobby: So I think for a lot of the listeners, they may not know at least the shortened version of the origin story for Impossible Foods, as well as they know some of the other kind of companies you've worked at and their origin stories, which we'll get to. As you'd mentioned, there were other plant-based substitutes available in the UK and in Europe and so forth before Impossible.

For the listeners that don't know what is the key important points to take away from the origin story of Impossible Foods? The

Craig: key thing to take away from it is that, Pat Brown took a conscious look. Pat Brown had worked on the D n a human d n A for years, did research around the H I V virus and D n a and a very smart gentleman, right?

I don't want to go into all of his titles, but it quite possibly one of the most gifted scientists that the United States has ever seen, and he. Took a look around and said, what would he like to do with his life? And said, Hey, wow, wouldn't it just be great to really look deeply into this alternative to animals as food?

And not for any reasons around ideology or anything else, just basically from science, from the science point of view, right? And so this is what's so interesting, is really to understand the human brain and why it needs. And looks and goes in search of blood. Why? This experience is in our psychology, it's in our history for as long as we've been here and understanding all these things and then understanding what the triggers are and the trigger are taste and smell, and the experience.

Cooking meat. I don't think he went into depth around the science around how do you get the animal right, because there would've been a lot more ritual behind it. If you look at the historic development of the human being our survival depended on also finding animals, right? And so the hunting process the culture around the hunting and getting, getting access to high protein animals was critical for our survival.

But at some point in time, we went overboard. Looking at it from a science point of view was very interesting. And that's taste. Taste is taste and smell. And it's interesting that through science recently we found that. Some human beings can see more colors than others and some human beings can taste more than others.

And then we started realizing, oh wait, there's actually more ways to describe taste. There's a very interesting gentleman called Harold McGee who did research also with Impossible. And he's also known as the guy who found out what space tastes like and smells like. And he helps calibrate machines that were used in the scientific process of trying to make exactly what humans want from food into a better version of the animal.

And that's through the s soy like hemoglobin, which is the blood made out of the soybean root. Wow. And it's fascinating

Bobby: if I recall. The early days with Pap Brown and impossible, like actually not the early days, but like the pre days he had gone on some sabbatical or something, right?

Craig: Yeah. He took time off and he honestly thought about how he could have the biggest impact on positive impact on the virus. So this is after years and years

Bobby: of studying genetics and h i v virus. And then he is he wants to take a break and is what

Craig: else? Yeah, exactly. And that's what's so amazing working with him, right?

Being in meetings with him is just so refreshing, right? Because, he's just so for this planet, he's so into asking questions and opening up like new discussions and digging into them, right? Not just like talking about 'em, but okay, we do the research, did the research, did the homework, and then basically came back and said, why need meat if we can do this with plans?

And that's just like an interim step, right? And there's lots of. Lots of technology that will come out of the likes of Impossible Foods and others in the future that can help us go in this direction if we keep people like this in our focus and in our priority. You

Bobby: got to Impossible Foods probably a decade into the company's existence,

Craig: is that Yeah they've been around for about nine years.

Yeah.

Bobby: Yeah. And you probably have this huge volume of experiences that the company had already go, gone through. And I'm curious what were maybe some of the micro breakthroughs that maybe didn't reach the headlines, but led to, the. The sausage patty being as amazing as it is.

Craig: No, I think you have to talk probably to other people that were at impossible since the beginning. So I worked closely with Nick Holla and he went through all of this. He can speak to this much better than anyone. In fact, all of the points that I've mentioned, cuz he spent the last 11 years doing this.

But I think that I missed a lot of the really good stories. When you hear them after they've happened, you're oh wow, okay. Whatever. It's like at Tesla. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, you can't imagine, being in a field and trying to figure out which soy to grow and which one tastes the best, and you can't, you have to do it yourself, right?

Because you can't go to a supplier and ask for something that doesn't necessarily exist. So doing things. Probably the most interesting thing that happened was, apart from looking into the science and the psychology, was to look into really doing this all from scratch. And that's probably the most interesting milestones were figuring out and testing and trying different things that no one probably would've ever thought about trying.

That however did work out. Yeah, I'm not the best person to answer that question, but

Bobby: it seems like what impossible had going for it with Pat Brown's kind of. Influence on the culture was this first principle's approach to this? Yes. Like this? Absolutely. This wasn't a guy that had been working with plant-based foods for 20 years and decided, okay, now we're gonna do something different.

It was more like, I'd never really touched plant-based food, but I had done a bunch of other things that were pretty compelling and how could I take first principles thinking at its best and apply to this problem. I think what I'm hearing is the whole. Starting from scratch was maybe their

Craig: scratch is the hard bit, right?

The scratch is the no investors, no investment, no, no clear business plan. Lots of people digging around, doing things, tinkering around. It was the same thing with Tesla or with SpaceX or whatever. There's this period of what are you really doing? What is up?

And then people will start asking you question, so where's, where did my money go? Elon, and Elon was, is obviously very into this as well. The first principle thinking, and obviously was also, I always said Pat Brown. I didn't, but we all did, said that Pat Brown's kind of like a Elon Musk for this planet.

It's really about starting from scratch and having the, having enough air in the room in order to get through the scratch period where you can start saying, okay, no, there is actually a use case. For plant-based blood. Wow. And everyone was like, wow, there's a business case there. And that's better than Google did for many time, for many years.

Bobby: Oh, ab absolutely. So take us through, a day in the life of Craig when you were, working full tilt at Impossible Foods. What were you working on? What were you doing?

Craig: Again, working with California on European time, which is a real drag. So you know, your morning starts at nine and ends at three in the morning.

So that's bit of how long my days are at Telan and impossible. But I did go a little bit lighter this time. Basically, I was setting up. For them understanding Europe, looking at the markets what the markets are interested in, which directions are the markets going. Obviously looking at creating products for Europe, right?

So you can't just, the burger's a real easy one, but the, you have to also look at other products that are more specific, traditional, focused in Europe. Eaters in Europe are very different than in the us UK is a bit more similar. Europe is very traditional and depending on where you go like towards France or Italy can get very traditional.

So I think it was basically about setting up, first of all the products, the thinking, around how to go to market and then how to phase into which markets, and then obviously doing it right. So finding all the partners, setting up all the business connections obviously importers from, the importers, distributors and everything else.

So I, I did. Pretty much everything as well as getting the team together, right? And so this was actually my joy was to be able to do this again, to be lucky enough to be able to do this again for a brand that has such amazing potential to have positive impact on the planet. That's was like the next version of Tesla, but for plant-based meat.

For meat, we hear

Bobby: about companies like redefine Meat supplying its products to beef bar restaurants across Europe. Do you think that is now the. The turning point for this getting, widespread adoption?

Craig: I think the key thing is it goes back to taste again, right? So I think that taste is critical.

And then obviously because of the war in Ukraine, the supply chain is critical, right? So you have to have local sourcing and manufacturing of these products. There's a little bit of local requirement indeed in the nature of developing the products as well as the logistics around the products and their total carbon footprint.

So I think that, it's important that we see that. We'll be looking for a lot more solutions, not only soy, right? Peas, which are the two top, but also mushrooms. And mushrooms are amazing. Mushrooms offer huge opportunities and not in terms of, not only in terms of texture, but also in terms of taste.

And basically it's not gonna be one single plant. It'll be a mixture of plants that, that will make the taste. And then obviously some special ingredients like Impossible Foods, heme, or others that will come up with. Potential special sauces, special ingredients that make it uniquely human uniquely.

Meat eater, athe, and help us slowly but surely, convert more of the unconvertible towards a more climate focused diet.

Bobby: There are a number of folks at Loca that wanted me to ask you about whether the plant-based filet mignon is coming along.

Craig: Trick question. Everyone has a filet mignon, and I will sidetrack this question by saying more important than the filet mignon is who is gonna do the first chicken breast?

Ah, interesting. The first really amazing chicken breast. So I get it. If you look all the research. The cow does the most damage right to the environment, right? The raising of the cow does the most damage to the environment, so it would be naturally the one you wanna apply the most pressure to.

But a volume around chicken is amazing, right? Chicken breast is really the holy grail of plant-based meat. So if they're gonna get a filet mignon or when it's gonna come, I'm also excited. There's some other companies that have already tried it, right? Juicy Marbles, they're based outta check. They have investment also outta California.

There's a couple of others I've tried. Some of them, I still think that they, I always say it falls into the vegan camp. We used to say, What is it? My dad used to say to me, this is this is camping food. It's good. This is like camping food, right? So yeah, you'll survive on it, right?

But is it really what you want to be eating? Is it like a filet mignon? And in order to get to that level where a filet mignon is as nice as. As the burger from the impossible food suit, it's gonna take some special. Yeah,

Bobby: It's great to see what comes out. We'll see. Yeah, that's right. The search for the Holy Grail of plant-based meat is in full swing.

And with that revelation, we arrive at the conclusion of part one of this episode of what Fascinates You. I'd like to thank Craig Davis for giving us so much of his time and energy and there's more to come. In the second part of this episode, Craig describes the origin story of Impossible Foods and the brilliance of the company's founder, pat Brown, and goes deep on his experience working with Elon Musk during the early days of Tesla, a history that includes a car chase.

Through Munich involving a Porsche nine 11 and a Tesla roaster. Stay tuned. Part two will arrive in the coming weeks. And as always, thanks for listening For what fascinates You? I'm Bobby Mukherjee.