Food People #004: Kirsten Sutaria & Food Science

I met Kirsten last year on Twitter or Instagram, or was it LinkedIn? We finally met in person at Expo West this year, and it felt like we’d been friends forever. We immediately bonded over founder life and food development.

Kirsten has an incredible career in food spanning 15+ years working with iconic brands like Ben & Jerry’s and P.F. Chang’s. She spent four years building her brand, Doozy Pots, an award-winning plant-based gelato company, from the ground up with a team of two.

When we finally recorded this interview a few months ago (we’ve established I’m a bit behind in publishing these interviews, right?), it was impossible to stay on track and not spend hours talking about everything like we were besties. 

I’m so excited to share with you Kirsten’s background, from growing up all around food, from family restaurants to living near the Ben & Jerry’s Vermont factory as a kid (an epic childhood in my mind), to her career path from Cornell to Unilever to London to Doozy Pots and more.

A recent update since we recorded this interview! Kirsten has joined the SkinnyDipped team as Director of R&D and Innovation. Congrats!! 🎉

Bon Appétit! - Read Time: 15 Minutes

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Part I: Business

Lex: Describe your path to working in food.

Kirsten: My path to working in food started when I was born. My parents had a restaurant, a bakery, and a catering business. The week I was born my parents were doing a big dinner for the cast of a soap opera or something.

The night before the dinner, I was born, so my mom couldn't go. I was thrust into it and in the kitchen from a young age. We were at my grandparents or the restaurant and sitting at a table peeling kiwis and carrots.

I also read that you grew up not too far away from an ice cream factory.

When I was five we moved from Long Island to Waterbury, Vermont, which is the home of Ben & Jerry's; I grew up down the road, so ice cream was always a big part of my life.

I remember being a little kid and going on the factory tour, seeing them chop open the big pints using a massive knife to see what was inside. I was like, that looks like a cool job. I want to do that.

Growing up in a town of 4,000 people, you don't have much to do, but you could go on the Ben & Jerry's tour for free. So we would walk there in the summer, my girlfriends and I, and we would go on the tour repeatedly.

They would ask questions on the tour and you would win prizes. If you went on it three or four times in a day, you knew the answers to get the prizes. I ended up working there for a long time. So I'm not only an ice cream nerd, but I also have a lot of old-school Ben and Jerry's trivia and history. 

I realized I could study food science and not have to live the restaurant life to work in food, which is not a great lifestyle. I also realized I could play with food and have a semi-normal nine-to-five.

And that turned into a 15-year career in ice cream, food and beverage, R&D, and food science. Tell me more.

I graduated in 2008 from Cornell.

Growing up in Vermont, I always wanted to work for a natural brand. It was the spring of 2008 and the economy was crashing and banks were failing, so any job would be a good job. I got a job with Unilever, thinking I'd be there a year, and ended up staying there for almost 10 years.

For the last six years, I’ve been with Innocent Drinks, launched my own brand, and done six years of product development consulting with other brands.

Very few people are fortunate enough to know what they want to do so early in life.

What has been your most cherished highlight of working in food?

Oh man, there have been so many good ones. As a product developer, knowing how long things take to get to market, the feeling of going into a grocery store and seeing your product on the shelf never gets old.

I've seen products that I've made in freezers and fridges across the world, which is really cool to see.

But having my own brand where there were two people doing the work of 40 people or more and seeing our brand’s Doozy Pots in the freezer next to Ben and Jerry's was a peak moment; to be able to see projects that have basically spanned the last 10 years sold together was a really proud moment.

What has been the toughest obstacle you've had to overcome, whether that's in your professional career or as a brand founder?

In the last 15 years, the most challenging piece was being a founder and starting a business six months before COVID-19 happened. I think starting a brand, you'll always have to literally roll with the punches because the punches come every day. But that felt especially hard.

However, it was just my husband and I, and we were stuck in our house and building a business; I wouldn't trade it for the world. It was so much fun, but it was also very lonely. Entrepreneurship, as you know, is a lonely journey. Stick yourself in the house and you can't go anywhere - you couldn't travel or see friends or family. And then you're just in this endless loop of loneliness. 

That was definitely really hard because those moments where you could connect with people or go to expo or IFT and meet a supplier in real life, all of that was taken away. And that felt like it compounded the challenges of loneliness of entrepreneurship.

It's not for the faint of heart.

What is the best thing to come out of your career in food?

This is going to sound silly, but meeting my husband.

He didn't work in food, but at the end of 2013, I got an opportunity to go to the UK to work to develop the Ben & Jerry's vegan product at the Ice Cream Technical Development Center in the UK.

At the time I had been looking at roles outside of Ben and Jerry's, then this opportunity came up. Within the same week of receiving this offer to go to the UK, another offer came. Had the timing been one week off, I would have given my notice and not moved to the UK.

I met Carl through one of my best friends from growing up and it felt like one of those life-changing moments. Had I made decisions differently or a meeting was two weeks later, none of this would have happened.

That all led to opportunities to work in Europe two different times, to work with different global teams, and to meet my husband who I started a business with.

That was a flashpoint in my life and career that led to a lot of really great fun work and life opportunities.

That's quite serendipitous.

What's your most challenging formula to develop?

Surprisingly, it was the first project I ever worked on, which was developing frozen P.F. Chang's meals. At the time Unilever owned the Bertolli frozen meal line and we worked with the P.F. Chang's culinary team. Those are still on the market. I saw them in Target recently and I was like, this is really cool to see. 

But I had started my role and they said “Here develop these products” and I was like, oh, what do I do? That was probably the most surprising because P.F. Chang's sauces have a lot of salt and sugar in them.

Salt and sugar don't want to freeze. So there was a lot of opportunity to make very messy products. There was a lot of technical learning. That was a really fun and surprising project to work on because I never pictured myself working on frozen dinners since I came out of a family of restaurant and food people.

What's a dream product that is just not feasible to bring to market?

I get a lot of people who ask me to make things. In the ice cream space, there are people who want no sugar, super high protein, really creamy, really indulgent ice cream. My line is, “I'm a scientist - not a magician.”

There are certain laws of physics that I cannot bend. Everybody wants that silver bullet product that is super indulgent and delightful and has no consequences.

Those are polar opposites - I'd say that's the biggest challenge and hurdle. 

We're getting there with some things but ice cream is a treat. 

My motto is that you can't cheat on dessert.
You can't cheat death and you can't cheat dessert.

Or taxes.

Yeah, that too.

What does it mean to be a woman in the food business today?

When I started, I worked on very male-dominated teams. R&D was a good old boys club. I roll in as a 21-year-old fresh out of college.

It’s a balance—letting people know that you know what you're doing and that you're capable of the softness that's expected.

I've worked with some really amazing women in the food industry.

Interestingly, most of the teams that I’ve worked on in Europe were all women, which was great. I love to see women in the technical field, on the production floor, in the lab, and in the kitchen. It’s great to see because we're opening up a space that has traditionally been male-dominated. We're really owning it now. Women have an innate understanding of caring for and feeding people, so having women-founded brands that align with what's on the family's table or what you're having for snacks is great.

I love seeing so many fresh female founders pioneering the space.

Who are some of the women in food that inspire you?

There are so many. Watching Jeni build Jeni’s Ice Cream brand over the last 15 years has been amazing. I've worked with some really fantastic founders, both in the US and the UK. Amanda Klain from Yasso, both her and Drew. Amanda is a fantastic leader.

PART II: Food

Describe your childhood in food.

My parents were both children of relatively large Catholic families. My dad was one of six and my mom was one of four. My mom's half is Sicilian, so my grandma was always making sauce and spaghetti and meatballs and there were always a lot of people around.

My grandma cooked en masse for people on my dad's side, but utilitarian Americana food - I'm talking pork chops with applesauce and mashed potatoes or meatloaf and stuff like that. 

On the flip side, I spent a lot of time in restaurants, both working in them and sitting in them as a kid. We moved to Vermont because my dad started working for Cabot Cheese in innovation, so I was going into factories at a young age and seeing R&D labs. I don't think there was anything else I really paid attention to. 

When my parents moved out of their house a couple of years ago, I was going through a shoebox full of pictures. I found a series of photos of food that I plated that I took with my camera, the kind you would bring the film in to get printed. Pictures of roast chicken, caprese salad, pasta - those were staples in my house all the time.

My dad would make us cook on the weekends in the morning. My brother and I would make French toast or pancakes because he said he cooked all week. He said, “you guys make breakfast for us”. So my whole life has been food.

What snacks remind you of home?

Cheddar cheese with Macintosh apples. I grew up in Vermont and that always used to be packed in my lunch and it was such a good snack combo.

Tate's chocolate chip cookies too. My mom grew up on the east end of Long Island and Tate's has been around since the 80s. It was just a small little company about 10 years ago—she's another one who built an amazing brand.

I'm a chewy chocolate chip cookie girl, but those crispy cookies! We would stop at the bakery and bring stuff to the beach. Just the taste of a Tate's chocolate chip cookie reminds me of summertime at the beach.

I love Tate's cookies and I normally hate crunchy cookies. It's its own category.

What were some of your food traditions growing up?

Spaghetti and meatballs with my mom. That was like a classic every time we went to Grandma Betty's house.

Baking with my other grandma and my grandpa - they loved to make bread (like zucchini bread) and they would also make homemade wheat bread and ice cream.

I ate so much Ben & Jerry's ice cream as a kid. Cherry Garcia, chocolate mint cookie. It reminds me so much of childhood and home and growing up in Vermont with my family.

I think Cherry Garcia is the ultimate flavor to associate with Ben and Jerry's.

Yeah, and I'm totally a classics person. Their new flavors are fun, but I want to share Garcia, Chunky Monkey, and Cookie Dough - iconic.

What's your most memorable food experience?

When Carl and I travel, it's mostly around food, like going to restaurants.

It's a good way to travel.

It’s hard to pick one because there are so many good ones.

There’s Osteria Francescana by Massimo Bottura in Modena, Italy. They have a small dining room so you can do the full tasting menu which is amazing. However, you go for the breakfast.

They also have a snack fridge that's filled with baked goods and treats from the garden and mini pots with freshly picked vegetable salads in them. If you can teleport me anywhere I would go have breakfast and sit in the garden there and have snack time because there are so many goodies. 

The breakfast there is unreal.  Last summer we went and spent two nights there. We pretty much went for the breakfast.

I would love that.

10 out of 10 recommend.

Describe your current dining habits or rituals.

This is so funny. My Instagram handle used to be Rituals of the Kitchen because there's a Ruth Reichl quote—she didn't cook for herself. She cooked because she was comforted by the rituals of the kitchen.

I want to have a podcast where I interview food people and ask them about their rituals because it's a very foodie thing—I don't, really. I love cooking for other people, but I really cook for my own mental well-being and peace of mind.

I travel a lot, which messes up some of those habits, but nothing makes me happier than going to our local North Union farmers market, filling up bags with local produce and local goodies, and then coming home and stocking the fridge and cooking what we would call a Sunday supper with family and sitting down and sharing a good meal.

I cook from scratch a lot but I've started to try and meal prep more. I realize it's very hard to cook two to three meals a day every day while also trying to run a business.

And I love to grill. 

What's your favorite thing to grill?

Grilled veggies—cutting sweet potatoes the long way, putting a little bit of oil on them and grilling them like they're a piece of chicken. There's a Nobu miso dressing recipe that they put on asparagus, but I'll make a maple miso dressing and then just baste it on all of the grilled veg.

YES TO ALL OF THAT!

Asparagus, sweet potatoes, zucchini, squash, mushrooms - I'll grill everything. I’ve grilled cabbage - quarter a cabbage, baste it with some oil, and then grill that like you would a big piece of meat and put chimichurri on it.

That’s my go-to.

How do you consider and evaluate new food today?

Every single bite I take and every single purchase I make I want to know more about nutrition and sourcing.

I think we're in a phase where if you have the good fortune to shop with the mindset of “Can my purchase make a difference? Am I supporting a supply chain that has some rigor behind it?” There are a lot of dirty avenues in food. Not everybody has the good fortune to shop that way.

But doing your research and figuring out where your food comes from is paramount. Also, from a nutrition standpoint, we are in an era where there's too much sugar.

There are way too many calories for people. I'm not saying that sugar is bad. I indulge in food all the time and I love it, but that can't be the only food that everyone's eating from breakfast till dinner. I could go on a whole other tangent about the food system, but that's another chat.

I love that you mentioned how your purchase impacts the rest of the supply chain or the world. It's what I built my business on. Every purchase of LEXINGTON BAKES supports good companies. We're sourcing organic and fair trade from B Corp certified or companies with strong ESG programs.

And that's what we tried to do with Doozy Pots—organic and regenerative.

I'm sure you know—sugar, cocoa, vanilla—they are pretty dirty industries! You start to look under the hood and it's like, oh, that’s not a supply chain I want to support.

Yes, fair trade all the way.

How do you buy your groceries—in person, online once a week, a couple of times a week, different stores, the same store?

I could never buy my groceries online—I have to go to the store.

I will order pantry basics from Thrive. Other than that, I go to the store and I flip-flop between Heinen's (Cleveland’s beautiful local grocery store) and Whole Foods. I go back and forth.

I probably shop twice a week. I am not very good at planning my meals. I usually don't know what I want for dinner until it's past dinner time and I'm like, oh my god, what am I going to want for dinner? Sometimes it's 4 pm and I feel like making a specific thing. But of course, I have nothing to make it with.

That’s why I’m very much an in-person shopper. When it's not wintertime, I go to the Saturday farmers market for all my produce and stuff like that.

I pop into my Whole Foods like four times a week. It’s not efficient, but it's somewhere to go. As a founder working from home, I'm home all day.

I went the other day and it was sunny for once. It was really nice. I just need to go walk around and clear my head. It's my safe space.

What is a food people would be surprised that you love?

I don't know if I have a good answer for that, but I can tell you a food that people are surprised that I seriously detest is cottage cheese.

I have a visceral hate for cottage cheese and people are like, wow, you're worked up about cottage cheese. What really gets me going is people who put cottage cheese in a blender with three strawberries and a drizzle of honey and stick it in their freezer and say “This is ice cream”. That is not ice cream. I have a violent reaction to that.

Same. I've actually never tried cottage cheese. I'm averse to the name and the texture and all of it. It’s just not for me—call it something else, please. 

It’s so gross—the clumpiness. I can remember trying it as a kid. A neighbor made lasagna and used cottage cheese. I don't like lasagna and that might be why.

That would make me hate lasagna too.

People might also be surprised that I do not like lasagna.

Okay, we have to get you some good lasagna.

What was your last great food adventure?

In January I got to work with a client who has some ice cream shops in Rome.

I spent a couple of days making gelato in Rome followed by three days at SIGEP, which is the world's dolce expo.

Is it a popular ice cream chain?

Yeah, so they're based in Argentina. They're called Lucciano’s…

STOP! I love them so much! I was in Rome in August and normally I go to Venchi, but I popped into Lucciano’s and was like, “Is this heaven?”

I can't believe you worked with them. Consider me a starstruck.

That was a good food adventure.

This issue of Salt&Main is brought to you by

Part III: Dessert

This interview continues with rapid-fire questions on TikTok and Instagram. Follow @SaltAndMain on TikTok and @SaltAndMain on Instagram and don’t miss the rest of the conversation including Kirsten’s favorite dessert spots, pastries, ice cream, travel snacks, which food she recently disliked and more.

Connect with Kirsten

• Follow: Kirsten on LinkedIn

• Follow: Kirsten on IG

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