Episode 5: Debbie Kornberg SPICE + LEAF with BestViewsReviews

Apurv : hello and welcome to the product life this is your host Apurv Sibal and I am really passionate about looking for the best deals on products from woman kitchen to electronics best music use recommends the best products by combining expert product curious honest customer reviews and artificial intelligence we use NLP to determine the sentiment score of all the reviews so you don't have to do the heavy lifting our product selection and algorithms are constantly updated to offer the best products to you today we have Debbie with us she's running spice and leave for a couple of years now which offers uniquely credited premium Quality Spice plants but for listeners who might not be aware could you give us a brief outline of what you do?

Debbie : sure thank you so much for having me it's a pleasure to be here uh so I am the owner and curator of spice and leaf which is a spice company and we really pride ourselves on using natural uh fresh ingredients no MSG no GMOs all just plant-based our products are vegan actually and we create blends to make cooking super easy so that when people get home after their busy work day and have to figure out what they're going to make for their next meal that they can just go into the pantry and find something that's going to inspire them and be able to produce dinner in rather short time.

Apurv : so uh how did you come up with this idea Debbie

Debbie : great question so I actually have a background in education I actually worked in a school settings for more than 20 years and I actually had the privilege of working at the school where my kids went which made it really nice but after a while I was ready for a change and I moved into another non-profit sector where I was in charge of programming and I was responsible for an annual Festival that take place in my community and I thought it would be really fun to kind of have a bizarre experience where people could go and do shopping and I thought you know I think of the Turkish markets and all the spice markets that are around the world and thought it would be really neat to be able to have spices as part of the celebration and so I happened to be traveling and I was abroad and found a company and asked them if they wanted to come to my community and they said yes and uh next thing I knew I was a spice curator learning health permits and FDA approvals which I knew nothing about coming from the world of education and nonprofit but over the course of nine ten months I navigated it and uh it discovered I wasn't too bad at that and really enjoyed it and was just so enamored by the world of spices and uh about a year and a half later I gave some over a year and a half really I gave some heavy contemplation of did I want to make the career change and and try out the spice world and I knew I could always go back to education and non-profit it's not going anywhere but I felt like I'd always regret if I hadn't tried it so I took the leap I went down the slide and made a major career change um and opened up a spice company and it turns out that teaching is still part of uh my soul it's my innards and I built a cooking uh school like a kitchen so that I could do cooking classes and so I was teaching cooking classes bringing in chefs and uh that's kind of how I got started it's just a change in life and uh it turns out I still love educating it's my passion I love helping people and spices is a really easy way to help people figure out what's gonna be for dinner.

Apurv : well that's quite a story moving from educational non-prof profit to the spice industry. so um when we look up your product on Amazon it recommends uh some other brands in the category category like summary Axel Sadaf the spice way custis so how what is the key differentiator

Debbie : well you know I pride myself we are a small company and um everything is done in-house there's no co-packing so we know everything that's going into our products and we're really proud of that uh are some of our Blends are really unique that you won't find anywhere else for example are avocado Chopper or avocado toast and egg topper I happen to have a jar here that I'll just hold up and for uh viewers who may be listening um it's it's a unique blend I came up with it myself from literally in the mornings making myself eggs and avocado and I would sprinkle on a little sumac and I'd sprinkle on a little bit of paprika soup for people who don't know sumac is a great salt alternative it's um got a nice lemon acidic flavor and I'm sure you cook with a lot of sumac in your households also um and we use something called Nigella seeds which are Super heart healthy uh as well as a little bit of cumin and a smidge of salt and we really take pride in really thinking about the ingredients that go to create blends to help the user so in the mornings you can just throw in your avocado toast topper and you're ready to go it adds a little zip to the flavor and honestly I think that's what distinguishes US is the the flavor profiles we also have a vegan soup powder base it's all plant-based no salt no MSG when you open up the jar and you see the spices first of all the aroma is going to hit you because it's so strong um and beautiful and your mouth starts to water as you smell it uh but it it is literally you think of like a deconstructed bullion Cube so the bullion cubes come in these perfect little squares and there's a reason that they make those perfect little squares is because there's some chemicals in there to keep it fortified and caking agents and we at space and leaf pride ourselves on not using those products and that when you add that vegan broth base to the water it's not going to fully disintegrate because plants don't disintegrate right like the flavor agents will add to the water and create your your broth uh but there will always be a little bit of sediment we're actually really proud of that so those are some of the things that I think distinguish us we have a lot of products that are salt free we really think about different eating Lifestyles whether you're keto paleo vegan vegetarian kosher whatever it is halal um we really tried to be thoughtful of that so all of our products are vegan but there are other people that have um dietary restrictions so for example if you're on a FODMAP diet and you can't have eggs and um uh sorry if you can't have garlic and onion um we have products that don't have garlic and onion which is such a pre-ingredient oftentimes in spices that we want to make sure that people can have that let's you know our products have no gluten in them uh our products as I mentioned are are vegan so there's no chicken or beef broth base in any of our ingredients shellfish those types of things so those are a couple other things I can probably go on and distinguish us but there you have it.

Apurv : got it so I'm just curious how did you manage to bring out the product on your own right from an idea

Debbie : how do I bring a product into into reality like the idea so uh oftentimes when I am cooking at home and there's a lot of Test Kitchen that goes on in my household my family loves it because they can see I'll have like five different versions of the same thing and they'll be like which one do you like uh so as I'm cooking and I think about flavor profiles I really think about what would enhance this whether it's a chicken or a vegetable and how to to create those flavors so the avocado toast Toppers are really good example of me every morning putting all these different spices on and all of a sudden I walked by a coffee shop and of course they had their avocado toast in the case and honestly it looked naked to me there were no spices on top I was like oh don't look there's nothing on the avocado test it's not dressed um and so you know those it's it's kind of those moments sometimes as I'm building a flavor profile I'll notice something as I'm out in the marketplace and realize that oh there's an opportunity here uh so you know it's cooking at home which I love to do and uh thinking about different flavors and how to to come up with a new way to make chicken because we're always looking for new ways whether it's chicken or fish or our vegetables or eggs and to to be able to enhance flavors so it's things that usually happen organically it's not like I go in there saying okay I'm gonna create this it just happens and evolves

Apurv : makes sense so how has the journey been so far in terms of product success sales

Debbie : um it's been an amazing journey I have to say as with any business you know you have your highs and your lows right now we're in uh the holiday season so it's a great time of year uh because everybody's home cooking and bringing family together and I am just honored to be able to be a support system for that as people go on looking for recipes and inspiration of how to make their holidays special and of course people have their traditions and hopefully spice and leaf is becoming a part of that tradition so um yeah I mean the journey has been fantastic and I'm so glad I went down the slide when I was contemplating um eight years ago of whether or not I should should make a little bit of a pivot in my career and find ways to educate in a in a different way

Apurv : got it so what are your plans for the future?

Debbie : so plans for the future so first of all I should mention in addition to spice and leaf I teach cooking classes and I teach it over Zoom I do team building I do family occasions whether it's a baby shower and whatnot and so um you know we use the spices as a vehicle to help educate people so it's really my way of creating me to be able to come in to people's homes to show them how to cook with the spices because some people get intimidated not everybody is comfortable in the kitchen and I like to be able to create a low barrier experience so that everybody is cooking at the same time with me and we create a complete meal together um and that has really helped so many people especially you know you can imagine during covid when we were on lockdown and people were in their homes and couldn't go anywhere we really formed community and what I realized I started that is people love getting together in those Community settings whether it's in person or virtually so spice it up with Deb is the partner to spice and leave to help educate people how to cook with spices and honestly um I'm in the hopes of creating a cookbook of educating people how to cook with spices so that's really what's on the horizon for me and just you know building new spice Blends as they come to me to enhance people's cooking

Apurv : all right good luck I we wish you the best of luck with your cookbook uh so these were all the questions that I had thank you so much Debbie for uh coming on our show uh we would like to ask our users to go on spiceandleave.com and check out your products and to check out all the products in this 8 000 plus categories go to bestviewsreviews.com thank you once again Debbie thank you

Debbie : do you want me to offer maybe I can uh share a promo code for viewers say watch

Apurv : sure that would be very nice

Debbie : I would love to be able to do that so for anybody who podcast listen Leaf you can use promo code spice 72 exclamation mark s p i c e 72 exclamation mark and I'd be honored to give you 15 off so thank you so much for uh having me I really appreciate it such

Apurv : an honor thank you once again Debbie