March 3, 2023
Sonia Sharma talks to Amelia Ekus about ISS Guckenheimer’s involvement in Beans is How, the importance of connecting farmers with consumers and the future of pulse consumption.
For our Women in Pulses series to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8, we profile Amelia Ekus, Director of Innovation at ISS Guckenheimer, a premier on-site corporate restaurant management and catering company focused on chef-crafted fresh food.
I have been in the food industry since birth. I grew up sticking labels on envelopes for my mother’s culinary PR and literary agency, now The Ekus Group, and then began working at my father’s barbecue restaurant at age 14.
I grew up in a home which was constantly hosting dinners filled with cookbook authors, chefs, and restaurateurs. I moved to NYC and graduated from NYU with a concentration entitled ‘Activism in the Food Industry’ with a minor in social entrepreneurship.
Throughout college, I worked for a small restaurant group, moving from server to manager, to eventually becoming their Director of Community Development. From there I worked at Barbuto restaurant under chef Jonathan Waxman and was then recruited to help build a food and beverage programme at a private club for creatives called Neuehouse.
From here, I learned about an opportunity to be the General Manager for the food programme of a new technology client. I’ve been with ISS Guckenheimer for nearly eight years, and I’ve advanced from working on individual client accounts in the technology and banking sectors, to my current role as Director of Innovation.
I was inspired by Paul Newnham and his presentation of Beans is How, for a few reasons. First, we face gargantuan problems as a global society today, and I believe in the power of simple solutions as a starting point.
Beans is How is incredibly compelling because it is simple. It is a call to action – both personally, and globally – to eat more beans! Help the planet and improve your own wellness! Additionally, I am inspired by and often look to our culinary traditions for inspiration to solve future challenges. Humans have been eating pulses from antiquity. They are an elemental food that can provide nourishment to our bodies and to our planet.
When I heard about the campaign, I couldn’t wait to share it with my colleagues at ISS Guckenheimer. As a global provider of a million meals daily, we play an important role in increasing the consumption of beans.
Incorporating beans into more of our menu offerings aligns with our larger strategy to shift our offerings to be more plant-forward. While this may represent an adjustment for some of us, plant-based or plant-forward meals are the norm in so many cultures globally.
Personally, I have been a fan of beans for a long time, and now as a member of the campaign, I have learned so much from the other members of the coalition and have discovered new cooking techniques, bean varieties, agricultural knowledge, and found a community of other bean lovers.
“As a global provider of a million meals daily, we play an important role in increasing the consumption of beans.”
Food is personal, and the work to be done when it comes to shifting diets must focus on education, authenticity, and appeal, more than anything else. Nobody likes to be told what to eat.
People are motivated to eat for many reasons beyond sustenance, including to feel comforted or to experience something authentic or novel. By addressing different consumption motivations, we can incorporate pulses into dishes in a way that makes pulses more accessible and more appealing.
This is a delicate balance – for many our clients, they consume at least one meal a day at the office. What is considered ‘healthy’, is different for everyone, so our approach is to provide information and education for our guests to make the best choice for their own wellness.
By beginning with a baseline of responsibly sourced ingredients, prepared expertly, and inclusive menu planning, we are able to provide a breadth of programming that meets people where they are in their own wellness journey and supports them in their next steps.
We have focused teams working on recipe development as we see an opportunity to shift offerings, particularly in North America, to incorporate more plant-forward proteins. We are extremely lucky to have culinary placemakers all over the world who are contributing recipes, so we can capture culturally diverse and authentic pulse recipes.
“We also need to increase collaboration around pulses and, for me, that is about connecting farmers and consumers. There is so much to learn about pulses and if we can share the knowledge on how to grow, cook, eat, and share pulses, our communities can benefit.”
I believe that shifting towards plant-based protein is crucial to sustaining the planet and its people. Increasing awareness around pulses is one key pillar of this work, particularly at this moment in time when we find ourselves facing economic turbulence in food prices.
Pulses are an economical way to consume protein and they are easier on our agricultural system compared to animal-based protein sources. In this way, the awareness of pulses and their benefits should be celebrated in all areas of the food industry, such as in corporate settings, at home and in restaurants.
We also need to increase collaboration around pulses and, for me, that is about connecting farmers and consumers. There is so much to learn about pulses and if we can share the knowledge on how to grow, cook, eat, and share pulses, our communities can benefit.
I do – for a few reasons. As a result of the pandemic, and the supply chain disruptions that ensued, many of us turned to shelf stable, highly available, more economical ingredients—including pulses.
As the health benefits of plant-based or plant-forward diets becomes more widely known, more users are seeking out creative applications. Fine dining has also shifted towards a more plant-forward agenda and that benefit is influencing the other areas of the food industry.
There is a very well-known restaurant in NYC that has been ranked top in the world multiple times, and they have moved to a completely plant-based tasting menu. That’s a pretty bold move! I believe that as an industry we can do more to encourage plant-based eating and, pulses in particular, and I’d love to see the food media take a larger part in this.
For IWD, we host a few events across various regions. The one I am most excited about are the interviews we do with some of our female chefs – this year one of our Teaching Kitchen Chefs is going to be highlighted, Krissy Stearns. The theme for the first quarter of the year was Pulses and she’s been teaching several different recipes, but the crowd favorite is her take on a crunch wrap supreme, it has a butternut squash queso and lentil filling! Imagine if this type of thing was adopted by a quick service restaurant?
When it comes to our female story’s strategy, we love IWD as an opportunity to highlight some of the amazing women who work in our organization. Many of our locations also feature recipes from influential women in the food industry and we share their stories in our cafes, which is a wonderful way to pay homage to those who have paved the way.
Culinary professionals and celebrity chefs are looked up to and help to determine and influence food trends that become a part of a regular consumers every-day life. Look at the evolution of something like Maldon salt – this was a super ‘chef-y’ ingredient at one time and now you see it more widely used and more accessible to consumers than it had previously been. Once fine dining starts adopting something, then it moves into the mainstream, then into peoples’ homes, which is when we will really start to see the step change.
Disclaimer: The opinions or views expressed in this publication are those of the authors or quoted persons. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Global Pulse Confederation or its members.
