In the latest episode of Plant Based on Fire, we dive into the flavorful world of plant-based cheese with Kobi Regev, the co-owner of Pleese Foods. Kobi's journey from a New York native who couldn't imagine life without cheese to a pioneer in the vegan cheese industry is nothing short of inspiring.
Kobi's initial reluctance to embrace a vegan lifestyle due to his love for cheese resonates with many. His transformation began with a challenge he and his wife undertook, to craft a plant-based cheese that could pass the New York pizza test. Their commitment to the project led to extensive experimentation that resulted in the creation of their unique cheese product, and the birth of Pleese Foods.
The inception of Pleese Foods is a classic tale of necessity breeding innovation. Faced with the lack of satisfying vegan cheese options, Kobi and his wife embarked on a culinary quest. They aimed to create a cheese that not only tasted great but also melted perfectly - a crucial element for any pizza aficionado. This journey took them from their home kitchen to mass production in Wisconsin, marking a significant milestone in the plant-based industry.
Kobi's entrepreneurial spirit is evident in how he navigated the challenges of scaling production. His focus on maintaining the integrity and quality of the product, even when faced with cost-cutting alternatives, sets Pleese Foods apart in the market. Kobi emphasizes that they weren't just making a product but were driven by the passion to create something exceptional for consumers like themselves.
The sustainability angle of Pleese Foods cannot be overstated. The environmental benefits of plant-based cheese over traditional dairy cheese are significant, including reduced carbon and methane emissions, lower water usage, and reduced land use. Kobi's approach aligns with the growing consumer awareness of the environmental impact of their food choices.
For aspiring plant-based entrepreneurs, Kobi's journey is a masterclass in perseverance, innovation, and staying true to one's vision. His advice to start small, understand your customers, and not rush the process is invaluable. As Pleese Foods prepares for national distribution and continues to innovate, Kobi's story serves as a beacon for anyone looking to make a meaningful impact in the plant-based industry.
Kobi's story proves that with passion, dedication, and a thoughtful approach, you can change an industry. Whether you're a vegan cheese lover or a budding entrepreneur, the story of Pleese Foods is a must-listen for inspiration and insight.
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>Podcast Episode’s Transcript:
Please understand that a transcription service provided the transcript below. It undoubtedly contains errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions.
Bryan (00:00.822)
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Plant Based on Fire where we talk about plant based businesses and their inspiring stories to thrive in the industry. I'm your host Bryan and joining us today is Kobi Regev with who is the founder, he's the CEO and inventor and industry expert for sure on plant based cheese and he's the co-owner of Please foods. Welcome, Kobe, to the show.
Kobi Regev (00:31.372)
Thank you, Bryan. Thank you for having me. I've been actually watching all of these podcasts leading up to this conversation today. I love everything that you've been doing. I've been following you for years, ever since I started my transition, just knowing real men eat plants. Definitely motivated me to feel like, yeah, hell yeah. But just it motivated me. It got me through like...
Bryan (00:50.018)
That's right.
Kobi Regev (01:00.136)
I used to not admit that I was vegan kind of like moments early on and having you on our Instagram feed definitely helped inspire us early on. So just thank you for everything that you're doing and continue to do seriously.
Bryan (01:03.222)
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bryan (01:17.014)
I appreciate that. Like, cause I feel the same way about you. I've been following you on Instagram and I think of you as this like big New York, awesome guy crushing it because you know, like that really gets into like, let's, let's unpack your personal journey just for a quick minute and then we'll get into the business because you know, as I went, uh, vegan, you're like, I went vegan for 30 days and then I went back to vegetarian because I couldn't give up the cheese and I couldn't give up the dairy, the ice cream.
Kobi Regev (01:45.876)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Bryan (01:46.134)
You know what I mean? And just like those two addictive things are key to us winning the battle to convert more and more people to the right diet for the world and everything else, our health and stuff. So I'm just curious, what's been your personal journey to make the most amazing cheese on the planet?
Kobi Regev (02:04.212)
That's one to unpack. So I actually, I tell this story all the time and I feel like there's a movie called I Heart Huckabees and they make fun of a character who always tells the same story over and over again. So I'm going to just the short, the really short version of it is I grew up in New York City. The idea of giving up on cheese or pizza was...
Bryan (02:19.649)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (02:31.784)
extremely strange for me. And it was one of those things that I just couldn't live without. And originally, like when we changed, my wife and I, we changed our diet together. It was, we started the challenge and decided to change our lives completely. And, you know, at first we would cheat on our diet with pizza and eventually, yeah, you know, you're cheating on your diet.
Bryan (02:34.379)
Mm-hmm.
Bryan (02:57.751)
That's right.
Kobi Regev (03:01.184)
And eventually, you know, the side effects, because if you don't eat dairy often, it hurts you more the less you consume it. And so the side effects weren't worth it. And I just like had this realization in my life, like, okay, I guess I'm not gonna have pizza anymore. And my brother was the one, this is my favorite part of the story. My brother just kind of looked at me one day and he's like, what kind of New Yorker are you without pizza?
Bryan (03:09.676)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (03:29.332)
And how I knew I was gonna marry my wife is she said, we're gonna show him. And she went to the supermarket, she bought dough, she bought ingredients for a sauce, the available plant-based cheese at the time. And it was the ugliest pizza you ever saw in your life. But it had been so long since we had cheese that I went, okay, I'll eat this. I'll...
Bryan (03:49.166)
Hehehehe
Kobi Regev (03:58.504)
This is okay for me, but no New Yorker is gonna accept this on pizza. And that is really what started this whole journey of trying to figure out how to make a pizza that just happened to be vegan. And we experimented with every iteration and version of plant-based cheeses out there, every recipe. And we ended up inventing our own.
Bryan (04:21.57)
Mm-hmm.
Kobi Regev (04:23.728)
And the journey to take, I mean, I'm sure we'll dive into some, like I'm like already the Clem speaking about it, but like to go from our kitchen to something that we mass produce in Wisconsin now, like it's mind blowing to think how far we've come and we haven't even scratched the surface.
Bryan (04:29.015)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bryan (04:43.338)
I mean, kudos on your success. Cause like, this is the biggest thing. Like I'm down here in Charlotte and I need to know when are you going to be in some of my local grocery stores so I can go pick it up because that's my problem. Like every Friday, the family makes our own, we make our own pizzas, you know, cause we can't buy it, you know, so we got to make our own pizzas. We get the crust, we do all the stuff. And the thing is like, I just, you know, I go for the nutritional yeast.
Kobi Regev (04:57.42)
Mm-hmm.
Bryan (05:12.586)
Maybe I put some beans on. I do something to try and make it a little cheesy, but I have not been impressed with any of the real cheese, dairy-free cheese alternatives out there kind of a thing until I ran across yours that when I first discovered it, you could only get it from the pizza places, right? I think finally you're getting it to us consumers, but tell me, just help me unpack that problem that I have. You have the cheese that melts, so amazing.
Kobi Regev (05:36.952)
So.
Bryan (05:42.238)
It tastes, in my opinion, as close as you can get. So I just want to see you like blow up all across America for the vegan and vegetarian community out there.
Kobi Regev (05:51.756)
Thank you, thank you. That's a lot right there. You know, what's interesting is the whole reason we created this product, like we made it a product. It wasn't just like for us anymore, was we had people who are interested in getting a plant-based cheese that actually tastes like cheese, that was allergen friendly, that had a friendly label.
Easy to digest, you know, like all the things like we're parents. So like all the things that you'd want as a parent and Our whole intention from day one was to be a consumer product even in the name, please like it just it's just fun to say and I Imagined little kids going mommy, please please, you know, like I had these all these fun moments of like
Bryan (06:36.322)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kobi Regev (06:46.58)
you know, going on this journey saying that we need to be a retail product. And our first production in Wisconsin, like the first time we actually produced it, not in our, not in a shared kitchen, uh, was three weeks before lockdown. And we were doing it. Yeah. I know. And we were, we chose that day in particular because it was two weeks before expo West. And we thought like we were going to.
Bryan (07:05.528)
Oh, yeah.
Kobi Regev (07:16.192)
Like we're so inspired by Miyoko and other people in our industry that like that's how she started. She just had a bunch of cheese like in her bag and she started going up and down Expo West. So I like literally wanted to do it. She was she's such a source of inspiration as just someone who started a whole like industry almost didn't exist, you know, a few years ago. And so that idea of like, oh, I could now I'm making it a factory and I can take it anywhere with me.
Bryan (07:35.682)
Yeah.
Bryan (07:39.159)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (07:45.912)
really inspired us and our pandemic pivot was needing to go with food service like starting there. So what you've been seeing now, now available is still a food service size. It's just available through webstraw and store.com, which allows a lot more consumers access. So I have people like originally, when we launched with Webstraw and store, they're like, what am I going to do with a two and a half pound bag of what am I going to do
Bryan (08:13.677)
That's right. Yeah.
Kobi Regev (08:15.708)
and people realize like, oh no, that's three pizzas, you know? So. Or. Yeah.
Bryan (08:19.798)
That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's the way I look at it too. And that sense of, of like, you know, divvy it up into the right portions. You freeze a couple and you use the one you got and you roll with it. So that is awesome. So like, and I just want to point out it's please foods is the name of the business, but it's spelled slightly different. Spell it for us.
Kobi Regev (08:31.149)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (08:39.316)
Yeah, so it's PL I used to have I moved the desk I just have the logo right behind me but it's a PL ESE Please is short for plant cheese Uh, that's really where the name came from um And it was really because I grew up here in new york and I used to be a traveling salesperson and I walk this
I love telling this part. I have this pin, it's from a restaurant I used to go to all the time before I changed my diet, and it just says, Polite New Yorker. And I would go everywhere and people would be like, New Yorker is polite, and that was like the funniest icebreaker ever. And so when we were coming up with a name for the product, it was when I went, please, plant cheese.
Bryan (09:12.878)
Okay.
Kobi Regev (09:31.728)
Oh my goodness, it'd be so funny to hear kids be polite when they ordered pizza or a burger or anything. Like, can I get a pizza? And like just that idea of it just inspired us so much to make this as mainstream as possible.
Bryan (09:37.78)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bryan (09:50.41)
I, and you know, obviously I'm a singing your praises cause I've tried your cheese, but there's many people out there that haven't yet. And that's, you know, thanks for coming on the podcast where hopefully you'll get a few more orders by the few listeners we have that are gonna go out there and purchase one of these when they watch this episode. But describe for us what sets Please Foods apart from other plant-based cheese brands in terms of like taste, texture, meltability, those kinds of things.
Kobi Regev (10:18.348)
So there's a few things. Number one, we developed our recipe. That's just number one. It started from a homemade recipe that I then brought in food scientists to figure out how to scale it, to use ingredients that are available at scale because, and just for people who are home chefs.
You know, you take beans chickpea whatever type of bean like you usually buy it dry and then you soak it and then you Cook it and all those steps are way Too many things can go wrong in a factory setting so what I wasn't aware of when I started is that you could buy ingredients that are pre powdered and you just add water to it like there's a whole realm of ingredients that
were the same that we're buying in a supermarket, but they're already made to just add into the cooker for different applications. So that was very exciting to see that scale up happen from version one to version two. And then when we get...
Bryan (11:31.739)
Did the taste change during version 1, version 2? Or you were able to keep that consistency?
Kobi Regev (11:36.344)
It improved, I wanted to say significantly, but improved and we carried on like different things. Like our whole goal was to just be a really good topping for pizza originally. And as we started experimenting with different ingredients, different timings, different things, we really nailed the flavor of cheese. And we've not just the flavor of cheese, but the it's very unique.
Bryan (11:46.838)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (12:02.68)
for us, like we've created our own unique, like we added a few spices and things like that to make it. And so one of the biggest differences I'll say, cause I've been working with a lot of the people who are in the plant-based, like trying to make plant-based cheeses as well. And there's a difference between a person who's passionate about bringing a product to market than someone who is hired to do something.
Bryan (12:07.87)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kobi Regev (12:30.888)
And when you're hired to do something, you have like, if you're like, you work for a dairy plan and they're like, Oh, we need a new plant based cheese for this market. Uh, he's going to come up with the most cost effective product that you can create. Uh, and not really care about the nutritional value of it. He just, this is the most cost effective. What, so you're going to use corn. There's a lot of ways to corners. And.
We looked at this as we wanted to make it as allergen friendly as possible. So corn is something we immediately took out. So I like, there's just so many areas that you can cut corners and save money, but we weren't looking at it as saving money. We're looking at it as we wanted to create a good product, like that product, product first, and then figure out how to create economies of scale. And I had to put my foot down a lot of times.
Bryan (13:01.878)
Right.
Bryan (13:10.562)
Mm-hmm.
Bryan (13:17.27)
Yeah, that's right.
Bryan (13:24.703)
I love it.
Kobi Regev (13:27.072)
when it came to that, but back to texture and all of that, again, people who are hired to make these products, they're not the ones eating these products. So I am, my family is, your family, hopefully a lot of different families will be purchasing these products and using them in their everyday lives. And I just wanted to make sure that it passed my expectations as a consumer.
Bryan (13:38.83)
Mm-hmm.
Kobi Regev (13:54.512)
who's tried everything on the market and I'm never satisfied so we're always working on the next iteration, the next flavor, the next thing that we can come up with.
Bryan (14:04.63)
Absolutely. Yeah. And I like there's some other brands out there that have some amazing cheeses and you can slice them with your knife and put them on your cracker and you can build a really nice like vegan cheese board now, but still like the struggle to find the one that can melt and taste good on the pizza is like, you know, it's very, very few and far between all the cheeses. And that's, I guess I was on this mission, whatever it was two, three years ago and stumbled across your website.
And like, I got to try your cheese, you know, Kobe, because like, you're selling it as like, this is the pizza cheese, you've got to try this and get it. Um, and then I couldn't get it anywhere. So I was mad at you for a little bit until I figured out some way to get, I got like a two or three pound bag shipped to me. Um, and, uh, and fell in love with it. So, um,
Kobi Regev (14:40.312)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
Kobi Regev (14:53.736)
Also, good news, you were just mentioning that you're in Charlotte. We're actually going to, there's a, I think it's Mike's Vegan Grill. There's like a food truck.
Bryan (15:02.774)
That's right, yeah, he's got like a grand opening or something happening soon, so I'm totally gonna.
Kobi Regev (15:07.584)
Yeah, yeah, something in the pizza world. Guess who that's gonna be with, by the way. I don't think we're gonna meet his deadline. I think he's launching this week. But we're gearing up specifically for him and people in your area. You're one of the first territories that we're gonna grow in. Thanks to him.
Bryan (15:13.57)
Nice.
Bryan (15:17.45)
Yeah, he is.
Bryan (15:24.476)
I love it.
Bryan (15:28.962)
Please let me know how I can help. The other big one here in Charlotte is the barbeque headquarters is right here too. So you gotta get some barbecue cheese or something going with those guys. Talk to me a little bit about that sustainability side of it, right? So you're not only really allergy friendly, you've got some of the best tasting cheese out there for your pizza. Talk to us about that other side of it. How we help in the environment and.
Kobi Regev (15:36.129)
Yeah.
Bryan (15:58.146)
the sustainability angles.
Kobi Regev (15:59.54)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, not having to raise a cow to produce milk is a significant decrease in carbon and methane emissions, water usage, feed usage. It's literally, you know, I find it really funny. I've been watching the other interviews and it's just really funny that a lot of the ingredients that we can grow to feed people and use in other products are just used to feed animals.
Bryan (16:30.018)
Yes. We feed the animals so we can steal their milk. Right? Yeah.
Kobi Regev (16:31.567)
So it's a very funny, I mean I think it's...
Kobi Regev (16:37.848)
we can steal their milk and then it's like, I think it's like 1200, 1250. It's like a significant amount of liters to produce one kilogram of cheese. And the land use is like the area, like I think it's like five or six times Manhattan, like the land usage that cows need.
Bryan (16:48.845)
Yes.
Kobi Regev (17:05.716)
So, and don't quote me on these numbers, guys, don't quote me on these numbers, do your own research, because I have this all written down somewhere, but I haven't looked at it out a while. But the land usage was astronomical, the water usage is crazy, the burping, the farting from the cows to create all of it, it's just something that I've always been aware of way before I changed my diet. And knowing that we can actively create something that uses like, I think,
Bryan (17:06.222)
Mm-hmm.
Bryan (17:09.934)
Hehehehe
Bryan (17:13.965)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (17:35.92)
like a liter of water per pound or two liters of water per pound of plant-based cheese in comparison. It's like ridiculous to think about it that way versus what we're doing right now to make, you know, even dairy-based cheese substitutes require so much land and water usage just to bring out to market.
Bryan (18:00.354)
So how many trees do you think you've planted through your initiatives in this space?
Kobi Regev (18:05.512)
We, so we had, that's a great segue. So originally when we started, we launched the company, we were planting one tree for every case that we sold. And over time we didn't get as much excitement about it. People wanted to save money. So we need to put a pause on the program.
Bryan (18:29.686)
Hehehehe
Kobi Regev (18:33.668)
But I think up to this point we must have planted 2,000 trees And so every tree captures I think was half a half a million tons of carbon dioxide and every pizzeria accidentally Produces a million tons of carbon dioxide Just from their cheese usage every year like they don't know so for me. I was like, okay if I can
Bryan (18:39.913)
awesome.
Kobi Regev (19:03.148)
plant two trees per pizzeria per year, I've done something. But, you know, yeah, it must have been a few thousand. I think it was like three or 4,000 before we paused the program.
Bryan (19:15.306)
Well, I hope you can work that into the value proposition and plant even more trees. That sounds like an awesome, awesome goal.
Kobi Regev (19:20.656)
Absolutely, you know, I actually, I, you know, I keep on imagining a bag. This is hasn't been invented yet, but I'm imagining like a bag that like has a seed in it that you can actually just plant into the ground and whether it's, uh, you know, some, some flower or something just to bring more life to deca.
Bryan (19:25.858)
Ahem.
Bryan (19:34.167)
Yeah.
Bryan (19:42.71)
Yep. How do we, how do we get that plastic out of our ecosystem? Yeah. I don't know. The loop products might be a good one. I want to, I want to get your advice because you've obviously grown out of, you know, doing this at your home or doing it at a, at a, at a like co, co packing facility kind of thing. You're on your own in this big, big way. You've made it. You're, you're rolling out into Charlotte. That's awesome to hear. I want to ask you one fun question and then ask a few questions for the entrepreneurs that are watching this.
Kobi Regev (19:47.297)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (20:12.364)
Absolutely.
Bryan (20:12.47)
year. So I'm a New Yorker. I grew up in Rochester way back when you are. But I did. And which but I did live in Chicago for a few years. So the important question is, you know, New York or Chicago pizza, the deep dish.
Kobi Regev (20:16.824)
Mm-hmm. Huge pizza.
Kobi Regev (20:27.106)
Mm-hmm.
Kobi Regev (20:35.52)
You know, I think the compromise between the two is actually Detroit style pizza. There we go. Throw a wrench into your question. I'm gonna piss off a whole bunch of people. Like, you know, that casserole, I don't know if I would consider it pizza. Come on, let's talk about it. No, but I...
Bryan (20:42.216)
Okay, okay.
Bryan (20:57.507)
There you go.
So it's New York pizza and Detroit casserole pizza. Ha ha ha.
Kobi Regev (21:03.452)
Yeah, I don't know, like to me a pizza, if you can't fold it and walk around with it, it's not like a real pizza. And there's so many, a pizza, there's so many variations of it that you really make it your own whichever way. As long as you get
Bryan (21:19.554)
Pizza is definitely fighting words when you really want to slice and dice certain pieces of that. So on your journey here, what advice would you give to others looking to start in the plant-based food business? I mean, there's so many other foods that we have to find some strong alternatives for or try to match the taste or texture. What advice do you have for those people out there that are on the edge or are just starting their journeys?
Kobi Regev (21:48.932)
You know, it's something I've been hearing a lot of people talk about recently, so I'm just gonna repeat it I think right now with the way Venture funds have kind of Almost like they started putting money into plant-based in 2019 and then kind of in the last couple of years Just moved on to the next thing before they even saw this category really grow. They just moved on to the next thing
So expecting to come into this market and like, you know, being independent and launching large and all over the place, everywhere. Don't expect that to be overnight. It is a very long, arduous, sleepless night kind of journey. That is not for the faint of heart. But what I will say is having as many successes locally.
as you can is really the key for yourself, for your own self growth. Unless you have like a huge food background and like you know how to launch CPG and food service, and you know everybody in the whole realm, doing those farmer markets or getting a small stall, getting to know your customer firsthand, and making those tweaks as you grow are so important. And I think...
Bryan (22:57.057)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (23:11.948)
That's what's gonna be the future of Plant Based right now. And especially if you wanna be a food entrepreneur, just growing a business is a lot. It's a lot to ask from people. You can be the most creative person in the world and most resourceful, but do you know how to do your QuickBooks? Do you know? You know? There's a lot of things that you need to learn. And even when I wrote my first business plan,
Bryan (23:31.51)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Kobi Regev (23:40.296)
You know, when I went to college, they taught you how to write a 16 pager. And you had to have a bibliography and like, you know, you had to know all your sources and everything. And, and now it's a two pager front and back, uh, kind of thing, just to get people's interests. Uh, and you know, even doing your own decks, you have to
Bryan (24:00.074)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (24:03.292)
You know, I'm really going to the nitty-gritty, but like you have to, you want to put all this information because you're not there to tell somebody about what you've done. And you have to make nice, beautiful illustrations to kind of captivate them to come and talk to you. So then you can tell them all the fun stuff. So there's a lot that, a lot of thought that needs to go into it and not, you know, not everyone can just start tomorrow and hit the ground running, I think.
Bryan (24:04.664)
Yeah.
Bryan (24:19.011)
Yeah.
Kobi Regev (24:31.608)
finding the right community. Like I started off with my wife, Abev, we went to something called Hot Bread Kitchen's business boot camp. And that was what led us to go from, originally we wanted to open our restaurant and they were like, no, you should sell this cheese everywhere. And taught us to find a food scientist, to raise money. You know, we weren't aware of it at all. And small businesses,
Bryan (24:56.3)
Yeah.
Bryan (24:59.882)
You totally...
Kobi Regev (25:01.36)
Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off with the Small Business Development Corporation. They have those in every big city. I'm lucky because I'm in Harlem. I'm part of Columbia's, Columbia University, so I get to go to their business school for classes and stuff like that. There's so many resources out in New York. There's SCORE, NYC. It's a huge resource. So finding those resources and hey. Hey.
Bryan (25:05.814)
Yeah.
Bryan (25:11.818)
Yeah.
Bryan (25:23.5)
Yeah.
Bryan (25:26.702)
That's my cat saying hello. I think the cat's trying to get the fish. I agree completely with you. I mean, because like the, the every state has a small business development center. So check your local state. You'll tap into some community there. And then like, I see so many entrepreneurs, at least the ones I've been mentoring and guiding along my journey is, is that they're trying to rush.
Kobi Regev (25:32.332)
Hehehehe
Bryan (25:53.974)
rush the process, you know what I mean? Like they're trying to go from zero to a hundred in 12 months and I don't think that's possible for 95% of all businesses. The 5% you hear about on a movie or in a Silicon Valley show or something like that, we're extremely lucky, I think. So I think you nailed those two things. It's gonna take some perseverance, it's gonna take three to five years of some really hard work or more and build that community around you, whether it's mentors.
or SBDCs or whatever that is to really grow your business. I think that's some really powerful advice you just laid out for them. What's...
Kobi Regev (26:31.092)
Yeah, these are things I discovered along the way and I'd rather you know about it before you save yourself so much energy.
Bryan (26:35.326)
Yeah.
Bryan (26:40.558)
So what is next for Pleased Foods here, both in development of new products and sustainability and stuff like, hit us what's on the horizon.
Kobi Regev (26:51.36)
I appreciate that. Yeah, a lot's on the horizon. We are ramping up very soon and rolling out with a national food service distributor. I don't want to jinx it, so I won't say anything, but we will be available much more regularly all across the country. So it's going from just being available in some local New York networks to really anywhere you want a better plant-based cheese option.
Um, so yeah, and you know, I, I've seen these, so at the end you have a, like call to action, my call to action is if you know, yeah, if you know of a pizzeria that is serving a vegan cheese right now and you don't love it, uh, tell them to, uh, to find these cheese and, uh, fully one of their reps could connect us through this redistribution network, uh, that will allow us to grow.
Bryan (27:21.518)
That's awesome to hear, congrats.
Bryan (27:29.119)
Yes.
Bryan (27:40.235)
Absolutely.
Bryan (27:47.586)
That is great. So that's what that was one of my last questions is what can we do as a community? So we have to all reach out to our local pizzeria, make sure they have a vegan cheese option on the menu because 90% of them still don't. I'm blown away by that. And like we wanna see you in either Pizza Hut or Domino's sometime soon here on that front on a national level. How do we get in touch with you, Kobi? Like how do we make sure that our local pizzeria reaches out to you?
Kobi Regev (28:07.581)
Thank you.
Kobi Regev (28:15.392)
Yeah, well, our website is SayPlease.com. You can find me on Instagram, Please Cheese, and I'm very active on LinkedIn. So if you're in the community, you know a chef or anything, I'm always available on LinkedIn. I like to be accessible. I don't always answer the website because there's somebody in between me and the website for me to get those acknowledgements.
but if you reach out to me on LinkedIn or social media, actually LinkedIn is probably the easiest because social media, there's also like a barrier there with spam and stuff, so yeah, LinkedIn.
Bryan (28:52.949)
Yep.
That's awesome. And it's and it's say please or please foods and it's P L E S E. Perfect. Yes. Plant cheese. That's right. Awesome. Well, that is all the time we have for this episode of Plant Based on Fire. Thank you so much, Kobi, for being here and joining us and sharing some great insights with our community. Until next time, everybody, keep that fire burning.
Kobi Regev (29:03.112)
Yes, plant cheese. Yeah, yeah.
Kobi Regev (29:21.44)
Thank you so much for inviting me.