Leading the Farm-to-Table MovementLeadingtheFarm-to-TableMovement

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  [Description: "The OutPerformers" title animates on screen the "P G I M" logo appears on the corner of the screen. Taimur Hyat walks onto a stage that displays "The OutPerformers" Logo] 

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  Taimur Hyat: Hello and welcome. I'm Taimur Hyat, chief operating officer of PGIM. I'm excited to bring you the second episode of our new PGIM event series, The Outperformers. This series aims to provide a unique perspective on outstanding performers in their chosen field - people who've risen to the top of their profession and have sustained excellence over time. Our goal is to better understand what traits they have in common in the pursuit of outperformance. We were drawn to this theme because the principles of outperformance we practice at PGIM are enduring. They are as essential to active investment management as they are to the performing arts, or sports, or the culinary arts. And so we think now is a good time to hear these stories, to hear from individuals whose discipline, passion, resilience, innovation and sheer devotion to excellence drives them to outperform. Let's meet our host for The Outperformers, Lisa Ling. A distinguished American journalist, television personality and author, she currently hosts the award-winning CNN series, This Is Life with Lisa Ling. Welcome, Lisa. 

  Lisa: Thank you so much, Taimur. It is great to be back again with PGIM for the second episode of The Outperformers series. I am so excited to share the stories of these amazing performers with all of you. 

  Taimur: I agree, Lisa. You know, one of the keys to outperformance at PGIM is innovation - disruptive thinking that really looks beyond the conventional wisdom. And another is sustainability, a focus on long-term outcomes. Our guest today, Alice Waters, embodies that innovative spirit. She practically invented the farm-to-table movement in the U.S. that's transformed the way we all eat. As a foodie myself, someone who loves to cook, I'm really excited to hear what she has to say on the subject of outperformance. 

  Lisa: Me too, Taimur. On behalf of PGIM, welcome, everyone. Today, The Outperformers continues with trailblazing chef, restaurateur and sustainable food advocate Alice Waters. Starting in 1971 at her restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, Alice Waters launched a culinary revolution, influencing a generation of chefs and food purveyors worldwide to use organic, locally- grown foods. 

  Lisa Ling: Alice Waters, it's so lovely to see you. I'm admiring those beautiful lemons behind you. I'm assuming they come from your property. 

  Alice Waters: A few of them actually do. I picked them this morning. 

  Lisa: I sort of figured that. We're so happy to, to have you as part of this Outperformers series. And I want to ask you first off, what does the term outperformer mean to you? How would you define it? 

  Alice: Well, I've never really thought about that word before. But then I heard that Yo-Yo Ma and Magic Johnson were part of this series, and I know what it means now. 

  Lisa: It is interesting that when you think of those two individuals and yourself, that definition becomes so much clearer. And so given that you have this framework of what an outperformer is when you think about Magic Johnson and Yo-Yo Ma, what would you say are the essential elements of outperformance, not just for a chef, but in any endeavor? 

  Alice: When I think back to the beginning of Chez Panisse, almost 50 years ago now, I have to say that I never thought about celebrity or money, fame and fortune. I never did. I just wanted to cook for my friends, and fortunately we made some money doing it. But I was never looking for that, and I'm still not looking for that. I never make decisions that are based on, on money. I have to decide whether I want to do something and I have a passion for it and it feels right. That's something very important, that you love your work. But also, that it's really about a collaboration, and certainly for those two people, and for myself, it must be that kind of ballet where you're working together to make something that's greater than the sum of the parts. 

  Lisa: Alice, would you say that anyone can be an outperformer? Or what, what do you think it requires to become an outperformer? 

  Alice: I think that anybody could become an outperformer, especially if they didn't have those goals of money and fame that are so, sort of omnipresent in our kind of fast food culture. And if they really thought of what they had a passion for and they were open to, to working with other people and making something that, that they felt was meaningful. 

  Lisa: Did you have any idea when you opened your restaurant 50 years ago that you were starting a culinary revolution. Like, did you set out to be a revolutionary? The way people think about food, the way people think about what they're putting into their bodies? 

  Alice: I guess I'm very convinced, that I am right about where food comes from and how the land needs to be cared for and the ideas of nourishment and stewardship are deeply inside me, and biodiversity and community. I am ready to really be outspoken because of climate. I always have come in sort of the slow food way of trying to win people over, to give them something delicious like an apricot when it's ripe and perfect to eat. And then they say, "Where did that come from?" And I say, "Well, you can only have this apricot at this time of year in California. This is a Blenheim apricot from Frog Hollow Farm." And to have that taste of ripeness, you have to connect with the season and with the person who's growing that food or raising those animals, and it's really something important to me, really, really important is that connection. 

  Lisa: you just bring this passion to it that is so palpable and infectious, and I wonder where your passion for cooking with local organic ingredients even came from? 

  Alice: Well, I was looking. I went to France when I was 19, and that was in 1966, '65 actually, and I spent a year there. And I didn't realize it, but France at that time was really a slow food nation. When you went to buy food at the marketplaces, like the farmer's market, that's the way everybody purchased food. There were markets in every neighborhood, and it was only food from kind of the north of France. And the food was gathered from all around the northern part of France and brought to the stores that were there, and so I got right in season with what was happening at every moment in time. And I guess it was those fraises de bois, those wild strawberries, that really woke me up. I tasted one and I said, "Where did these come from?" And they said, "Oh, they were picked wild up in the woods nearby. And you have to go up there and pick them." Within a month they were gone. But I've never forgotten that. And when I came back to California, I wanted to eat like the French. 

  Lisa: And so what would you say shaped you as a chef, and the advocate that you are today? 

  Alice: Well, definitely what shaped me was finding those producers of food. The farmers, the ranchers, the fishermen that were close by. I was looking for taste. And they had it. I didn't know about, really, about organic food. I guess I did, 'cause I lived in Berkeley in the '60s. And I knew about the vegetables that were coming from the farms nearby. But that wasn't the food that looked like the food that I ate in France. And it wasn't until I really went out to the farm, and to the farm stands, that I tasted the real thing. And then that directed the food that we cooked at Chez Panisse. What we understood was, that we were following the farmers through the seasons. So even in terms of peaches, we realized they sort of began to get ripe in the valley first. And those, then we would go further out to the foothills. And by September, we were getting, you know, Masumoto's peaches. And we learned so much about biodiversity. We learned so much about seasonality. And for me, that was a revelation. And a conviction. But this is a very different way of thinking than our culture, our fast food culture would like us to think. But I can tell you that it's not, it's so liberating. Because people are used to eating second-rate fruits and vegetables all year long. So when the good thing comes, they're bored, you know? I've had it. They don't recognize that, that real thing. And then when it's gone, it's gone. And during this year, the pandemic, it's probably been more important than anything else for keeping the spirits of the cooks lifted up as we leave asparagus behind and we move to the little Tokyo turnips, that we move to the next fruit. And it, it connects you to nature, and we've been so disconnected by the way that we have eaten. And to think that it could be deeply good for us, that it could build our connection to all of the people in our community. 

  Lisa: Alice, this is why you are a revolutionary. But one, you know, you think of revolutionaries who are hard-charging, right? And moving forward at such a fast pace. But in talking about patience, and experience, and seasons, and anticipation, it's almost the antithesis of how you think of what a revolutionary might do, right? And, you know, people have been coming back to Chez Panisse for over 50 years. And you've just set such a high bar, when you opened the restaurant in 1971. I wonder, what does it take to maintain such consistently high performance at a restaurant like yours?

  Alice: It was really my Montessori training in England that really awakened me. Because Montessori, she was working in the late 19th century as a doctor in Italy, and she worried about the children who lived in the poor areas of the world. And she wondered how she could teach them. And she understood that our senses are our pathways into our minds. Taste, smell, seeing, listening, touching, smelling. These are the ways that we get information. And when someone is deprived she called them sensorially deprived of the beauty of the world, that there were special ways that they needed to be educated. And that is really what is so important to me at the restaurant, that everybody who works there needs to be working in a place that's, that's beautiful, in a way. That's inspiring. Maybe it's a poster on the wall. Even in the dish room. I want the dishwasher to be happy doing his or her work. I want the dining room to smell good, all of the time. We have no wall between the kitchen and the dining room. I wanted to see the sunset, which comes in from the West. And it was so beautiful, that light coming into the kitchen. But we have to give people who are working in the restaurant a sense of meaningful work. And that is very, very important to me. I want a place where I'm connected to all the people who are working there, that I know their names, that we feel like we're working together to make this meal. I'm doing this, I'm like Montessori, I'm preparing the classroom, in this sense, I'm preparing the restaurant so the people who come in fall in love. She wanted her students to fall in love with learning. And that's why, you know, The Edible Schoolyard Project that I'm working on is marrying food with learning by doing. But we have an industrialized school system, just like the farms. And so we have to come in through that cafeteria door. Bring in those values. Make gardens in schools for teaching, you know, all of the academic subjects. Have kitchens in schools that teach science, that teach language. I know, you know, from 25 years of the Edible Schoolyard Project that those middle school children are completely in - changed by it. Are little environmentalists after they leave. 

  Lisa: You, you are literally planting seeds in them, right? To, to become change agents. And I want to ask you about challenges, because surely you have overcome some on your culinary journey. Are there certain challenges that stick out to you that you had to work really, really hard to overcome? 

  Alice: Well I don't think of, of ever working really, really hard to overcome. I think of it a little bit differently than that. I'm listening to what the customers are saying to me. I'm listening to the waiters, to the cooks, I'm trying to really get a sense that it's the right moment to do this thing. Because I couldn't imagine working as the main chef six days a week. I, I just couldn't have ideas for six days. I couldn't make menus. I, I just couldn't do it. And when I had a child it was even more difficult. So I thought, "Well, maybe the main chef should only work three days. There should be two main chefs. They both get paid for five days, but they work three." And so that's what we instituted at the restaurant. And people would say, "How can you make it work financially?" And I think it's the most successful, important decision I ever made at Chez Panisse, because what it does, it's, it encourages collaboration. Because you have two chefs that are pastry chefs. And they each work three days, but they have to communicate with each other and know what was happening in the kitchen, and what fruit was, was being used, and how they used it. And so that thing happened. And it's like, it's constantly, again, renewing itself. And we are constantly teaching. So it's that, that I think really keeps us alive, as a restaurant. People ask me this all the time, how do you sort of keep going for 50 years? We have a board of directors. And every year we ask ourselves, "Do we want to run the restaurant for another year?" And for 49 years we have all said yes. But we could say no, because we really want to keep that integrity and we want to be passionate about what we're doing. I really think that's important, that everybody feels engaged and wants to do it, or wants to change it. 

  Lisa: Alice, it's powerful to hear you talk about how essential collaboration is in the restaurant, but what about the culinary revolution that you all have sparked? Can you talk about all of the different players, I suppose, in terms of local farmers, and producers, and the whole ecosystem, who made this revolution possible? 

  Alice: Well, it's amazing to see...it has grown over these 50 years. But we're talking about human values. That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about buying food the way that people think about doing that. We're talking about a human connection with the people who take care of the land, who care about the nourishment for the people who, who are coming to the restaurants. And it's kind of, it's a bond that we have. But there is a greater bond amongst all of us, not just in this country, but around the world. And that's what's so exciting for me, what's so powerful, is that we are willing to share everything. We're running our restaurants not with the chef up there at the top and all the worker bees at the bottom. And we are enriching the way that we run a restaurant. We're hearing from everyone, we're all tasting. But we're doing this in an incredible, International way. And that's what we're looking for, big change. 

  Lisa: I love that. Absolutely. Alice, you were an early advocate of sustainable agriculture and, and eating habits. So can you talk about the importance of sustainability to your world view and also to the idea of outperformance? 

  Alice: I'm going to say that regenerative is the word instead of sustainable. I'm going to say regeneration is essential to outperformance. And that word is very important to me right now, because regenerative farming is what is bringing down that carbon into the ground. It's about composts, it's about enriching the soil. Because I don't want things to just be kept how they are now. We need to restore the soil, we need to regenerate what's happening in the world. And so I, I think of the food that we buy as regenerative organic food. And it's so critical right now to think about this word, regeneration, in everything we're doing. We want to know where it comes from, everything. The dish, the glass, the books, the flowers. Everything, our clothes. Everything we have to ask that question, you know? Where was it made, how was it made, are we supporting the people who care about the planet? Who care about their farm workers? Who care about the soil? Every other country has thought about food as a way to feel good and to address illness, and we've never thought of it that way. We've thought about food as fast, cheap, and easy. And now we have that opportunity to, to really nourish ourselves, in all ways. To come back to the table, to sit with our families, to take the time. More isn't better. Time isn't money. 

  Lisa: I want to talk to you about -I mean, you are such an innovator - so I want to talk to you about innovation and risk. For a chef, is there a connection between the two? And do you consider yourself a risk taker? 

  Alice: I'm a calculated risk taker. I guess you would say that I, I really try to balance that out. Is it worth it to do that? And, but I think we have to be willing to tell the truth. We have to take that risk right now. And I know that, we have to be honest. We have to be willing to say what is not food, what is food. We are afraid, we have been afraid, to say those words. Because we, we're afraid that people would not support us, that it costs too much. And that's something we really have to examine. What are the real costs of paying for organic regenerative food? And we're serving our children fast food in the schools. And actually, if you know how to cook, and you choose the foods that are in season, you can cook affordable food, and quickly, and quickly. 

  Lisa: Alice Waters, it has been such a pleasure talking to you today. I, I hope one day maybe we can continue this conversation at Chez Panisse. It's, it's on my bucket list. 

  Alice: You are cordially invited. We'll seat you upstairs when the sun's setting up there on the balcony. 

  Lisa: I would love, love that. Thank you so much. It has truly been an honor and a pleasure. 

  Alice: Well thank you, thank you really. 

  Lisa: I'd like to thank Alice Waters for participating in The Outperformers. I so enjoyed the conversation in this PGIM series. We'll return now to Taimur Hyat for some final thoughts - and stay tuned for a special treat for our audience from Alice Waters. 

  Taimur: That was fantastic. Thank you, Lisa. And a big thank you to Alice, who brought back the memories and sense from my childhood when we used to go wild strawberry picking in the foothills of the Himalayas. As active investment managers at PGIM, I like to think we share many of the traits that define an outperformer like Alice, her passion, her conviction, her commitment to teamwork and collaboration. I particularly love the fact that she said there's no back of the house at her restaurant. Everyone and every step matters. And then reflecting on Alice's commitment to sustainability and as she said, regeneration, it's clear that long-term focus is vital to outperformance. We are profoundly thankful for Alice's efforts and vision for sustainable agriculture. And here at PGIM we truly believe that the world's response to the climate crisis will radically reshape how investors build and protect their portfolios. And that investors have a real responsibility to seek out innovative and transformative opportunities that can support the transition to a lower-carbon world. But not all investors are prepared. Based on our recent study of chief investment officers globally, nearly 90 percent of investors believe climate change is very or somewhat important, yet only 60 percent of those surveyed have integrated climate change into their investment process. I invite all of you interested in these issues to explore it further in our new megatrend report, Weathering Climate Change online at pgim.com. Now before we go, we do have a special treat for you. Alice is going to prepare her mesclun salad for us, sharing her famous recipe for vinaigrette. 

  Alice Waters: I'm going to make something that I make every single day. I make a salad vinaigrette. Well this is the moment of garlic in the state of California. And it's the end of this big garlic. But I begin with my favorite implement in the kitchen, which is the mortar and the pestle. It really makes me happy to pound the garlic this way. And it only takes a minute. Once the garlic is very mashed - you can hardly see it in there - that's when I add some salt. Remember that you can always add more. But it's very hard to take something out, so I'm careful about how much salt is in there. This is vinegar, red wine vinegar, a good one. And I stick my finger in it. I want it to taste kind of good. I feel the garlic in it right now. Maybe I'll put in a little, oops, little more vinegar, to counterbalance the garlic. Stir it up and I put it aside. And I've already washed the salads. And I'm going to add the olive oil to the vinegar mixture with garlic. And I'm not trying really to make some emulsion like you do for a mayonnaise. I'm just trying to mix it together. And I'm thinking probably two or three parts olive oil to one part vinegar. I'm just about ready to dress the salad. I want to make sure it's mixed well together. Put part of it on, and toss it. And I'm kind of one of those people that, that makes a little bit too much 'cause I know I'm going to have the salad for breakfast. And as Julia Child would say, Bon appetit! 

  Taimur Hyat: That looked absolutely delicious. Like Lisa, I too hope to make a detour to Alice's legendary restaurant in California. Next time on The Outperformers, we'll talk about teamwork with Magic Johnson, basketball legend, businessman and longtime community organizer. We hope you'll join us. And to learn more about PGIM and our pursuit of outperformance, please visit pgim.com. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time on The Outperformers.

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