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Food Design Careers: Inventing Tomorrow’s Tastes and Jobs with Jashan Sippy

  • Writer: horizonshiftlab
    horizonshiftlab
  • 1 day ago
  • 17 min read
Various sliced vegetables, including orange and pink pieces, are arranged on a gray mat. A jar of liquid and spoons are also present.
Source: © Sugar and Space Food Design. All Rights Reserved.

We dive in with food architect Jashan Sippy to reimagine work at the crossroads of food, design, and sustainability. Discover the emerging world of food design, how multipotentialites—people with many talents—blend skills into boundary-pushing roles, and what an Interplanetary Cookbook reveals about creating meals in zero gravity. If you’ve ever wanted to craft your own path—or scout talent—in this fast-growing arena, join us as we map the possibilities of tomorrow’s food-design careers.



* The image referenced by Jashan on the call can be found on the Home page of https://www.i-fooddesign.com/ - scroll the page to the 3rd block or section and it's the image on the right, give the moving image a few seconds to expand and emerge fully.



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Episode Transcript:

Raakhee: Hello and welcome to Signal Shift with me, Raakhee, and Lana and a very special guest joining us today, Jashan Sippy. Welcome, Jashan.


As you may have noticed, we've started doing guest interviews with truly dynamic, inspiring thought leaders and experts across various domains. Still within the theme of future careers and jobs this month, we wanted to speak to individuals who are doing interesting, creative, inventive, and boundary pushing work. And Jashan suddenly comes top of mind here. 


Jashan is a food architect. He specializes in the design of spaces for food and his work brings together food and design in thoughtful, provocative, unique and impactful ways. From his dissertation, which was a completely edible architectural model, to managing spaces like Candytopia, I hope you've been, it's fun, to leading a Chilean city to the number eight spot on the 2024 New York Times Gastronomic Destination List. You know, hosting multi-sensory and sustainability-focused eating performances. Think dining in the dark and similar social experiments. 


He is based in Belgium and he is the founder and director of the International Center for Food Design, which is a global network of purpose-driven creative professionals and aspiring thought leaders dedicated to bettering our food systems.


He also runs a food design studio and innovation hub in India where they transform things like food waste into edible inks and 3D printed nutritious and designer food. 

So, Jashan really does interesting stuff at the intersection of food and design. And we could talk about a myriad of things today, including food systems and sustainability. But we were really inspired by how Jashan has forged his own creative career path and is now helping others do the same, too, through the Center for Food Design. 


And we really wanted to talk to Jashan about future careers in the areas of food and design and honestly the spaces and the nooks amidst all these areas, which I think we're going to discover today. So Jashan, once again, yeah, a very, very warm welcome. Thank you for being here.


Jashan: Thanks so much, Raakhee, for inviting me and thanks for the introduction.


Lana: I guess one question that I had, and Jashan, you decide how you want to weave it in, is in addition to how Raakhee described your really boundary pushing career, you also have a very international life. So you're running a center in Mumbai. You live in Belgium. The CandyTopia was in San Francisco.


Just so curious, because, you know, we, we talk about that, too, as we think about mobility and the relationship between mobility and careers. And so you're also pushing the boundaries of that with a very international lifestyle. And so, you know, just in as much as possible, you know, sharing how you do that would be fun as well.


Raakhee: I think that's a great question, Lana. And, Jashan, I think you'll probably find opportunities to weave that into the rest of the discussion as well, because with climate change and our food systems and everything, mobility has just been weaved into everything we're talking about. 


But I think the central question that we really wanted to explore today, because what we're trying to do with this theme this month is to expand everyone's, including our own, minds as to the possibilities around the types of work we could be doing in the future. I call them kind of the transitional years, the sort of short-term future. 


Considering the landscape of everything that's going on, and so much of it involves food systems and food from climate change, but even to AI, just changing things and our changing really world orders in all senses. 


I think if there's ever been a time when we are kind of getting to co-create a new world, it really does feel like it right now. And I think that's so exciting for areas you work in, right? And I think playing a role in that co-creation and where the world is going to be. So, yeah, I think, you know, also the world of food and design might be really unknown to a lot of people, right? It's pretty niche work.


So yeah, I just being able to hear a little bit about what's happening in that world will be really exciting. I guess, Jashan, tell us about some of the unique things that are happening in terms of jobs and careers in the world of food and design and anything in between.


Jashan: Awesome. So a job search in general, of course, as you guys have been exploring, and I'm sure we'll hear with other people as well, that space is changing, right? Not only is it changing in terms of the way recruiting and hiring is done, the way jobs are listed, the motivations behind why candidates apply for specific jobs, but from a candidate perspective or a job seeker perspective, of course, it's a very stressful, uncertain, and sort of uncomfortable, vulnerable time.


Finding a job is like finding a spouse or a life partner, in theory, especially if you want one that is a good match that doesn't drain you. And that is particularly challenging within the food and design space because, as you mentioned, it's niche and little known, but also it's quite misunderstood.


Because when you put together these two words, food and design, there's lots of assumptions that come about which sort of lean themselves towards, let's say, food styling or making things look pretty on a plate.


Other challenge here is that food design is super horizontal in the sense none of the things that, or let's say the, job opportunities or relevant work that people do as food designers is not necessarily new, but it's a matter of approaching different industries or different jobs from a certain mindset and perspective. 


This has led to, coming back to mobility, food designers all around the world for many years now, feeling alone or feeling like they are the only ones doing what they want to do in their specific niche, in their specific country. Which means whether you are located, I was located in San Francisco, felt like nobody in the US was approaching food design the way that I wanted to do it. Therefore, it was the wrong fit. Moved to India, no one there was approaching food design the way. 


Networked with and grew my professional network with people in the seeming hotspots of food design careers-- Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy -- met people there, spoke to all of them, also struggling and feeling alone with what they're doing. 


Locations like Italy, where you have the most number of food design related masters and education programs, but people there graduating and struggling to find work. 


So this is a problem because of the misunderstanding of food and design, but also because food designers do not want to work in hospitality, but rather with hospitality. And the difference between, let's say, going to fashion school, studying, and then graduating, you know that you end up, for example, being able to work in the fashion industry,


There is, established retail channels through which the products that you produce can be sold and understood by end customers. 


With food and design, given the horizontality and vast scope of it, that is a challenge because, like I said, we're working with an industry and not in it.


People assume food designers ought to be working like gastronomic chefs, but food designers themselves, depending on their background, I'm an architect, I don't necessarily on a daily basis go into a kitchen and produce food. And therefore that's just one piece of what food design is and what it can be, which is why it's interesting to have this conversation of scope and future.


Raakhee: You said something that was really very, important, which is that food design is not just pretty food on a plate. It's a lot more. I mean, it's actually, you know, a lot of the work that you're doing is very important to sustainability and food systems. And so I feel there's going to be a critical role that people who have these skills are going to have to play in the next few years. And so even though it's hard to craft and see what that path is, I think that food designers are going to be really important. 


But yeah, I think if you could give people a sense of what a food designer does do, what does that look like?


Jashan: So it's taken about 10 years to be able to come up with a way to articulate this. And since, let's say, last year, we found a way that helps people really visually grasp what it is that food designers can do. So on the home page of i-fooddesign, you'll be able to see the reference of the food design discipline and all the sub-disciplines that fall within it.


Raakhee:  To anybody who is listening, the images that Jashan has referenced, if you're just doing audio, they'll be linked as well. So anything you're hearing will be linked and you'll be able to find and be able to see the visuals as well.


Jashan: So this was developed by Dr. Francesca Zampollo, and she added five new sub-disciplines in 2023. So we're going to look at the, let's say, most up-to-date version of what food design is and what food designers do. 


So in my case, for example, when I work as a food architect, I graduated with architecture, worked with an architecture studio in San Francisco, a boutique architecture firm. I worked on projects related to hospitality. So designing well-known hotels, restaurants, wineries, marijuana plantations. All of that was my entry into food and design, which was through food space design. 


When I work with my 3D food printer, for example, so from food architect, I go to becoming 3D food printing expert or 3D food printing technician. Within this, I need to have the knowledge of actually working with edible materials, once it's printed, I end up having a dish ready for consumption. So that's gastronomy. 


But when I developed edible toys for neophobic children with the 3D food printer, so that is for children who have fear of trying new foods, we developed a series of edible toys that had to be shelf stable. So that goes into food product design, because that is something that is not meant for immediate consumption. So it's not just designed with food, but it's something which is food product design. 


So you start seeing how, depending on what the scope and the role is, the titles, but also the kind of activities that food designers do, can change or evolve. And then when we start looking at how this can change future behavior, for example, the fact that we're looking at behavior psychology of children and they are playing with a product that is made with beetroot and alfalfa, ingredients that they either do not have access to, although they have traditional ancestral sort of roots, links with those ingredients. But they, you serve beetroot to a kid and they're probably going to be very not into it. But the minute we printed 3D printed Xs and Os made out of these ingredients, they used play.


With touch, it went to smell. From smell, it went to maybe a taste, and then it led to consumption. 


And that power is critical and speculative food design, because the intention of the project was that behavior psychology. And we ended up using design with food, food product design, and finally went into critical, speculative future food design. 


Now, I understand this is complex, it's niche, and again, it's related to my journey. So let's take it out of my journey. 


Too Good to Go is a food service, essentially. It's an application operational in several countries around the world. Their main premise is basically to be able to connect consumers with food at the end of a day, where, let's say, there's excess food or food waste left in eating establishments. And at a discounted price, they're able to provide that to people who want to buy it. 


In theory, this is just food service design. But what it's actually doing, because of the fact that it works with food waste, it's addressing food systems and sustainability. So it pushes the boundaries and goes into more than one sub-discipline of food design.


So it's a very dynamic movement and depending on who you are and what your role is and what your background is, what your skills are, you may move within the full design discipline.


Lana: You're really in like a future forward space. And so you have to, you're defining the field, which is what you just did for us, right? Defining the discipline and then helping the practitioners see themselves in the discipline, right? Connect with each other.


But then I would think even the employers or the companies themselves, I wonder if they see themselves in that space. Does Too Good to Go know that they are in food design?


Jashan: Candidates themselves or practitioners of food and design are very intentional about the why in which they work. They're quite agnostic in moving within which role they play as long as the why is addressed. Where there is a mismatch is because you use tools like LinkedIn, for example, for a job search. You put in food design and you will get nothing. 


The base issue is we're looking at food crossover jobs here, right? And because of it not being accessible or searchable in a certain way, food designers as of today have to be entrepreneurial in order to be successful because then they have to go out there and communicate, convince, demonstrate, and overcome a full, let's say, cyclical set of challenges in order to successfully deliver a project. 


And then you're back to needing to educate the next potential client, which is a very exhausting process. Therefore, we've spent 10 years now speaking with and interacting with and having practitioners as part of our network.


Raakhee: The world is extremely complex. So I love this merging of it, but that raises that whole question of way to definitions. and singular paths, right? Does that disappear? And I think that's so relatable, not just to this world, but I think people are going to see it in other spaces that we may never have before, right? I mean, we see the corporate world very linear, and I think that in itself is a struggle, and that's going to transform in the next few years, especially with AI coming in, right?


Jashan: So definitely, think with the non-singularity, a word that comes to mind is multipotentialite. And maybe that's a familiar one. It's basically someone who is not necessarily a linear expert, but is someone who has more than one pursuit, whether that's creative, whether that's trying to mix music and cooking or whatever those seemingly unrelated combinations might be.


So they tend to be people that will shift or mix or ideate or, and given, let's say, the volatility and short-lived cyclical nature of everything that we do, based on being exposed to trends, Dubai chocolate, for example. All of those things are aligned with what is not necessarily looked at as a positive for candidates in the job market because what you want is a reliable person who you can invest in and then they dedicate 20, 30, 50 years of their career working for your company and they grow a little by little but potentially die every day, a little by little every day that they come in there. 


And that's what sort of changing or to be honest, I think what has changed and that is also a mismatch in what traditional careers are still able to offer or are looking for, and what candidates are willing to, and can realistically, give of themselves. And I think that's also in a bit of a flux and we'll have to find whatever balance that means in this transitionary period that we started off discussing.


Raakhee: Are there any kind of like really interesting, provocative roles that either, you know, Lana and I haven't heard of, or other people? And I know that the title being unimportant, but really the description of something unique that people are doing or going to be doing in the next few years, in any way in this space.


Jashan: I have a couple of examples. Food Architect was one of them. What does that mean? Or 3D Food Printing Technician or Food Interaction Designer. Or Critical Food Artist, or Tasting Bar Guide. 


You see this kind of thing which says, my god, Food Interaction Designer. And then you start reading the description and you're met with The Disgusting Food Museum? What's happening? What is it? That's where the tasting bar guide is.


So I found it really interesting because it's a museum in Sweden, in Malmö, which is at the cusp of Denmark and Sweden. It is a museum which has on display different, like 40, 80 cultural foods that evoke disgust. Now, of course, from where they come in the world, they're not disgusting, they're just traditional foods. But when you look at it as a third party,having cheese with maggots inside it, nasty.


it also has a very strong value proposition, right? Because you're educating people on being open to traditional ways and cultures, and it is these differences that we should celebrate.


I found this interesting because the way they listed this job was with a very catchy attention grabbing method, which said, put your finger down if you like interacting with people. Put your finger down if you would be open to tasting XYZ product. Put your finger down if, oh you've put three fingers down, this role might be interesting for you. And it's so relatable, but engaging, and it was not your dry job opening out there, so it caught attention.


The evaluation instead of a traditional motivation letter or a skills test is in the form of a questionnaire. You are working in the tasting bar and a couple comes up to you. The woman is boastful and cocky, but the man is cautious and a bit skeptical. How would you handle them?


And it's so interesting to see how this is, it sort of takes the pressure off in a certain way because it's such a simulation of you imagining yourself in that role.


You decide to fill up on things in the shop, but when you go to the back, you find the stockroom unorganized and in disarray. What do you do?


Or the -- I tasted everything t-shirt is only on sale if you try it all in the bar. You have taken a couple through the whole experience who did it all to get the t-shirt. It's time to pay when they realize they cannot afford it. What would you do? So there are very specific skills or managerial traits being tested through these questions.


Lana: Yeah, I think what you're describing, I mean, Jashan, and I feel like you're, you're 10 years ahead. I mean, I think you're, you're like the canary in the coal mine.


I think people will have to stitch together their own, you know, suite of skills, right? It's not just, you can't just be the subject matter expert of one thing, right? So this kind of that multipotentialite identity, but then, as you described it, like forging ahead to, in a very entrepreneurial way to connect that why with your skills, to find the right opportunity.


Raakhee: And I'll just expand with one additional thing that's coming up for me. There's so much fear around AI and okay, great, we can have robot servers and no longer human servers. 


But then I think about the disgustologist, right, role and how those things were described. And saying that there's certain base things. Yes, we can automate and compute, but there is this element and there is always going to be this realm of human creativity. Right. That we get to apply to work. That is just going to be too hard to even get, yes, AI to get there the way a human can.


One more question. I saw this on your website, and I thought it was really cool. Yeah, I saw that you contributed to the Interplanetary Cookbook for the MIT Media Lab. For some reason, particularly, we have spoken about space and food on previous episodes of our podcast a lot.


We spoke about a signal a while back about a Michelin dining experience in space and just zero gravity food and figuring out pulls that people can eat in space, but also on Earth then. So can you just share a little bit or tell us a little bit about that or any other thoughts or feelings about food in space?


Jashan: Absolutely. So Maggie Coblentz, and it was in 2021, I believe, April 2021, that I contributed to the project. There was research, which sort of demonstrated and showed that, okay, for a space traveling mission to Mars, there are certain environmental factors within the spaceship that play a role for what kind of food can be suitable for these kinds of missions or journeys. 


You're talking several years, right, for a single trip and journey. So you need food that has a very long shelf life. You're talking very valuable real estate within the spaceship. So you're talking foods that are not bulky. So you start looking at also aspects of, within space, the psychology of the astronauts being so detached or away from their family, loved ones, everything they know. So sort of depression in a certain way, and because of the sort of zero gravity context, et cetera, the loss of appetite. 


And you combine all of these aspects where your food cannot lead to crumbs when an astronaut bites it, because then you've got crumbs suspended in the air, which are then going to rot. You cannot have any sort of leftovers, because then there's nowhere to dispose of it. And you start putting together all these factors.


And I proposed two speculative solutions to it, which was essentially based on one ingredient, spirulina. And I called it “spirulina in space,” which would essentially, it was inspired by a pasta wall that I had really on earth delivered to a client where we had 18 feet by four feet of upcycled macaroni being an interactive installation for a chef client in Mumbai. 


And so I looked at that aspect of the long shelf life of spirulina capsules or tablets being long lasting in terms of shelf life, being nutritionally dense. So even if you don't necessarily want to eat a full meal, you pop two of these tablets, you still get your nutritional needs and being very compact, there's no waste. All of those aspects.


So that was one where the way it was laid out was astronauts could sort of have a visual calendar or a countdown of their journey. And of course, you knew you had to consume two tablets a day. And it's sort of a visual game that they could create patterns with, they could play, but then also end up consuming. So it was multipurpose. So that was the interactive edible installation.


The other was edible compost, which was essentially any fluid or liquid product that would end up being wasted in the cabin could be 3D printed into, again, something that is appealing. So maybe it's printed in the shape of your favorite childhood roast lunch.


So while you're away from, as an astronaut, away from the family memory, every time that there is something which is wasted, it's produced and presented to you in a form that is nostalgic and makes you want to eat so you overcome the sort of loss of appetite. So those are the sort of speculative proposals, yeah.


Raakhee: Wow, so, so interesting, so phenomenal. I should have asked it at the beginning because now I have a million questions and we could talk about that for an hour. But I think, just so fascinating. I would encourage everybody listening today, please go and follow the links. They'll all be available and check out the work that Jashan does. It is so, so incredibly interesting and is really helping to shift and change our world, as you can see.


Yeah, Jashan, thank you so much for your time today. I think this is going to be so illuminating and so interesting for many people who sit outside of food and design itself. So I think, yeah, thank you so much for your time.


Jashan:  My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity. It's always nice to have our niche world of food and design discovered and reach ears and eyes of new potential partners, stakeholders, spectators. So thank you very much for the opportunity. 


For anyone who is interested in knowing more about what food design is, what food designers do, wanting to connect with other food designers, I would encourage them to consider joining our community at the International Center for Food Design, through which, of course, if you're looking for a career or looking to start an entrepreneurial project related to food and design, there is the support that we would be more than happy to provide. So thank you. And I look forward to discovering and seeing what comes out of this series and for food and design.


Raakhee: Awesome. Thank you so much, Jashan. And I will link all your sites. And also just want to highlight to anybody who is listening, the images that Jashan has referenced, if you're just doing audio, they'll be linked as well. So anything you're hearing will be linked and you'll be able to find and be able to see the visuals as well. So thank you so much for listening and liking and subscribing. And yeah, that is it for today. But we will see you again next week. Bye for now.


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