DJ Tan: Prince of Fermentation, Coffee Without Beans & Government Food Scientist - E460

DJ Tan, CTO & Cofounder of Prefer, and Jeremy Au talked about three main topics:

1. Government Food Scientist: DJ recounted his early fascination with science and his studies in chemistry at UCL, leading to a focus on food science at Singapore's ASTAR government lab. He shared how his academic and laboratory experiences shaped his decision to experiment at the frontier of what humans eat and drink and merge rigorous scientific methods with innovative culinary practices. He discussed the challenges that novel food products face, particularly in achieving cost parity and consumer acceptance regarding taste.

2. Prince of Fermentation: Transitioning from a chemistry enthusiast to a fermentation expert, DJ detailed his journey from organic synthesis to leveraging his expertise to transform flavor profiles in partnership with alcohol mixologists and chefs. Fermentation is a strategic solution that enhances and creates new flavors while potentially reducing production costs. He also shared how his title was accidentally coined, and how he feels about this personal brand today.

3. Coffee Without Beans: DJ discussed the inception of Prefer, a startup aimed at creating sustainable food solutions, beginning with bean-free coffee. He outlined the strategic positioning in the market, focusing on consumer benefits and business challenges. Prefer's goal is to revolutionize the coffee industry by offering an environmentally friendly alternative that maintains taste and convenience. The conversation also touched on scaling production, sustainable packaging, and the impact of their business model on the food industry’s adaptation to climate change.

Jeremy and DJ also talked about the technical challenges in food science, consumer trends towards innovative food products, and the impact of global environmental changes on agricultural practices.

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(01:51) Jeremy Au:

Hey, DJ.

(01:52) DJ Tan:

Hey Jeremy.

(01:53) Jeremy Au:

Hey, I'm excited to have you. We've gone for many walks together and fantastic to see you take that plunge into the founder life.

(01:58) DJ Tan:

Thanks for having me. Long time listener, first time caller.

(02:01) Jeremy Au:

And of course, I'm happy to introduce you as the prince of fermentation. I know we've got to explain the story behind that. So definitely let's get started and talk a little bit about it.

(02:09) Jeremy Au:

DJ, can you share a little bit about yourself?

(02:10) DJ Tan:

Yeah, happy to. DJ here. I graduated with a degree in Chemistry from UCL on an ASTAR scholarship. Upon graduation, I came back to Singapore. I worked in research. I started my career out in an organic synthesis laboratory. So there we were making chemicals for the specialty chemical industry making larger molecules, more complex molecules from simpler chemicals. That was fun and all, but a part of me really wanted to look into food and see whether we could replicate some of the science to create flavors using chemistry. So after that, I moved on to work in a fermentation laboratory. So that we were using microbes to create flavors and fragrances. That really inspired me to want to look into fermentation. I started consulting for Michelin starred restaurants and bars here in Singapore, helping them develop new flavors, new dishes, new drinks, all based on fermentation. And of course, a year and a half ago, I started as cofounder and CTO of Prefer where we make coffee without coffee beans.

(02:58) Jeremy Au:

So let's start from the beginning. Did you love science as a kid? I mean, because you did that undergrad degree, right? So I guess you must have, but how did you get into it? Were you into science?

(03:06) DJ Tan:

I mean, I've always enjoyed science as a kid. I was always a regular member of the Singapore Science Centre, which I think does amazing work in science communication. I was always reading science textbooks even as early as primary school. Science was always sort of very natural to me, really understanding how the world works, how everything around us ticks and moves.

(03:23) Jeremy Au:

Amazing. And do you have any fun stories about you as a kid of science? Did your parents tell you any stories?

(03:29) DJ Tan:

I think it is one of my earliest memories was joining the science club in primary school. And the school has a very interesting program where they allow kids to really get in touch with botany and specifically orchids. So we learned how to cultivate orchids, learn how to pollinate orchids learn how to learn aseptic techniques to grow orchid seeds into seedlings and really learn all of that entire part of the life cycle. And I think, also those early days that really got me interested in lab techniques, in biology and chemistry.

(03:56) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. I remember my early days in a science club and then I joined a computer club, the robotics club. Those were some fun times.

(04:01) DJ Tan:

Yeah.

(04:02) Jeremy Au:

And what's interesting, of course, the difference between you and me is that you went on to decide to do an undergraduate degree in science, right? And chemistry. So what was your thinking back then?

(04:10) DJ Tan:

I think, I'll be honest, I probably wasn't thinking very much about my future or my career. All I knew was that I love science. I knew that going to JC, and I was just looking for a way to do more science, do more chemistry. ASTAR offered a very generous opportunity. It was a scholarship to study abroad. And, yeah. I got a place in UCL, so I was like, let's try and do chemistry there. And I think that's been one of the more memorable years. Not just the studying chemistry in UCL, but I think also getting to know fellow scholars, fellow uh, geeks and nerds who are experts in their field of studies in chemistry and physics and biology and medicine. And I think it's just incredible to be in the same room with folks of that energy and that level of passion about, their work.

(04:53) Jeremy Au:

Incredible. And what was it like, as a bachelor of science, but you could have been a bachelor as well. You're probably a bachelor as well uh, in London, but obviously new country, you know, you can specialize. What was it like?

(05:03) DJ Tan:

I mean, London is London. It's a bit of a mini-Singapore town over there. A lot of Singaporeans, a lot of Malaysians. So you almost feel at home in a foreign land. A great place to meet people to get such a community. What I really appreciate about my time in London and this again was accidental back then, but, in retrospect, it sort of made sense, was that I got to stay, I got to live alone. I found a flat for my second and third year. And as I was living alone, I had to cook for myself. And as I was cooking for myself, I figured, why not try and apply some of this chemistry knowledge that I was learning in lectures and tutorials. Why not try and use chemistry to make my food taste better, to make it more nutritious?

I saw that there were very clear links, correlations between what the experiments that we did in the lab and cooking. It's all the same thing. You're applying heat, you're applying acids, you're applying amylase and sugars, whether it's in the lab or in the kitchen. And that I think really got me started on learning more about food, learning more about science, learning more about food chemistry and along the way, also really appreciating the culture, the tradition the history, the social element of food and eating.

(06:08) Jeremy Au:

Oh, that's so true. I've always wanted a cookbook that was more scientific in approach, right? Rather than add salt to taste, and the kind of fuzziness there. No, I think it's really interesting. And then there you were, obviously you went to ASTAR, which is a Singapore science organization here, and you did a whole set of different, I would say, practices, and projects. Could you share a little bit more about the evolution process?

(06:30) DJ Tan:

Yeah. As part of the scholarship from graduation, I came back to Singapore. I worked in a. a research lab that was looking into organic synthesis and organic chemistry. Back then my my, my first thought and what every other scholar thinks is to pursue a PhD and that was what I thought I would want to do and just, pursue a PhD in chemistry.

For the longest time I thought, oh, hey, food science. This food chemistry bit was fun, was cute, but it was just going to be a hobby or a side project. But it was only when I came back to Singapore, started talking to senior scientists, talking to mentors and advisors within the scientific community that I really saw that there was a lot of effort, emphasis and a lot of interest paid to food. And especially food in Singapore. I think that was also the time when the government was taking food security very seriously. And this was as early as 2016, 2017. So way before COVID. I remember attending an A Star wide seminar once. And senior management was briefing us about the state of the industry and a number, still stays in my mind. And that was that the food industry was, in Singapore, was mushrooming 30 percent year on year. And that's huge growth. And I thought, hey, maybe I could actually make a career out of this food thing. So I took what I learned in chemistry and I said, Hey, let me try to work in food and flavors and fermentation. Let me get my feet wet, get my hands dirty and pick up some more skills. And that was how I started really looking into flavors, fragrances and pick up practical skills in biotechnology and fermentation.

(07:52) Jeremy Au:

Yep. And then I guess what's interesting here is that you decided to focus on that, what was the change there? What's the difference between sulfates and gas chromatography versus, kind of like food as an application. How does that shift from your perspective?

(08:05) DJ Tan:

Very little difference, actually. What I like about it is that, in chemistry, the experiments you do, you leave in the lab. In food experiments you do, you can eat, you can bring home. So that's it's always fun to share your results with friends and family, right? Yeah, I think that was really the big shift. When I realized that, I would go out networking events I would talk to people about science and chemistry. Quote, unquote, which was my first love and people just like, nod along. They will, they will politely follow along the conversation and like, okay, I learned a new trivia today about chemistry. All right. That's it. Move on. But when I talk about food, food resonates very differently with people. Food, I think touches and hits an emotional core. It's sentimental. People have sometimes irrational feelings about food. People get surprisingly or unsurprisingly nationalistic and defensive about food. And I saw that I could talk about food and almost use food as a vehicle to talk about culture, use food, talk about science and chemistry and that was fun. It was almost like an exercise in science communication for me.

(08:59) Jeremy Au:

And what's interesting is that, during this time while you're still doing research at ASTAR, you had started your first consultancy gig as the co founder of starter culture, would you share more about that?

(09:09) DJ Tan:

Yeah, so it started from my for my first ever ferment and that was a red cabbage sauerkraut that I was making in the lab. So I went to the lab pantry. I made this kimchi this sauerkraut and what was interesting was, you expect red cabbage to smell like red cabbage, like earthy, musty, sulfurous. But what came out of that was a almost black currant fruity aroma. And that to me was just amazing. It was almost like the black box that is fermentation and how you could put something, ingredient A in and get something entirely different, entirely unexpected out of it. And that to me was and so I wanted to share that sort of magic in it. Mystery with folks. So we, my friends and I, we started taking projectors, speakers, mics down to Dongpagu Hawker Center. We will just stand there on a weekend morning and talk and deliver a lecture about kimchi. We'll talk about the science of kimchi. We'll talk about why you need to add, X amount of salt, why you need to add X amount of sugar. We'll talk about the science of miso, the science of . We even got a historian to come in and talk about the history of shrimp paste. So it really, of southern culture really birthed itself just by talking about the science of food and trying to teach people, adults, young families aunties, uncles, the science of fermentation and try to dispel some of the pseudoscience that was surrounding it.

And it was through those workshops that I think a couple of chefs and bartenders noticed us. They were attending our workshops and after a while they said, Hey, this is actually quite informative. We are exploring fermentation on menus. Why don't you come and teach, a course, a class for the staff? That way they can better explain fermentation to the guests. And so we did, and then one thing led to another. I started reaching out to a couple of chef friends who run restaurants, bars. And a lot of these bars and restaurants, are looking into novel, innovative dishes. But unfortunately, most of the staff, do not graduate or aren't trained in the lab, they don't have science, engineering, math degrees and backgrounds. And so there's always this almost wall that prevented them from accessing information about science and fermentation. And I came in almost like a translator.

So I'll read a scientific paper or journal. And basically just translate that to the kitchen staff as, oh, hey, this, what this paper says is basically you just need add 2% salt and that 2% salt helps to inhibit spoilage and encourage the growth of your bacteria. So that's been really, really fun. And I'll always get unique challenges, unique problems thrown at me. So it's always interesting to have to dive into the archives of the national library to dig up all recipes, to try and correlate or corroborate information across records and time spans.

(11:30) Jeremy Au:

I love that phrase. You said, you always remember your first fermentation. It sounds like other people say, Oh, I remember my first significant other.

(11:38) DJ Tan:

Yeah.

(11:38) Jeremy Au:

My first man, my first woman. You're like my first fermentation. And you made that kimchi in the lab, right? Which is a bit different. A lot of people make it at home. You're looking in the lab.

(11:46) DJ Tan:

Yeah. I mean, I think it was fun because in lab we had one access to not just scientific equipment, but really scientific talent very, very smart chemists, analytical chemists microbiologists were in my workplace. So I figured, if something were to go wrong or go right, who better to ask than my colleagues. And why would I make it at home? Why not just make it in the lab? So they can help me, observe and and help me, like, look and yeah, we, for a while we would make, brew kombucha together. We would brew beer together. And really just encourage people to see fermentation beyond just a nine to five work thing, but also as a way of life and hobby.

(12:18) Jeremy Au:

So what's so special about fermentation as a process? I mean, obviously, we talk about chemistry, gas chromatography. And I was like, wow. Like you said, fermentation feels like something that everyone has been doing forever, right? Every Korean auntie, grandmother has been doing kimchi for generations, like say sauerkraut, lachan as well. What's so special about fermentation from your perspective?

(12:36) DJ Tan:

I like fermentation. I think it's interesting because it's actually a lazy person's approach cooking. And I say it because, no, so when I was doing organic chemistry work I had to be the one assembling the chemicals. I the one putting the chemicals together, mixing them under heat stirring them. And I thought, why not let someone else or something else do the work? And that's what you find in fermentation, right? You throw cabbage, salt together, and you basically just leave it there for a week. And you let the bacteria that's present naturally ferment, naturally break down the amino acids and sugars and convert them into flavor molecules. And yeah, one week later, come back, after a holiday or a break, come back to it and it's done. It's almost like magic, it's really a lazy person's approach to it. You don't have to slave over a hot stirring, it, mixing it, waiting for it to be done. Just go do your own thing, come back to it and it's almost magically done.

And I think that's what the fun part about fermentation is. And that's something that I've had some problems with when I was talking to folk at the health centres. Some of them were like, oh, I'm checking it every other minute, how do I know that it's ready? I'm like, relax. Set it there, forget about it. Forget about it, come back to it. If it's done, it's done. If it's not done, then wait a bit longer. And if it's right, it's right. If it's wrong, toss it up, start again. It's a very I don't know, almost zen approach, almost a very chilled approach to food and cooking.

(13:46) Jeremy Au:

Isn't fermentation dangerous? I mean, there's bacteria, there's viruses, there's, all these food handling issues, people get food poisoning. You're just throwing this and that and then you're letting fermentation like, you know, how should I think about that?

(13:59) DJ Tan:

Yeah it can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. And that's why, when we are teaching classes and workshops, we always start with safety. to me it's important, it's more important that folks take away the why, the science of what we were doing when we were fermenting rather than the specific numbers and ingredients in the recipe. Now people who are always very interested in the recipes, I try not to spend too much time on that. Really it's, as long as you understand the science of it, you can basically do whatever you want. And there's quite a wide margin of error. And I think one of the beauty of fermentation is that, especially for someone who, if not, if you regularly cook in the kitchen, if you are if you know how to handle food and handle kitchen utensils, you are generally going to be okay. It's quite common sense, wash your hands, wash your utensils. Yeah. If you're doing all that, you will be fine, 80, 90 percent of the time.

(14:43) Jeremy Au:

I mean, I guess people are worried about what if the wrong bacteria starts the fermentation process, right? I'm sure people are thinking about it all the time. So how do you address that point?

(14:51) DJ Tan:

One of the fun things about fermantation is that it almost self checks. If you're making kimchi you should expect at the end of it, kimchi, right? You know how kimchi smells like, you know how kimchi tastes like. You should expect kimchi at the end. If you don't get kimchi, something has gone wrong, and then your nose is your GC, your tongue is your liquid, chromatogram. Just by smelling it, you know that something's gone wrong, and you know not to taste it, you know not to eat it, and not to serve it. So in a way, it tells you whether it's right, it tells you whether it's wrong. If it smells right, looks right, generally speaking, it's gonna be quite okay. And what I recommend to folks is If you try a bit try a small sample of it, you're not going to fall sick from that. And that will probably give you enough information to tell you whether you want to serve it to the rest of your friends. It's fun when your experiments tell you that, whether things are going right or wrong. And you do that just by observing, just by using your senses, and really paying attention to what's happening and what's changing.

(15:36) Jeremy Au:

So when you think about all of that, you also have the title now of the Prince of Fermentation, right? And we've always laughed about it over the years. So how did you get that name?

(15:44) DJ Tan:

Yeah. I was working with a friend who runs a Malaysian style restaurant ,Labyrinth. So they do a modern take on Singaporean flavors and local ingredients. So I was doing quite a bit of work for him, helping him design, Nata de Coco. Having him design other flavors, amazake, kombuchas. So one day this journalist, also a friend now Mei, went to the restaurant to, for lunch. And she was quite impressed, very intrigued by the ferments that our friend LG was implementing the menu. And she wanted to find out more about the science of it. So she reached out. And we just, we spoke about what fermentation means to food, to the future of food and the history of food as well. And she was looking for a catchy headline or caption to tie it all together. And it just so happened that we were having this conversation in a friend's cafe and my friend who was the barista in behind the counter, probably inspired by, Japanese shonen manga titles and anime characters, like, hey, why not, try Prince of Fermentation, probably inspired by, partly inspired by Prince of Tennis or your other Japanese high school mangas. And May thought that was a cute nickname and went with it and hence the name started.

(16:47) Jeremy Au:

I'm sure how does it like, I mean, because, I've seen people introduce you to that title, I think you're used to it to some extent. What was it like to walk around that title?

(16:54) DJ Tan:

I think the first few days were quite weird. It was a bit awkward. But I think I, I've since grown to, to, take it as almost like a badge of honor and admiration. I think, especially because I work with quite a few bars and restaurants. Helping them again, develop fermented dishes and ingredients. And so when people say that, yeah, it tells me that they are thinking about fermentation , that they appreciate how fermentation is so key and integral to the food and everything around us. And I think it's nice that it helps with being memorable. And then so these days I kind of like it.

(17:23) Jeremy Au:

Amazing. And so what's interesting is that in parallel while you've been doing this, you've also decided to take the founder route, right? And we met because, you were an Entrepreneur First, which is, kind of like that founder training program. So could you talk a little bit more about your decision about why you decided to become a founder?

(17:36) DJ Tan:

I think part of me was always a bit rebellious not in a bad way, I hope. But I think I also always liked the idea of building something for myself. I mean, I've always liked, building models as a kid Legos going up even today. So when the opportunity came for me to build my own business, I was like, yeah, why not? Give it a whirl. EF had been reaching out for, I think a few cohorts before. I said, no, I was like, I'm at ASTAR by thinking that time that it reached out a year and a half ago was a time I was like, I was really thinking about what's next in life and career. And it happened to be a good time. I was like, yeah, all right, let's, let's do it try it know, take a look at it and see how it goes. And of course, I met Jake and the rest is, as they say, is history.

(18:14) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. I think what's interesting is that you met a co-founder and you also started working on the idea as well. Can you talk about that process?

(18:20) DJ Tan:

I think, yeah, I mean, Jake's been a great partner and cofounder. We came together with different ideas for what we wanted to bring to the table. He came from VC where he was investing in food tech and climate tech. He has an MBA from Tel Aviv and NUS. He has a degree in neuroscience. So he really wanted to find a solution for the world's climate problems. I didn't care any about it. I just wanted to make food. I just wanted to make food that tasted good and was nutritious. I think where we really came together was looking at food as a lever for climate impact at scale. We figured, hey, everyone in the world eats food. If we could make the food that we eat the lifestyle that we have, the habits that we, that we consume just a bit more sustainable that would translate to huge impact multiplied by the world population. And then we went about looking at what was problematic. Or what issues in today's food ecosystem. We looked at nutrition plant based proteins the hype and the trend of world, the hype and trend a while ago.

(19:14) DJ Tan:

And we saw that a huge problem with these food products, novel food products. Two things. One they didn't meet price parity. So people, ,consumers aren't willing to pay a premium for something that's perceived to be more sustainable or even If my chicken or my tofu costs X amount, any new product that wants to compete with that needs to cost X or less. Why would I pay more for something? Second was taste. If I'm going to switch my regular bar of chocolates to something else, to another brand, why would I switch to a brand that tastes worse? And we figured, hey, why not try and solve these two problems in one shot? Let's use fermentation. We know that fermentation can scale. We can see how cheap soy sauce, beer gets. We believe that you can use the same technology to make it cheap. And of course, we know that fermentation solves the taste problem. It's traditionally, historically used for millennia by the human civilization to create new flavors. And then we hold in on the ingredient that we saw had a huge price and taste problem, and that is coffee. Climate change is wrecking coffee supply, it's eroding coffee farmland. At the same time, demand for coffee is expected to grow, especially in developing countries. Price problem? Check. Taste problem? Check. coffee supply, coffee quality has been impacted by extreme weather phenomena, floods, hail, typhoons, reducing coffee supply uh, using coffee, coffee quality and figure, Hey, why not try and use sustainable bioprocessors to create coffee flavor? And we spoke to a couple of prospective customers and clients. it got quite a lot of traction and we figured this was something that we could, double down on and, and, and start a company just to try and solve.

(20:39) Jeremy Au:

So I think the part that obviously people kind of have the question mark is what's so bad about coffee anyway, right? I mean, coffee works, coffee beans, put a bean in, you get a coffee out, every Starbucks has it. So why do we need some sort of extract, to put instead of a coffee bean?

(20:56) DJ Tan:

I think coffee is hanging on by a thread today. Over the next couple of decades climate scientists predict that coffee land will not be suitable to support agriculture and coffee growth and that's just because of climate change. As the bean belt shrinks because of global warming that prevents or inhibits the optimal growth of coffee and coffee cherries. Coffee supply is threatened, and it's not just also climate change. It's, if you look at, if you talk to coffee farmers on the ground, it's also labour. Younger generations that are brought up in, in farmland are moving to the city. Why would they want to, take up the hard jobs that their parents went through? Uh, Working, tilling the farms, planting the seeds. When they could just move to a city, take a nice, comfortable office job, right? And make a living that way. People don't want to work on farms. Coffee farmers find that even if they were to work on farms, they'd rather plant a crop like durian, where they can fetch a higher value per harvest.

Coffee harvests are also twice, twice annually. And you don't make a lot. So all these factors together are threatening coffee supply. So while today we may still see coffee prices somewhat stable because they are traded on futures and upon the commodities market but in a few years as this shock waves propagate through the market and through the supply chain, we'll start to see coffee prices increase. We will see either coffee prices increase or coffee quality becoming something that is something that we're not quite used to. And our hunch at Prefer is that we need to find a solution today and not wait for the problem to be too real or too big to solve.

(22:14) Jeremy Au:

What are the challenges in fermenting and creating a coffee like product?

(22:19) DJ Tan:

The first challenge really is the taste problem. How you replicate the genuine, authentic sensory experience, right? Again, food is not pure science. It's an art and it's tied to a lot of emotions, so when we think of coffee, we think of the moments in someone's life or someone's day when you would drink coffee. For some folks when I was in London the first thing I did when I woke up was turn on my coffee grinder. So you get that aroma of freshly ground coffee. Waffling through the entire entire flat, entire apartment, and that I think is a unique sense of experience, and of course that is tied to a lot of emotion.

How do you replicate that? It's something that's not coffee. For us, we use bread, we use soy, we use barley, we ferment these ingredients. And we ferment these ingredients to get the same aroma molecules that you would get in coffee. And that, we think, is our best approach to mimicking on a chemical molecular level the exact profile of coffee.

(23:10) Jeremy Au:

And obviously, there's a flavor component and I think that's interesting because we saw that for Impossible Meats, right? Where they have managed, I'll say, pretty much replicate the taste of a burger patty, I would say. But of course, one of the challenges they have now is that, I'll say the form factor, the distribution, the price. I mean, it all comes together one side. And of course, the consumer also doesn't find it to be as healthy. That is very processed. So how do you think about this for like bean-free coffee.

(23:37) DJ Tan:

I think the beauty of bean free coffee, for Prefer, at least, it's fermented in a way that you would naturally see food being fermented. We use food with microbes. We use beer tanks, we use soy sauce vats. And it's as simple as, fermentation. We ferment the ingredients and then we roast it like you would roast coffee. So it's minimally processed if you want to think about it that way. And at the end of it, it comes out in a form that looks like ground coffee. So it's very familiar to folks who drink coffee. We've done blind tests where we pass it to baristas. And they basically know how to use the ground coffee. They will scoop it up, they'll put it in the portafilters, they'll pull a shot of it. And so it needs minimal training, minimal equipment, no specialized equipment. And I think that makes it very approachable and very easy to use.

(24:21) Jeremy Au:

Great to hear that usage is actually effectively one to one and how does it compare you think in price over time?

(24:27) DJ Tan:

I mean, today we are matching coffee prices. So I think that bodes well for us. And that tells us that we are on the right track using fermentation as a scalable technology to approach the problem. But over time, we believe that in order for Prefer to make a real impact in the supply chain and in the food ecosystem, we need to be more affordable. And we believe that we can get there by next year.

(24:45) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. I mean, it's a scale more and scale that it's easier to scale.

(24:49) DJ Tan:

A simple scaling problem. We look at how cheap yogurt can be, how cheap beer can be we believe that we'll get there.

(24:55) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. You scale that faster than you can scale like coffee plantations here for sure. What's the caffeine kick like?

(25:00) DJ Tan:

Yeah. The product is decaf by default. So if you don't want caffeine, you're allergic to any bit of caffeine, Prefer is perfect. For folks who want caffeine, we buy caffeine powder off the shelf and we scoop it in. So that allows us to control the exact dosage of caffeine that you want. You want 30mg, 70mg, we can get that exact amount in.

(25:17) Jeremy Au:

Great. So I think what's interesting is that as you think through all of that, could you share about what are some of the myths or misconceptions, I guess, about bean-free coffee?

(25:26) DJ Tan:

Misconceptions. I think some folks think that we use spanned coffee. And they wonder why go through all this, jump through all these hoops just to use coffee again. And we don't. We don't use spanned coffee. I think the goal is to move away from any ingredient or any by product that would be threatened by climate change. So the goal is to not, is to avoid using any coffee by product or coffee derived ingredient and really rely on ingredients that are accessible, like bread, like soy, like barley.The other misconception n I think is not just about bean-free coffee, but about Prefer. People think that we are a coffee company. In truth, we are not. Really, we are, we see ourselves as a flavor company. The goal, the ultimate goal of Prefer is to create flavors for the world's ingredients that have been, that are threatened by climate change. Today it's coffee it's cacao, it's vanilla, it's hazelnut we want to be able to use our fermentation technology, our by processes to create coffee flavours, but also can we create, chocolate without cacao, can we create pot free hazelnut, so pot free vanilla, can we create nut free hazelnut all based on the same platform technology that is fermentation. So we are starting with coffee to prove that this works, but those ingredients are next on our horizon.

(26:31) Jeremy Au:

I think it's interesting because a lot of these flavors have already been developed by, kind of like food scientists at CPG, Consumer Packaged Good Companies, right? Obviously at Pringles, I think there's probably like a hundred flavors right now. So those food scientists are already creating those flavors, same thing for your chocolate wafers and things like that. So how do you see yourself differentiated from that? Is it primarily because you're an independent team selling to small and medium distributors. Is that one big difference?

(26:55) DJ Tan:

I think one key difference is the process. So synthetic flavors, artificial flavors, or nature identical flavors have been around for very long as, as correctly pointed out, even coffee flavors, right? So coffee flavoring in itself is not unique. I think our approach to making coffee flavors sustainable food grade sources is different. And this is especially important for consumers interested in clean labeling, especially interesting to corporations who want to avoid using petrochemical feedstock in their synthesis and want to find a carbon neutral or even carbon negative approach to creating flavors.

The other thing I think is interesting is the application. So while you can get liquid coffee flavoring and those work very well for ready to drink beverages and packaged goods, it's been challenging, I think, to embed those flavors in a solid form factor and a powder that will work just like coffee beans, that will work just like ground coffee. We have that. So our customers today, again, put it in their portafilter, they put it in their cafeterias, they put it in their mocha pots, and they brew it as they brew coffee. And I think just being able to open that application that, that form factor really opens up a lot of opportunities for bean free coffee.

(27:58) Jeremy Au:

Then from that perspective could you share about a time that you personally have been brave?

(28:02) DJ Tan:

I think that, that's a very interesting question. I don't think I was brave back then when I made the decision. Back then, found someone else would see as reckless, abandoned. But today, on hindsight I think I was brave when I chose not to pursue a PhD. A lot of times, as ASTAR scholars pursue a PhD as is almost seems natural. For me, I had to wrestle with that guilt for the longest time. It was childhood means bucket list to, to do a PhD, to become a professor and just teach chemistry. But I think I saw that there was a very real time sensitive opportunity to pursue a career in food science, and that required me to start working in the industry immediately and not spend five years almost siloed away in academia, working, studying one specific problem. And I think it's that decision to move away from PhD. that ultimately led me here to where I am today.

(28:50) Jeremy Au:

Amazing. On that note, I love to kind of like summarize the three big takeaways that I got from this conversation. First of all, so much for sharing about your early science and academic career, in terms of how you as a student, how much you love science and what were the early decisions you make as a student?

Secondly, thank you so much for sharing about fermentation especially about the science and the process and about how you fell in love with fermentation, how you set out your kimchi and kombucha and your beer, also doing that while you were at ASTAR as a scientist. So fascinating to hear that story as well.

And lastly, thank you so much for sharing about your decision to become a founder and, your vision for Prefer, bean-free coffee. and this kind of answering it from two different angles, right? One from what is it like from a consumer perspective about why they should drink it, why they can use it at home, why they can brew a cup of coffee as they normally would. And secondly, from the perspective of a founder, right? We're just talking about the go to market, talking about how you're making it, right? Something that's positive in terms of the climate, making it positive in terms of packaging and seeing yourself primarily as a flavors company rather than a coffee So on that note, thank you so much, DJ, for sharing your story.

(29:50) DJ Tan:

Thanks for having me.