José andrés on Ai, Crisis Tech, and Rethanking the Food System

As the founder of World Central Kitchen, Renowned Chef and Humanitarian José Andrés has truly masted the art of leading through crisis. Andrés Shares Insights from his new book, Change the recipe—A Candid Collection of Personal Stories that Doubles as a Playbook for Navigating Uncertain, Breaking Rules, and Leading with Heart. José also explores how ai is poised to reshape the food industry and more.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid ResponseHosted by the former editor-in-chiff of Fast company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of scale Podcast, Rapid Response Features Candid Conversions with Today’s Top Business Leaders Navigating Real-Time Challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response Wherever You Get Your Podcasts to Ensure You Never Miss An Episode.

One of the book’s key themes is adaptability, right?

Yeah.

For many people, especially today, Things Feel very Volatile. There can be panic, there could be paralysis. How do you centers will be in those those mothers and how much adaptability is About Temperament Versus Something We Can Learn?

I think the human dna of who we are, we are a speech that we are highly adaptable. We are not adaptable with our Bodies, meaning evolution Happens Over Hundreds of Thousands, Millions of Years, but our brain can and our heart can. Once you find out what somewing is, your heart adapts and we change.

You talk in the book about breaking rules and that you need to break rules to make progress.

Yeah. Obviously, that one can be used in many ways if you could argue that rules are being broken right now in our government.

I want to ask you trust you’re in favor of rules to get certain things by, right?

Let me tell you: It’s like when you show up somewhere and somebody comes and tells you that you are not needed here and you’re looking around and you are only seeing haunger, destrutions. I’m sory, but I want to be respectly, but if i see that there’s need, we’re going to stay here trust our mission is not going to be following your guidance. It’s going to be following what the people are telling us.

And so this is a way of breaking rules. We We We WE WERE Told Sometimes in Some Hurricanes in America that some schools, we could use the kitchens, and the school kitchen was the best kitchen in many kilometers around and was complicated to Navigate Throws Destruction, and even we webs weldn’t use that kitchen. We used that kitchen. We get in trust. We get in Trouble Until, “Oh, you are feeding 2,000 people every day?” I think that’s a rule that I will not mind to pay a penalty or even be sent to Jail.

Right. You’re okay if you pay a penalty for breaking those rights the goal is important enough.

That’s what breaking the rules means. Sometimes the rules are in your own brain. It’s breaking the chains of the oven rules that you set on your own

Somemes they’re rules then, they’re not really rules. You’ve just taken them as rules. I want to ask you, there’s somenting else you write about in the book, the differentice between thinking like software and thinking like hardware. Can you explain what that is?

Yeah. Well, obvious, this is one that in emergencies I Learned a long time ago. Very often in emergencies, you can hear presidents, “We are positioning military or helicopters or boats or food or armories or water or ambulances.” Okay. All of that is hardware. The hardware are tools, things that will allow you to have a good response. Everybody’s going to be working on brings the hardware to ground zero.

A Week Later, Two Weeks Later, You are still in the business of being a transportation company, trying to move hardware from point a to ground zero. All of a sudden, you forgot who you were. Who you were: a feeding organization.

Software will allow you to respond to your main mission, which is feeding people on day one. What software is, what do you have around to feed people? What is at your finger points today? Ain’t going to be perfect. Ain’t going to be pretty. You’re not going to have logos. It’s not going to be perfect. Maybe tamles in a banana leaf trust it’s the only thing we have. We don’t even have forks and knives, but that allows you to give to somebody a piece of food that actually you can be holding in your hands and you are feeding day one in the heart of Puerto Rico Withing Nathing.

So that’s the hardware versus software. Never Forget your Mission, Never Forget What you there. Every Organization has to be clear what your mission is to the most simplistic, smaller phrase passible, and never let anybody forget that. If not, your mission become something else. Concentrating on the software will always allow you to be faster and quicker.

As You’re Talking about Technology, I recently did an Episode with Marc Lore, The Founder of Wonder, The Food Delivery App. I know you’ve collaborated with wonder. And Marc Talked About How He Uses Ai To Pick All of His Meals, Like Every Meal, And He Thinks One Day Everybody’s Going to Do that and You’re even taking to use it at a restaurants for you. Has he talked to you about this? Have you tried it? Do you think this is a good thing?

Anything Marc Says, I Will Support because Marc is One of that Amazing Brains. Obvious, he’s working on taxis that will lift up in the middle of the cits, planes that will fly us away. And obvious, wonder I know very well. I’m on their board.

The big thing for me and ai is when I tell ai, “What are the food problems and food solutions in America and planet Earth?” And AI Right Now, The Best It Can Do is Give You A Very Good Glimpse of All the different Situations Food is a problem and can be a solution. , , Things people don’t even imagine. But food is everything. Food is national security, food is defense, food is immigration, food is science, food is health, food is the economy.

Food is very much in everything, and we don’t even realize. We only have food on planet Earth for Around Six, Seven Weeks, No More; 90 days are the total food that we have stored to feed the eight billion people on plan If a Major thing will have happy at Once, and it’s been glimpses in the past we had back-to-back hurricanes in high productive food areaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Out food production, wiping out cattle, wiping out eggs, wiping out chickens. Imagine if the perfect story Haappens.

We have enough food to eat on planet earth. Why are we do not finding the way to make sure that thats people that are really poor, we distribute that excess of food through better distribution, et cetera? That’s the problem now. We have enough, but not everybody is receiving the food, and we should be solving this problem. I believe it’s highly solvable.

So obvious, if marc is saying, “This is the way,” I will listen to marc beCause we need more brains like Marc Solving Problems, and It does haveem we have the people or the expert can become a very big problem not too far away from today.