The Beef Medium Podcast

Hardee's Head Chef Jean Leathersich

We’re off to Nashville this week for our first-ever road show and we could not be more excited. In today’s episode, we sit down with Chef Jean Leathersich, the Director of Culinary at Hardee’s restaurants. If you’ve ever wondered what it actually takes to get a fast food item onto a menu, look no further. Chef Jean walks us through the process while we talk inside Hardee’s very own test kitchen here in Tennessee. We spend a lot of time talking about both Hardee’s, and Carl’s Jr. as well as what differentiates the two. However, Beef Medium has always been about the people within the wonderful world of food which means that Chef Jean gets to tell us her story as well, including the time she was a postal worker, her stint a boutique pastry chef, and even when she was snack packaging engineer. It turns out getting to lead culinary innovation for a restaurant brand isn’t as straightforward of a path as one would think.

Alexis Frost

Our favorite fast food-loving educator is on the pod today: Alexis Frost! (alexis.frost [https://www.tiktok.com/@alexis.frost?lang=en] / lex.loves [https://www.instagram.com/lex.loves_/]) As a former high school math teacher, her internet fame began as a bit years back with one of her students. Alexis ultimately decided to start her own page on TikTok in 2020 during a phase in her life where most folks would have a hard time putting themselves out there (not even including the pandemic). She started off doing content about being a teacher which amassed her hundreds of thousands of followers but she found a higher calling in the world of fast food, particularly in trying employee orders, ultimately becoming a full time creator several years ago and leaving her job as a teacher. Alexis's story is truly a motivating one. Regularly putting out multiple videos a day for past the five years, she's only missed a couple in total. One video of hers in particular proved to a bit of a challenge but she made it happen anyway and it landed her a collab with both Chipotle and Keith Lee in case you're ever doubting your content. Let Alexis's grind be your guiding light.

Grocery Obsessed (Emily Hill)

It’s about time we had a Texas-centric episode. Who better to walk us through the food culture of one of the U.S.’s best states than Emily Hill aka Grocery Obsessed? Like many others, she started her page back in 2020 but unlike many others, her content focused specifically and only on Texas’s iconic grocery store chain H-E-B. Emily’s page was originally known as HEB Obsessed but a couple years back, she found that she had niched just a bit too hard and that’s where the rebrand to Grocery Obsessed comes in. Regardless, she still focuses only on Texas grocery finds, with everything from national brands to new startups. It’s been so successful that it’s become her full time job, which makes her one of the coolest moms we know (in addition to her being the first ever guest on the podcast that is indeed a mom). This episode is particularly great because Matt has never really experienced Texas, so you have three perspectives today, those being the true local (Emily), an experienced visitor (Zach), and a relative newcomer (Matt).

Laneygrn

Laneygrn (Laney Green) the official Dessert Queen joins us on the podcast today. A full-time content creator at 22, Laney wasted no time launching her career right out of college. She is undoubtedly living the life reviewing food every day in San Diego, but it didn’t happen overnight. Turns out Laney’s been making videos since she was nine years old. After over decade of pure hustle experimenting with everything from makeup to lifestyle content, she ultimately landed on food as she was wrapping up school.  During her time in college, she also started a user-generated content (UGC) marketing business, largely separate from her escapades as a social media personality. UGC’s a pretty big subsection of the industry these days but get this: barely anybody was talking about it when she started things back in the early 2020s. The risks she’s taken have ultimately paid off as she continues her career and it’s something anyone looking to get into content, young or old, can learn from.

KingSchratz

All hail KingSchratz (Dave Schratz), fast food legend and pop culture expert. Dave is an absolute content machine. His page was originally created in 2006, during YouTube’s earliest days, but he didn’t start taking content creation seriously until 2020 when the pandemic forced his personal training business to a halt. From long-form to short-form, Dave does it all, every single day, every single platform.  It all started with an Instagram post where he offered to eat an entire Shaq-a-Roni Pizza from Papa John’s in exchange for 5,000 likes. From there, he took his childhood love for fast food and turned it into multi-thousand calorie eating challenges, mukbangs, and even tech reviews via his second channel, MoreKingSchratz. In today’s episode, we talk about his personal journey, his love for Wendy’s, his disdain for Subway, and much more.