Fisayo Oluwadiya Podcast Transcript
Fisayo Oluwadiya joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Fisayo Oluwadiya. OKAO, Inc. is the brainchild of Fisayo Oluwadiya, a visionary who combines a love for Food with an extensive 16-year career in technology. Fisayo’s technological experience has been honed at Fortune 500 companies such as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Nordstrom.
Her work has encompassed innovative projects, leadership roles, and a relentless pursuit of excellence, contributing to cutting edge solutions that have shaped the industry. Parallel to her tech career, Viseo embarked on a gastronomic journey exploring the intricate tapestry of global cuisines, local flavors, and culinary traditions.
Her food blog has become a destination for food lovers where she shares thoughtful reviews and personal foodie adventures.
Well, good afternoon, Fisayo. Welcome to the show!
Fisayo Oluwadiya: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Love doing this. Love jumping on. First thing in the day. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.
I get to do this every day and it’s so awesome. And again, Fisayo, I appreciate you making the time, hailing out of the great state of New York. Let’s just jump right into your first question here. Can you share with us the moment or experience that inspired you to create OKAO, blending your extensive technology background with your love for food?
Fisayo Oluwadiya: Well, I mean, we’d have to start with where everything started in the first place. I absolutely love food. It’s something that has been in my family line all the way up to my grandfather. He was a chef and then followed by my mother. She was a caterer. My maternal grandfather owns a farm. So, food has always been something that is in my life.
But tech, on the other hand, is something I stumbled into when I went to college. I actually was going to major in computer science and economics because I wanted to be a stockbroker, but I took a computer science class, and I just loved it. So, I decided to major in that instead. Fast forward, 17 years in industry, open is just released and I’m thinking to myself, I want to be a part of this gold rush.
I had initially started thinking about solutions in the serious industries, like finance and medicine and so on and so forth. I was non-committal to these industries. So, I figured I need to find something that I am passionate and upset the passion and obsessed with and very much ingrained in that I could combine together.
So, then I started to think, okay, I have tech. I have AI and I can build a recommendation engine because that’s effectively what I do when I’m writing about a restaurant. So, it was with it was with that thought that I came up with the recommendation engine and I started building it.
Brian Thomas: I really love that story combining your passions essentially into making something that is you love to do, but also provides a great service for people out there that are looking for great food. So, I appreciate that and throughout your notable career at leading fortune 500 companies, how have the skills and insights you gained in technology influenced your approach to the food industry and okay. Mission.
Fisayo Oluwadiya: So, with all of my experiences across all of the fortune 500 companies, I essentially have come to the realization that there is no problem. Technology cannot solve. There is always a solution once you get a team together, and everybody is discussing it. For whatever manual issue there is, whatever problem there is, there is a technical solution.
So having that and knowing I have the power to affect that change. That’s something I always carried with me. And it always boiled down to 3 core things efficiency, scalability and innovation. Now, diving in on innovation, that is where exactly comes into play because it’s solving so many problems in the food industry from different perspectives.
I know I speak about exactly from the perspective of the recommendation engine, giving diners, cooling the experiences, B2B aspect of the problem of the product restaurants. Do not have data real time data to make data driven decisions about their menus and their dishes. It’s basically okay. Let me be creative and hopefully people like this.
Now, think about the power of data. Let’s say I’m able to provide to a restaurant that within a five-mile radius, everybody is a vegan and you have a steakhouse. You probably want to ensure that you have a lot of options for the vegans in your neighborhood. And that is just one of the, one of the things that the data can reveal.
And that is that’s I’ve given perspectives from the eaters getting their personal dietary preferences, recommendations, and the restaurants. We also have for the chefs, there are chefs who are not there are chefs who are not participating in any particular restaurant. They’re solopreneurs.
So these chefs are caterers, these chefs are, these chefs are running pop ups so creating a platform here of essentially pairing together investors who are looking for chefs to invest in at the same time, which will help these chefs towards their ultimate goals of having their restaurant, if, in fact, that is the case, some people just want to work at top restaurants.
So here so here we go with exactly, essentially creating a LinkedIn For chefs, we’re taking culinary art and pairing it with business acumen and giving them that platform to be able to do that. These are just some of the solutions that exactly solves and it’s honing in quite a bit on the innovation aspect of things.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. Really do. And you’re right. The, a lot of chefs are solopreneurs or, you know, they just need to have that time to be creative and they don’t have time to be you know, worrying about anything else. And you really brought something to them that’s going to help them, but also it helps the end consumer, the people that are ordering that food.
Right. So, I appreciate the insights and everything you’re doing there. Emphasize technology playing an increasingly pivotal role in how we experience and interact with food from blockchain and supply chains to AI and personalized nutrition. Where do you see the biggest technological impact in the food industry in the next few years?
Fisayo Oluwadiya: I think even more personalization, I think personalization right now is a bit of a luxury where some people, some people say, okay, I want some specifics and others. It’s just I’ll take whatever is provided to me on the menu. But the aspect of personalization is in 5 years, it’s going to be a requirement.
It’s going to be standard because right now it’s already starting. You go into a restaurant, and you have someone having a 10-minute conversation with the waitress of I can eat this. I can’t eat this. I’m allergic to this. I have these nutritional requirements that story of personalization. It’s already starting and it’s increasing, especially.
With this, no, no waste transition that people will take, people are moving towards. So, personalization is definitely going to be something that is definitely going to be something that’s going to be at the forefront. And how do we achieve this with data with lots and lots of data? We’re collecting this data.
We’re collecting these attributes and we’re running our AI models and we’re. We’re running our AI and ML models to be able to provide this, this personalization. So, at OKAO, we’re through exactly what we’re doing is not only saying we’re going to be a part of this training, this trend to get to personalization, but actually going to drive the movement and be the one creating that space for personalization in the future of the food industry.
Brian Thomas: Awesome. Thank you. I love that. There’s just so, so many opportunities here to Really make the world a better place and leveraging these new and emerging technologies, which we’d love to talk about on the show. It’s just awesome. So, to say, I really appreciate that. And the last question of the day for sale.
Finally, what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs who wish to merge their technological expertise with a personal passion? Much like you do, and have with OKAO?
Fisayo Oluwadiya: Oh, ultimately, I think it’s simple enough. Don’t give up. So, I built exactly all by myself. I mentioned I’ve been an engineer for 17 years.
But building it by myself, I really recognize the value of having an engineering team because in general, there’s the front-end engineer. There’s the back-end engineer. There’s the QA. There is. There’s the QA, there’s the infrastructure it’s made up of a team, but I didn’t have a team. I was my own team.
But that part was the easy part because I’ve been doing that for a while. That’s the tech aspect of things shifting over now, and I’m focusing more on the business aspect of things. It’s also very challenging and all I have to do is to lean into my passion. So, when it’s 2 am in the morning, and I can’t figure something out, or I’m stressed out about meeting, I have to have regarding OKAO. All I have to do, all I know is I have to wait a couple of hours, go to a restaurant, have a conversation with guest patrons, staff, restaurant owners, and it just reminds me why I’m doing what I’m doing. So, ultimately, I think that’s really, I think that’s really the advice. Don’t give up and lean into your passion when you feel like you’re going to give up.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And yeah, at the end of the day, absolutely. You have got to ask yourself, why did I start on this journey? And that just gives us that reminder, that little kick, that little nudge to move forward and continue in with the passion, knowing that we’re going to be able to help others in this beautiful world we have.
So, I appreciate your time today. It was such a pleasure and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Fisayo Oluwadiya: Thank you so much. Looking forward to it as well.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Fisayo Oluwadiya Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
