When Fabalish Co-Founder, Jessica Gebel, fell ill in her 20s, she turned to the healing power of food. Soon her dishes were helping others heal as well. As a chef, Jessica learned first-hand how eating a clean diet can transform the body, and with that knowledge, she created Fabalish. Centered around the mighty chickpea, Fabalish products include falafel and aquafaba dips.
Nicole Astra:
Welcome to Talking Plant Protein. I'm Nicole Astra. More and more we are bringing attention to products that are contributing to a circular supply chain, keeping nutritious byproducts in the food system. Eric Cox is in the kitchen bringing us the origin story of Fabalish
Eric Cox:
All right. Thanks, Nicole. And Jessica, this is a real game changer what you have going on here. I understand you had a pretty difficult health journey on your way to creating Fabalish. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Jessica Gebel:
Yeah, absolutely. My parents were Polish immigrants and working multiple jobs during the week and we grew up on just fast foods and TV dinners. And we didn't think about food at the time. No one actually gave it a second thought. And so, yeah, thankfully in my early 20s, I ended up having a lot of health issues. I say, thankfully, because I wouldn't be here right now, but I was prescribed various drugs and steroids and antibiotics, and nothing actually really helped. It made it worse if anything, but intuitively I knew I was too young to have problems like that. I dove in a little bit deeper and intuitively I started looking at my diet and my lifestyle, and I started changing the way I ate and cooked actually for myself. And I started to heal myself and for me, it was incredible.
Jessica Gebel:
It really opened up my eyes and I knew I wasn't the only one in this position. And so I just became super passionate about cooking and clean eating. And for me, what was really heartbreaking was I was actually paying attention to ingredients when I was shopping and I wasn't able to pronounce certain things. The unnecessary sugars and gluten and crazy sodium and other preservatives really was mind blowing to me. And if I was starting to pay attention, I can't imagine what everyone else was doing.
Eric Cox:
Exactly.
Jessica Gebel:
Yeah, so I became super passionate. I wanted to go to culinary school, the Natural Gourmet Institute. In order to get to school, I applied to various grants and scholarships, and I got myself on the Food Network show called Cooks vs. Cons. I was an amateur chef. It's two cooks against two amateur chefs and the audience and the judges don't know who's who, and I ended up winning by my own shock. I was shocked. I shocked my own self, but I was able to prove that you can cook healthy, but it was absolutely delicious because your dish was winning.
Jessica Gebel:
Right. Yeah. For me, I was really showing that I was making a difference. And so after graduation, after school, I became a private chef to help other people like myself. And that's where I started working with aquafaba, which I'll talk a little bit about that in the second, but aquafaba is a great tool to use in the kitchen because it's soy free, nut free, gluten free, egg free, dairy free. And it really gives that nice flavor, that creamy texture that we love. And so then I started selling my sauces at farmer's market. It's a long story, but it's all important to where I am today and now we're growing like crazy in stores and online and it's just been an exciting journey for-
Eric Cox:
It certainly sounds exciting.
Jessica Gebel:
Yeah.
Eric Cox:
It sounds incredible. An incredible testimony. And like you said, it all started with aquafaba and chickpeas. That's one simple ingredient we have in front of us. Can you tell us how you created the company based off this?
Jessica Gebel:
Yeah. Yeah. I always thought chickpeas were fascinating and there's such an untapped potential with chickpeas. And when I discovered aquafaba in school, my mind was blown. I was like, this is so cool. It just sounds so simple. And normally we would toss this down the drain. I can show you a little bit how it works. Normally we'd toss this down the drain. This is aquafaba and when you strain it... so we have the chickpeas here and normally we would strain this and toss this down the drain. To me, I call it liquid gold because you're going to see in just a little bit why, but I was using chickpeas first for my clients and I would use the aquafaba as a great sauce replacement. Let me just show you. We upcycle. We use the chickpeas and this. We don't toss anything out, which is really important for us. Let me just-
Eric Cox:
That's incredible.
Jessica Gebel:
... Close this. Ah, there we go. Yeah. It's really funny. Just pop this into a food processor, like so, and you're about to see what happens. It's just magical.
Eric Cox:
Wow. After just a minute, it looks totally different.
Jessica Gebel:
It's crazy. Aquafaba, when the chickpeas are being boiled in that water, the chickpeas release tiny strands of protein and starches that mimic an egg white consistency. When you whip up an egg white, this is pretty much exactly what it would look like.
Eric Cox:
Right.
Jessica Gebel:
You can make meringues out of this, whipped cream. You just have to add whether it's sugar or salt or oils or acids. There's a lot more that you have to add into it, but this is such an amazing base.
Eric Cox:
Wow.
Jessica Gebel:
This is the base of our sauces that you could see here. We've got a ranch, faba dip, a tzatziki, and a queso. That's what's great about it is that it has that creamy egg white consistency, or maybe a dairy consistency.
Eric Cox:
Yeah.
Jessica Gebel:
And then you can add whatever flavor. Smells a little bit, it's like a mellow bean flavor.
Eric Cox:
It's nice though. Yeah.
Jessica Gebel:
Yeah. But it's not overpowering.
Eric Cox:
I enjoy it.
Jessica Gebel:
Yeah. It's not overpowering at all. And it's doesn't really have much flavor. You just have to make sure you add that flavor, whether it's sweet or savory that you go and we went savory.
Eric Cox:
Certainly versatile.
Jessica Gebel:
Yeah, it really is.
Eric Cox:
Very versatile. That's incredible.
Jessica Gebel:
And then from the actual leftover chickpeas, we make our baked and organic falafel, which is the first on the market.
Eric Cox:
Right over here.Right over here. And I just want to summate with this, Jessica. We've talked about what you have out currently, but what's next for Fabalish? What's that next exciting product? Can you give us a preview here?
Jessica Gebel:
Yes, absolutely. I love creating things. It's not just about the falafel and dips. We want to do more. We want to be almost a chickpea innovation center. We want to have a bunch of product lines that are just clean and help satisfy people. For example, right now on our website, we have chickpea chocolate brownie bites. We're going into the sweets category slowly. We have those. I've done whipped cream before. And we also have a chickpea nut butter. It's a nut butter, but gingerbread flavor. We're also piloting a falafel burger in New York City. The sky's the limit. There's so much we could do, but in order for us to grow and really get to that point, we're actually doing a crowdfunding right now. It's an equity crowdfunding on Wefunder.
Eric Cox:
Okay.
Jessica Gebel:
Which is really exciting too, because it's just great for our customers to be a part of our journey. You can invest as little as $100 and you become a shareholder and you watch us grow and release all these new exciting products that we just can't wait to get out there in people's hands, but it's a great way to just be part of other companies and come along with the journey with us. You can go to wefunder.com/fabalish.
Eric Cox:
Awesome. That certainly is exciting to be part of your process, part of the growth that's coming here with Fabalish. Well, thank you so much for stopping by, Jessica.
Jessica Gebel:
Thank you, Eric. I really appreciate it.