Burnt Hands Perspective
This is a raw and unfiltered look into the pu$$ification and state of the restaurant industry as a whole, powered by longtime friends Chef/Owner Antonio Caruana and former bartender turned News Anchor/TV Host Kristen Crowley.
Representing all aspects of the industry from the front to the back of the house we will dig into the juiciest stories and pull from decades of experience in one of the sexiest and most exciting industries in the world...the food and beverage industry.
From international chefs, sommeliers, industry pros, and so much more, this show will cover all of it without a filter. You turn up the volume; we'll turn up the heat.
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Burnt Hands Perspective
Food Sports: Inside the World Food Championships, the Super Bowl of Cooking Competitions
Imagine a world where chefs finally get the recognition they deserve—where culinary professionals step onto a red carpet to thunderous applause instead of toiling away in hot kitchens for others' enjoyment. That's the revolution Mike McCloud started when he created the World Food Championships in 2012.
In our conversation with the founder himself, we discover how a simple question—"Why is there not a Super Bowl for food?"—sparked a movement that's now transforming the culinary competition landscape. McCloud shares the raw, unfiltered story of building this platform from scratch, laughing about the "dead bodies" from their chaotic first year in Las Vegas and the countless lessons learned along the way.
What makes this event truly special is its democratic approach to competition. Whether you're a home cook, a line cook, or a Michelin-starred chef, everyone follows the same rules and faces the same challenges. The playing field is level, the judging is consistent, and the only thing that matters is what you create during your time on the clock. This philosophy has attracted competitors from across the globe, each bringing their unique culinary perspective to the championship stage.
The World Food Championships isn't just a cooking contest—it's "food sport" with all the energy and excitement that implies. From the dramatic red carpet entrances to the ticking clock tension, everything is designed to celebrate culinary talent while keeping spectators thoroughly entertained. No longer must you watch a steak sizzle for two boring minutes; instead, you're immersed in a multi-sensory experience where you can see, smell, and eventually taste the competitive spirit of food.
Ready to join the food sport revolution? Visit https://worldfoodchampionships.com/ to find qualifying events happening nearly every weekend across America. Whether you're a seasoned chef looking for your next challenge or an enthusiastic home cook with competitive aspirations, there's a place for you in this growing community of culinary athletes.
Who knows—you might just find yourself walking that red carpet next year!
Get all the info here: https://worldfoodchampionships.com/
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all right, here we are now with mr mike mcleod, the one, the one, m1 the one one that's right so we have, uh, you are. I wish it was a car you need your own car now.
Speaker 1:So world food championships 2024 and we get to sit down with the founder of this, 12 years in the making. Now that's right and this is incredible. And you guys this year have grown exponentially over last year and what you used to be doing.
Speaker 3:We always like to evolve and grow and expand, and this year we put steroids up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to do it with some drinks.
Speaker 3:We did steroids on that this year. Ah, there we go. Thank you, ladies.
Speaker 2:Cheers, cheers, relax, everything down there. They can't see it, our viewers can't see, but we're overlooking the whole event, the venue, which we have plenty of roles with. You're so uptight right now, because this is everything you worked on for the year. Now, here you are, sitting here, now, take a breath, smell the roses for one second, isn't it cool, though? It really is pretty special.
Speaker 3:The cool thing about this particular location is that we had such a clear span space on an empty canvas, if you will to create exactly how we wanted to approach the heartbeat of the competition and then do the peripheral experiences for the consumers. So this vantage point is a perfect way to view all of the moving parts that we've been working on and, for someone like me, all the moving parts that should be moving that aren't moving.
Speaker 2:So that's the only thing I'm looking at.
Speaker 3:Why is that not working? Why is this not moving?
Speaker 2:Where is that person? Why is that down right now? Otherwise, it's actually pretty cool that not working. Why is this not moving? Where is that person? Why is that otherwise? This, you know, it's actually pretty cool the outside eye. You guys have so many parts that are moving or not moving that it gets lost in translation anyway. For the person, the consumer, yeah, of course you looking it over is amazing and you're looking at it like, oh shit, that's not working. But I'm looking at there's a scissor lift with a cameraman over the other guy in a camera. There's so much going on here for the food, for the food and what, what, what. When you founded this? How long ago?
Speaker 3:was that 2012 is when we launched it. Um, we started talking about it in 2010. Are you a chef? Did you come?
Speaker 1:from the background, actually a marketing background.
Speaker 3:And, uh, I got involved with barbecue in 2006 and fell in love with the industry industry, the whole competition, cooking industry and realized, uh, there was a whole lot of stuff starting to pop up. Then, you know, food network was becoming huge, but so were uh individual sidles like burger battles, sandwich slams, dessert offs, uh chef throwdowns, and then barbecue and chili. And so we're. We were always meeting on a regular basis about how to improve barbecue. And one fateful meeting we had come back from an event. We had seen two or three new things and we had heard they were claiming a world title here and a world title there, and one of us, in our brainstorming strategy, said why is there not a Super Bowl of food? And every one of us just dropped our jaw and stopped right there, it's key.
Speaker 2:And just the panels. Everything, you're right, it is the Super Bowl of food, world Series, call it whatever you want, I would say Super Bowl, because there's that much entertainment.
Speaker 1:It's the energy of it.
Speaker 2:Between shows there's a show. Between a halftime show there's another show. These people over here they're running down the red carpet trying to make the times Very exciting. There was a lot of thought that went into this. I'm sure a lot of trial and error.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, I'm still hoping that they don't find any of the dead bodies from the first year in Las Vegas who went down.
Speaker 2:Who got stabbed Everything.
Speaker 3:Everything happened, but the food. We didn't know what we didn't know, and we walked into Las Vegas. We partnered with Caesars. Somehow we convinced them to do this and it was crazy. It was just absolutely nuts.
Speaker 1:So year one was Vegas. The first time you did it was Vegas. Oh, you went big. You were like what?
Speaker 3:We decided if we're going to be loud and obnoxious in the food space we had to go to be loud and obnoxious in the food space.
Speaker 3:We had to go to the loud and obnoxious city of Las Vegas. So we did, and it was a great year, great place to start. We learned very quickly. There was a whole lot of things that all of our year and a half of planning didn't cover and we backed up for a minute and said maybe we shouldn't try to be so robust at first. Maybe we need to dial this back in a little bit. Still not. But the truth be told, from a chef-centric perspective, from a team perspective, from day one we knew we had hit a nerve. We had found a stream of consciousness that mattered. Yeah. And the question became all right. Once you come to the competition and you see your favorite chef competing do well or not, do well what else do you do? In Vegas we didn't have to worry about it too much because there's so much to do. We did it on Fremont Street a couple of years.
Speaker 3:So if you can't be entertained on Fremont Street, you don't have a heartbeat so as we started moving to other places of the country, we realized this has to be a consumer experience. The biggest thing we ever had to overcome and I know you're probably going to ask that question is cooking in general. Food competitions in general aren't great spectator sports. You can watch a steak sizzle for about two minutes before you get bored. Sure, right, yeah, so we knew that we had to start adding components and adding things for consumers to hang around, to stay. Watch this burger category, because everybody's going to go ooh and ah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But after that's over with, go over here and see a demo and then go over there and have a tasting. Go over there and see a demo and then go over there and have a tasting. Go over there, have a free drink, right? So we had to start really programming all of those things and it took us a while to get to a point where we could unveil it in such a big robo, robust what I call rubik's cube of food competition and, with that being said, if you look, kristen, if we look around, we were talking about it yesterday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so much more going on. So you got to put together that, make sure that all works. So everything you just said is right in line. But in that time, in all these years that you've done it, you've almost had to generate your own identity in your own world, your own judging system, your own logos. You have to get networked in with the cities you're hosting. You have to have already all this stuff you've already produced. You have to store it somewhere. You have to luggage, uh ship it. You have to be, you have to. Just there's so many moving parts that people don't even know what it takes to put on a show like this. Your grills, are these sponsors? Are these donated? Did you purchase them? There's so many grills and so many stove tops and cooks top just just the restaurant equipment you have 40 kitchens can you go back to 2011 and have that conversation with me?
Speaker 1:because I'm not sure.
Speaker 3:I knew all that at the time, but you're right, you're right and and the other thing on top of it that people don't realize and this is where, uh, sometimes people may not truly understand how complicated this is. We're trailblazing absolutely. We call this, we call this food sport.
Speaker 1:There was no game plan.
Speaker 3:If you're starting a basketball team for a charity or a local church group or anything like that, you know the goal is going to be 10 feet tall.
Speaker 1:There's a template, you know. There's a guideline.
Speaker 2:You know there's out of bounds, you know it's 90 feet. There's decades of guidelines, exactly, there's already guidelines.
Speaker 3:We had to create all that for food sport. The red carpet didn't come into existence until three years ago. Sure, wow, and it was almost by accident. We were like, okay, we need to figure out how we can funnel people in front of the stage because that's the most exciting part of food sport. And I remember standing there and saying, can we make them come from the same space on two kitchen arenas? And the guy said yeah. I said why don't we put some carpet down here? Why don't we make a red carpet?
Speaker 1:It would be cool. Why not put a stage in the middle of it?
Speaker 3:Like a velvet ropes and everything. It's a hit Right off the bat. It's a hit as soon as it happened Right off the bat.
Speaker 2:So now, being a chef, coming from the chef world, I can say this over and over again, which I am redundant on it, because it's that exciting to me. I'm in the kitchen all the time. My staff, my crew, my team, my brigade we work day in and day out. We are constantly competing every night with the thing.
Speaker 3:So Because we're constantly making a living off competition you do if you come here, brother, that's what I mean.
Speaker 2:So what this does is it refires, rekindles something inside of me right to want to be part of it and to want to go back home Now. These guys are inspiring, you're inspiring, everything's inspiring me. You know what. I've done my thing and I'm working up my ladder of success in the restaurant world. Right, and just like all the hidden secrets that it takes to run this, same things happen in the restaurants. Then, if you own two, it doubles up and everything else. So, when you come to something like this and see someone else bringing this type of energy, and seeing all these chefs competing, all these wannabe chefs competing, or whatever you want to call them but they are all very skilled and talented the judges, all the people who are taking the passion to be here, really have a heart in this man and you've designed this to work. We're overlooking now. We have mixology competitions going on right now. These people are traveling from all over the world to compete here, and they're not competing here for the first time. They've had this preliminary.
Speaker 3:They had to win their way in. They had to win their way here.
Speaker 2:So you've set up a lifestyle throughout the year and celebrated here in the Super Bowl, like you said, chefs finally have their own platform and their own league.
Speaker 3:That's what we've created and it's kind of special because this whole event and everything you go through here the reason it gives you passion and drive and energy is that you finally get celebrated for what you do. Sure, most events that you go to it's called South Beach Aspen, food and Wine any of those big, beautiful events that are a lot of fun for consumers to go to. You know what the dirty little secret behind the scenes is. Chefs are having to work their ass off Yep money.
Speaker 3:They're having to work their asses off just to serve people, which they do every single day. Well, guess what? Here you come here to prove that you're the best at something, so the energy level is different. That's right. It goes through different parts of your heart here there's competitors out there.
Speaker 2:I can see it in their eyes. People refuse to talk to us because they're focusing on the dish they have to come with. Yeah, that's amazing to me and I get it because I'm in the business. I, I am a chef and I'm like good answer, sir ma'am.
Speaker 1:I don't have time for you right now.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and that's the way it should be. They're focused, and that's a spark that we lose sometimes.
Speaker 3:And you lose that spark sometimes, because I think this industry is the most overworked, underappreciated industry.
Speaker 2:It is. It's only appreciated if you are at the top of it, if you're gordon ramsay.
Speaker 3:If you're bringing something, yeah, you get into the millionaire multi-multi-millionaire zone.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, yeah, it's, it's. It's not every day, it's less than one percent. And so what happens to great chefs?
Speaker 3:like you. Where do you get your energy? Where do you get your payoff? Yeah for these chefs, these competing chefs. They get their energy and payoff from being called out and going to the stage because they were fifth or fourth or third or second. Sure.
Speaker 2:Putting that gold on and stuff, and then they win some money, yep.
Speaker 3:Right, and one day that money is going to be a lot more money, sure, and it's going to be tied to a TV show that's going to have launched their careers to the next level. In the meantime, they're moving their pedigree and their resume up a notch, and so they can go back to their bosses and they go back to their hometowns.
Speaker 1:I did this.
Speaker 3:I achieved this for Biloxi, or I achieved this for Nashville, or wherever they're from.
Speaker 1:But even when they don't win here, they've already won to get here.
Speaker 3:They did.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like the American Idol kind of thing you already won because you beat all these other people to get to this point and it's year-round.
Speaker 3:We track every media hit through our alert system and we get about 3,000 stories a year written about the World Food Championships. It's because someone won the Tupelo honey contest and all of a sudden that area in Tupelo gets behind that chef because they hear oh, he or she is, or he or she's going to the World Food Championships to compete for Tupelo. That's right.
Speaker 1:And more community, more community Right.
Speaker 2:I had 1,000 interactions on this just because I was coming here in my area. So, I mean, my platforms brought a lot of attention to this and now I've actually had text messages from people who are just asking me how it's going here, because they're watching. We're feeding from here too. We're putting out our shorts while we're here. I'm sure this conversation is going to hit out as soon as we're done and people are going to comment and exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:It's that effect. Well, you know, I mean it's the power of media at this point and the power of the voice and just getting it in front of people. That many touch points where they're like, oh, I have to go to this event now.
Speaker 3:Awareness- and then not only supporting your favorite chef or supporting your favorite cook, but being entertained.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the entertainment's back.
Speaker 3:Most people will never set foot on a food TV scene or have the opportunity to do so. Here you get all of that and more, and just visiting. You get to see it. You get really close to the kitchen. You get to smell it, feel it, hear it.
Speaker 1:Well, and they're talking to you Like we're down there, the chefs that are down there cooking, like Machete he's with every person there talking to him, he's cooking. They feel like they're getting that chef experience because it's so personal.
Speaker 3:So for a foodie who just loves watching uh food on tv, this gives them a chance to really feel the energy. It's live and, and guess what, there's no redos. That's what makes it food sport. I do this for a living daily and I feel the energy.
Speaker 2:I'm excited watching them. There's no redundancy for me here. I'm watching them and I'm excited about it because they are doing things in a small little area. I'm impressed by how they're putting it together. They are doing things in a small little area. I'm impressed by how they're putting it together. They're doing it in a very fast time, not with fancy equipment either no equipment. This is very archaic, really, yeah it is.
Speaker 3:It could be improved 10 times, and we're going to do that.
Speaker 2:Right With that comes more success. Like I said, this city here seems to be holding up their end. As far as what I see as being a perfect location, you're in the middle of the country, pretty much. The place is beautiful. Easy to get to you walk off that airport and you see all this hype in the airport. I felt good being a chef. I wanted to walk around in my chef coat outside of my luggage bag, so I could feel like I'm part of it. Like, I'm here for it.
Speaker 3:After two or three years here, I think that is going to be the thing to do. It'll be chef week, it'll be food week, right, and that's a good dream, just like Daytona and of course I shouldn't say Daytona in the home of the Indy 500. But just like they have in NASCAR, they have the speed week, sure.
Speaker 2:All motorcycle enthusiasts. So we have Sturgis, we have Laconia.
Speaker 1:We're going to create food Shark Week.
Speaker 3:I mean, you got all sorts of things and all celebrities in town are going to be people wearing this right here, the chef jacket, everybody needs to wear it.
Speaker 1:And I mean even one of the restaurants we went to, like they asked, they didn't, we didn't even really say anything and they were like, oh how, how's the World Food Championships going? Like they already were watching and knew, like from the you know, just seeing people's faces with this event, indianapolis brings big city to the table with media and population, professional sports.
Speaker 3:you know, football, basketball, the Indy cars. But it also brings small community big time. Yes, you're right, midwest, you're one phone call away from anybody that you need in a town like Indianapolis.
Speaker 2:I told her yesterday. I said why is everybody so nice? Well, we come on the East Coast.
Speaker 1:Well, I grew up in Michigan, so I am Midwest technically and I'm like Midwest is just pretty laid back culture.
Speaker 2:Everybody's pretty nice. They want to talk to you.
Speaker 1:It's not New York, it's not, you know, a lot of East Coast feel, so it's great. But this event in total because it's our first time being here and not our last, but this has been a spectacular example of what is possible.
Speaker 3:I agree.
Speaker 1:So congratulations to you and your team. I'm a hard guy to hook as far as the culinary industry, he's a little stubborn about stuff I'm so used to being taken advantage of as a chef.
Speaker 2:Like you were saying earlier, you were talking about how you have these food shows. Typically, to get me to a food show or to do an event or to guest as a chef takes a lot for me and it usually comes down to money, because all they want me for is to make money on their own. They don't really care about the chefs.
Speaker 3:They don't care about that.
Speaker 2:They care about how they're going to sell their knives or how they're going to sell sponsorship booths, and if they bring me there, then that might help. Well, I'm not down for that here. I don't feel that way at all. I have no different.
Speaker 3:It's not a strategy.
Speaker 2:I feel no bigger than anyone in this room and no smaller. I think everyone in here is on the same level. They're all in the same focus. The respect from the chefs here is on the same level. Everyone's equal here.
Speaker 3:I'm glad you said that, because one of the big things we focused on early on with this is playing no favorites. We pretty much played Switzerland. We didn't care what your background was as a chef. You could be a home cook, Sure. You could be a classically trained chef. You could be a self-taught chef. You could be a line cook. You could be a Michelin star chef. You could be a pro team barbecue team.
Speaker 2:You really can do it, just qualify we didn't care.
Speaker 3:We developed the level playing field, we developed the rules, we developed the challenges, we developed the judging process and as long as you follow that and you follow that, we don't care what your background is. That's right. I love it. That's the goal.
Speaker 2:And that gives everyone opportunity, because just because you're a chef doesn't mean you can go on that stage right there in one hour and produce what you need to, but that person who doesn't work may be able to, and it all comes down to that. So you have to qualify to get here right. So whether you got here from your home kitchen or you didn't, you still had to go through all the steps of everybody else. So there's no one up on the other and I've noticed before that. I won't say names, but there's been celebrity chefs here that look to me and then, oh, you're still in it, heavy like that, you're still cooking like that. They're looking at me like I'm the celebrity now because they've been out of it so long that they have a pride for people who are still in the industry still cooking it dirty still coming here and still up in the grit.
Speaker 2:I don't see myself leaving that anytime soon, but I would like to at some point as I grow, you know. But right now that's not my focus. I'm still. I'm still in line with trying to be the best chef I can be and lead my team, but this right here is definitely helping me and bringing me to it.
Speaker 3:I'm glad to hear that. So I think a lot of people don't know.
Speaker 1:It is kind of year-round as far as quality. So where would anybody who's listed? Where would they start to get into this and how do they find out more?
Speaker 3:about it. So I would encourage everyone to check out our social media and then go to our website, worldfoodchampionshipscom. We have a a million pages on that website and one of them uh, focuses on qualifiers has a list of all our golden ticket partners.
Speaker 1:So and it starts january 1 to december 31st- all year, so people need to go on start looking at it to qualify for that, in fact the first people qualifying into next year's championship will be anyone who finishes in the top ten here. Yeah, the concept of that category goes towards next year. They get an automatic birth into next year. It gives you an automatic entry into next year. Sure, I got you.
Speaker 2:Right, so right away. Though, without that being said, your next qualifiers for next year have already begun. In a sense, as soon as this is done, you're moving into the next phase already. Right there's no downtime.
Speaker 3:There are food events and contests every single weekend in America. So next weekend there will be a contest somewhere. That's a qualifier for the World Food Championship. Don't ask me where it is.
Speaker 1:Well, we're going to talk to you about that. We need this in Hampton Roads in Virginia, so we need to have a qualifier in our area, so we will talk to you about that because we will help with that.
Speaker 2:So that will be fun.
Speaker 1:I'm proud to do that. But we're proud to be here. I finished mine. Yeah, we're ready to catch up. We had you talking way too much, I'm sorry. Thank you for your time. We know you're busy.
Speaker 2:You're in the middle of the highest point of this competition right now. The event is in full swing restaurant person anyone who's not anyone listening to this podcast focus in on this bartending. They have a huge bartending thing here, which the mixology thing is going to be great. Just get into it. Look at this, come out of the kitchen a little bit, experience a little bit and come in and take the trips. Give yourself a culinary trip out here and check them out, check us out.
Speaker 1:We're following it. All right, we got it.
Speaker 2:We're Right here at the World Food Championships in Indianapolis, indiana. Thank you again.
Speaker 3:my man Appreciate everything you do, my pleasure.
Speaker 2:Ciao for now, ciao.
Speaker 3:Cheers.
