Is Indiana Becoming the Culinary Crossroads of America?

We are the food sports capital of America, Nate, until somebody tells us we're not

building this like loyal tribe of people who are fanatic about the state of Indiana.

People start to see that be ready. We're going to hit the tipping point.

What are some of the staples in Indiana's culinary scene from like a product or people perspective? From South Bin to Evansville and everywhere in between, this is Get In, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation. Before we get into it, just a reminder, this episode of Get In is brought to you by Cluster Truck, Indy's go-to delivery kitchen. If you haven't tried Cluster Truck yet, you are missing out. They have over a 100 menu items.

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com. Order now and use code indie ndy at checkout for 20% off orders of $25 or more. Trust me, your stomach's going to thank you. Reminder, that code is indie ny. Now, let's get into the episode. Today I'm joined by Larry Dickerson, founder and director of Culinary Crossroads, the organization that is leading Indiana's statewide initiative to position Indiana as the culinary crossroads of America.

With major events like the 2024 and 2025 World Food Championships under his belt, Larry helps build community through food and elevate Indiana's culinary identity. Today we're going to be talking through his journey to launching Culinary Crossroads back in 2019 and getting the Grand Jewel, the World Food Championships to come from Dallas to Indianapolis. So excited to have you on the show, Larry. Welcome to Get In.

It's It's great to be here. Let you know I um knowing of your work and the stories that you do and the people you had in to to say I'm psyched would be an understatement.

Let's go. Well, I mean, one big thing is is World Food Championship is just around the corner. Uh we had our kind of our inaugural year last year in 2024. If people didn't make it over to the fairgrounds, it was awesome. Oh my gosh. They had the World Mixology Championship.

The our our good friend Colin Hilton. He actually won the whole thing in Bentonville, Arkansas. Uh he won noodle the noodle category while he was here in Indianapolis on home turf and then ends up getting to go and ends up being the the top chef overall uh throughout the entire World Food Championship. So, but uh after you finish this episode, go back and listen to I want Colin his experience as like on the chef's side is is really really cool. But I'm excited to get into like how it even ended up here in Indiana. How we got so lucky to to bring an or an event like World Food Championship to the Circle City.

So, before we dive into all things that, I want to know what got you passionate about the culinary scene in Indiana and why did you decide to make this your mission? Uh it's a great question and great to be here with you. Uh this comes as um you know people talk about different sports and let's say you're playing golf and I'm at my point in the career that I'm not just on the back nine. You know I'm coming up on 17 or 18 and um I came back home again Indiana. You you talk about that I grew up in Middletown east of Anderson. uh I had a very route that gave me a lot of experiences over the last 25 or 30 years.

Uh and those included in you know local, state and national politics. Uh they included working with uh travel agencies, state tourism organizations specifically around the country, selling them electronic based uh tourism promotion programs, and then working with convention and visitors bureaus around the state. uh going way back I graduated from what's now Ketering was General Motors Institute. So I worked one of the largest corporations in the world and uh during that career a lot of exposure to travel and tourism a lot of exposure to public sector institutions. So you you you learn a lot during that time and um from that I also had a chance to live several places around the country uh also abroad. So I've seen a lot of different areas through tourism promotion as well as being there assignments throughout the south down Orange Beach, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi.

Lived in the Delta.

But you grew up in Indtown.

I grew up in Middletown. Okay. And I come back here. Um I and the last place before being here was living in New York City in Manhattan. And so um my boys then were 18 and 22. Didn't need to be in New York. I'd been in New York to uh work with my ex-wife and parenting partner to parent the boys. That's what took us there from the suburbs of Michigan. Yeah.

And I was uh at the point where I was going to decide what am I going to do in this next chapter professionally and personally. And what had happened, Nate, is all along that time, having grown up in Middletown, my mom living in the same house in Middletown for 50 years before her passing, I was always coming back in uh to uh Indiana, coming through Indianapolis. And I'd come in here, I just watched Indianapolis grow and grow and grow. stayed in hotels, went to the restaurants, had friends that were connected to the culinary scene. So, when I moved back, I had some specific ideas of what I thought could be done in tourism promotion.

What year did you move back?

I moved back full-time in 2014. 2014, 2015.

2014, 2015.

So, I've been back here about 10 years.

Yeah. Okay. First question about, you know, you're traveling not only the United States, the world, you're living in all these different places, New York City. When you would tell people you're from Indiana, what was the perception that the world had of Indiana?

Who's your hospitality? End up with 500

uh the Hooers.

Um the tenderloins, but but it was who your hospitality and that from Indiana

from like a food perspective. What was the vibe?

There wasn't really any uh real vibe on it. They didn't they didn't that's part of the the mission there. They didn't see Indiana, you know, as the culinary crossroads. They didn't see Indiana as a as a culinary scene. When I got back and had ideas about how to help with tourism promotion, I also had a chance to meet some of the women and men that were really leading the scene at that time and still very involved. One of them very good friend, somebody that's been so helpful along the way is Craig Baker. You know, Craig is now down at Intercontinental and Craig has been all over the scene. But I got introduced to Chrissy Elie, Neil Brown, Jonathan Brooks, uh Stephen Oakley through friends of ours. And as I was talking about these ideas that I wanted to take to lieutenant governor,

what were these ideas?

Uh the ideas that that I thought that we needed to do tourism promotion in a much better way that you that it used to be just the best analogy is in the in the travel agency business.

Yeah.

That before the internet took over to where you didn't need the function of utility of a travel agent that it just ran through and changed distinctly and the agencies that didn't change no longer had an impact. I would argue that when you look at a lot of our convention visitor bureaus and state tourism agencies, they stick to old stu old tools that don't really resonate. You've had some of your folks on here that when you travel, you know, as much as these folks are do a lot of good work. You're not going to go to any state website, tourism website to figure out where you're going to go or what you're going to do. It just doesn't happen.

One I will say like because I think that some CVB like DMO type organizations will listen to this episode. they are doing really and they're like so understaffed and all that piece. Um on the other side, yeah, it's hard to expect them to be a creator that's going to get people, you know, like they're making their

let's say like uh Indiana, let's say this whatever the town might be, they make their visitor guide and you know, they print off 5,000 copies or whatever of it and it's like I don't know like how many people are like going back there and reading all that. like few crazies like me, like I love those things cuz they give me a bunch of information, but then I take that and I make a video about it and then a 100,000 people see what we talked about on page 28 of the visitor guide and it's like 100,000 people don't pick up most DMOS visitor guides. It's interesting to see that. So, I see that you like kind of saw that trend early on.

Yeah, I'll give you I'll give you a great little back backstory on that. It's interesting that you bring that up because uh the entry into tourism promotion came from when I was living up in Michigan and a guy came from American Express to run Travel Michigan at this time. This is before a pure Michigan. This is 1800 say yes. When 800 numbers was what everybody used. You'd you'd call in on that 800 number.

They'd take uh they'd take your name. You'd say I'm going to travel to Michigan or wherever you're going to be. They'd say, "You know what? I'll send you out a travel guide." Well, you know, when we got to the point where you're setting on a Tuesday in the Detroit area and you're going to take your kids up to northern Michigan and it's in the fall and you want to have a place where there's going to be an indoor pool, this guy from American Express says, "Well, why we got this really radical idea? Why don't we take all that information that's in that travel guide and put it into a database?

And then why don't we set up for that database to be in front of a call agent?" So instead of just say taking Nate's name and address actually say where you going Nate? Oh I'm going up to Northern Michigan. I need a hotel with indoor pool. Say oh we've got four of those and I can give those to you right now. That was radical.

And then we had this really advanced technology that you could send out to them. It was called a fax and

genius. It was and when you think about it, it it always had we always said data is king and it was get the information to the consumer in the most expedient uh easy way that they can put it to use. That's the system that we built. This is this is in 1993.

Wow.

That was pretty darn cool at that particular time.

Yeah. And it's like today it's just so easy. I will say I do think that uh travelers research habits are changing.

Yes.

Where you know maybe because everyone knows that a lot of these like big websites are all paytoplay. It's all like you get and I won't name any names of like whatever the things are but like there are these national companies that raise a ton of money and they're like cool you want to be on the list of top top 40 places to eat in Indianapolis cool. It's going to be $2,000 and we'll put you on the list. Right. and independent people who go out and like document the video and like you know show you like these are three places that I love and and you kind of have to vibe with the creator. It's like you know there are people out there like if if you're like let's say if you're like a vegan or a vegetarian and I say like these are the top three places you get a tenderloin like you're probably not going to love that video you know like that's just let's call a spade a spade there. Uh but

the tofu tenderloin isn't necessarily something

that I don't know if that's like taken off yet but might be an opportunity there. Um, but it's interesting to see how the the search patterns were changing in 1993 from like you probably said, "Oh, I know my my cousin's grandma went to Northern Michigan and I think she stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge up there." Like, I think we should book that one versus like, "Hey, call this travel guide. They book you right over the phone. They fax you over the info." Like, that's pretty cool.

You know, you know this from uh the folks that are listening here from the business side is that when you find a channel where you think that you've got some a very niche market. Well, this same guy from Michigan, there's this conference every year called ESTO. It's just a conference of all the state tourism directors. He said, "You know what? I've got a shiny new object I want to go uh show these folks." So he took us out to the state tourism conference and we presented and two years later we had that system in seven or eight states around the country.

I mean just it just it it just

what states took what were the early adopters?

Indiana had it here. Guy named John Gost who was running Indiana was a good friend and put it in um Minnesota had it in. We put it in New York. Uh we put it into Oklahoma. Those are ones just off the top of my head. I'm thinking through I didn't know if they were like certain ones that have like because Michigan might be like the gold standard of visitor bureau like I don't know from your perspective who are like the top the crown jewels of

travel and tourism I think you know in today's world um you know travel Michigan and uh you know pure Michigan yeah there there's a whole another could go into a whole another story where that came into play Ericson by the way was the agency that developed that and and if you think about madman that was the kind of agency that they were and that program came from the Detroit people working with the uh the state says we've got to change something because Detroit had some real challenges and the state had challenges. Brilliant, brilliant uh campaign. But I would tell you honestly, just like in most businesses, the ones that had it was the ones to where I was able to build a relationship with the with the top level leadership and get them to say, you know what, let's go give this thing a a push and

come back to Indiana. It's 2014, 2015 and you're like I have all these ideas. I've worked a lot in travel and tourism and I've been around the world and stuff and like I'm back home again in Indiana. Good play there. Come on. And uh what do you decide like what are these ideas that you're you're that you have in 2014 2015 and how do you go about five years later starting Culinary Crossroads?

The first thing was to, you know, for all the reasons I just stated that there was a new game and a new approach to take and I was able to get an audience with Lieutenant Governor and you'll hear a lot about Lieutenant Governor Crouch. She I can't give her enough credit for her vision and her leadership and as your viewers may know and you know in that in that role at that time she oversees Department of Agriculture, the Office of Community and Rural Affairs and also tourism. Uh there was legislation that was ultimately passed in 2019 that created the Indiana Destination Development Corporation. And when I started working with um the Lieutenant Governor with Suzanne, this was now around 2017 2018. I'd been back for a couple years, had been working on some different items and had the audience with her and I said, "You know, all the things I'm telling you, we need to look at differently." She said, "What do you want to do?"

said, 'You know, first thing I'd like to do, I want to go out and talk to some of our big brands here in the state and their leaders and see how they work with being located in Indiana. And I'm talking about I had a CA chance to go out and and talk to Doug BS uh out at IMS. I went up Mitch Daniels uh was up at Purdue. So, I went and talked to his global marketing uh manager, some folks from the Indie Fuel, a couple other different universities. And I wanted to sit down and talk to him and say, "Well, how do you use being in Indiana? Is it something that you leverage positively because you can go and talk about all the attributes or do you find yourself on the defense always talking about you're going to love it here?

I know you don't necessarily think a lot.

Trust me, you'll love it here." Yeah. Try it. You try it. You'll like it.

Come on in. The water's fine.

Um, and that was that was a really really uh great experience. But you know,

what did they say? Uh the biggest thing they said was thank you in terms of we're so glad that somebody came to sit down and talk to us.

Well, yes. But what did they say in terms of do they use Indiana to positively market their thing?

Not necessarily. No. No. They they they used what they stood on in terms of their own respective brands and they couldn't leverage the rest of

predominantly. This is like a whole big thing that that we're combating with here is it's not necessarily like I don't think people across America or across the world hate Indiana. I don't think they love Indiana. It's indifferent. They just have this feeling of indifference towards Indiana where it's like you could put uh Ind Purdue. You could put Purdue anywhere like Indiana doesn't move the needle or deter the needle for Purdue. I think it's just like, oh, it just happens to be there. Where there's states like like, you know, some people freaking love Texas. They're like, Texas is so cool. California is so cool, Florida's so cool, or they hate it.

And it's like, you know, it's polarizing and like you find your loyal your loyalist. And that's the kind of like what we've been building over the past couple years is building this like loyal tribe of people who are fanatic about the state of Indiana. for those institutions, for the niche audiences or larger audiences they have. They end up being the ones that define the way people think about Indiana. IU makes people think about Indiana. Oh, they love basketball. There's a Hoosier State, right? The Indianapolis 500 says, "Oh, these people are like racing, so they they like to go out to the

Everyone's a diesel mechanic."

Yeah, that's that's exactly right. So it get it ends up being defined by the institutions instead of turning that around and saying, "Oh, this is a great state of Indiana. This is a culinary crossroads. Oh, there's Purdue that's there. I want to go there." So you sort of reverse it to where the perception of the state gets to be where they want to go.

There's a lot of people that ran to California because I don't know what I'm going to do out there, but I know that California never rains in California. The brand of California is way bigger than any individual brand there. I would say the brand of Texas is I would that'd be an interesting study to do. Do more people know let's say like Facebook Meta Meta's in California. Is the brand of Meta bigger than the brand of California? I don't know.

That would be interesting. Definitely though the brand of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway like that is huge and those those big institutions define the place.

They define the place.

So you have all these conversations.

They have all these conversations and uh in short my recommendation for IDC and I still believe it is that um that we would run it like an investment bank. Uh that you would find these are sectors that we invest in and so that's how we're going to have it. And so your staff is a product manager out here and then they go out and they develop the relationships out to the organization. So you got one one arm that is on the educational start on front. And so it's looking at all of our college and universities and saying where can we from IDC do programs that will help for what we're charged with in terms of getting people here that are in line with what you're doing uh with the Indianapolis 500. If you do cooperative programs with them, do you really need to do anything in May with them?

Probably not. April and May, they're so out there. But if you did programs with them, because one of they want to do is they don't want people to forget about it when the race season is over. So, they're a great cooperative partner for working with them on their branding interest and what we want to do from the state.

You know, we're now 20 minutes into this podcast and you haven't really mentioned anything about food yet. culinary crossroads is all about. Well, the the overarching thing is food, but it has this deeper meaning behind it.

You have to start the discussion somewhere.

Yeah.

And it's very tough if you start the discussion, you know, we we do a great job. I mean, IC and our and all of our different institutions that are out there, economic development groups, they they within the way the game is played today, they do a great job. They can say, "Here's our education levels, right? here's here's what we have in terms of our tax rates. But you still got to get somebody to say I I don't know for sure if I even want to have these kind of discussions because I don't think about Indiana as a place to go live.

Cost of living that's a huge like oh your dollar goes to that's not sexy. Being inexpensive like doesn't like attract people to be like oh yeah like I live in the most cost effective place in America. It's like you got to have these other pieces that like speed and racing and like more like St. Elmo's Steakhouse is like that has just this new lure to it where people want to live in communities that have stuff going on from a culture perspective.

Let me button it up tight because it's a great in terms of where the food comes from. So I'm here I'm doing this work with the lieutenant governor. Um, and quite frankly when when I came back here and talked to friends, I said, "Well, what do you you know, what are you going to do when you go back to Indiana?" And after all the different experience I had, I said, "You know what I really want to do right now? I want to go and I want to work on a couple uh big ideas with smart people." That was my plan.

And so when I got back here in travel and tourism, all those experiences, had a big idea and and tried to surround myself with really, really smart people. You go back to Baker and all the chefs, they said, "We need to talk about the economy." And it was remarkable. I mean, what we're doing out there with some of the leaders that we've had over the last 10 years and what we have right now, it's really, really powerful. And there were ideas about saying, "Well, what if we go and let's go do a popup in Grand Rapids, St. Louis, you know, uh, Detroit or whatever, and then reciprocating, bring them back here and do that."

A lot of merit. So, they get to know our folks, they get to know it. But um even if it goes extremely well, the problem that I had with it and the problem that you often have with any of these type of activities is what's the ongoing narrative? How do you keep water in the sponge? So we go over here and we have reciprocal events and what's the story? And so that was the impetus to sit down and says, what if we created a narrative?

And that's was culinary crossroads, the people, products, places, and services that define Indiana's law uh culinary landscape and make it the place where you want to live, work, and play. So, I take that to the lieutenant governor. She says, "Well, what do you want?" She says, "Anybody comes in here, they want something." I said, "I'd like for you to say that you like the idea and I can go out and tell people that you support it." She said, "Absolutely, but maybe be on some front that you're not thinking about the lowhanging fruit.

They go to our restaurants, they buy our proteins, they buy our produce. But she said, "If we could really get people to understand what we had to offer on the culinary side, that would be a really, really great asset for workforce recruitment and workforce retention." She said, "If we get everybody out there talking about the state from that context to start the discussions, that would be a gamecher." I said, "I couldn't agree more." She I said, "I'll be back." But I didn't know exactly.

Now it says okay I've got this narrative one tactical mistake is I've got this brand and I'll come back to that because that ended up creating some challenges but we have this narrative but when you go out just like when you started your business what's the ongoing narrative what's going to be the story lines I didn't know exactly how to come out of the gate but when you're going to come out of the gate you got to be able to stay out there and it was fortunate that Baker and some of these same folks were part of this group of team Indiana that was out there and he started telling me he says, "Well, we go to this thing called the World Food Championships." I said, "What's that?" And he told me about it. At that time, it was still in Orange Beach, Alabama. It was finishing up in this is in 17 and 18. Okay.

So, I go down there. I'd actually done work down in Orange Beach. So, I knew the territory. I went down there and like, "Oh my, this is a real deal. It's got Sam's Club, Walmart behind it. It's got competitors from 40ome states, 10 or 15 uh count.

There's 13,500 home cooks, professional chefs, professional barbecue teams. This is awesome. The the light went off and said, "Now I know how to launch. Let's let's go and support, promote the people from team Indiana that are going to be going to Dallas because they just made the decision they were going to go to Dallas." So, we go back to the lieutenant governor and said, "I'm ready to go." She says, "What are we going to do?"

I said, 'We going to promote the members of Team Indiana and we're going to go tell stories about them and then we're going to activate down there and they're going to be our ambassadors and we're going to start talking about the Culinary Crossroads of America in front of these influencers. She said, "Okay, what do we need to do?" We needed to raise, you know, about $75,000 to do the activation, which we did. And that started getting some of these other coalition members to step up. money from the state, money from IvyTech, money from Visit Indie, some private sector sponsors that were there, and we brought it all together. At the same time, you remember Colin went down to the final table where the winners from last fall came in the spring for that competition.

Yeah.

That particular final table for the year, this is now in the spring of 2019. So, this is the final table from 2018, was being held in New Orleans. And I said, I'd like to go down and see that. never been to one of those. Let's see what that's all about. And I go down there and and say, "Okay."

And Mike Mloud, the founder of of the World Food Championships, says, "We don't know for sure where we're going. We haven't made a decision on where we're going to go for next year." Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like went back to the lieutenant governor. I said, "What about when we go down to Dallas and go and and support and promote our team Indiana that they're making the announcement that they're going to bring the final table event to Indiana and to Indianapolis?" She goes, "How do we do that?"

I said, "Well, okay. This time we've got to go and we've got to raise the licensing fee." And that's when we were able to really get IvyTech to step up. The folks at Vizendi helped us and another one. And this time it was close to six figures on what the licency fee was and we had a plan and we held it over at IvyTech Culinary Center. So we go down there and that happens and all of a sudden we're in the game.

Now in the back of our mind the lieutenant governor's already said we need to get this whole thing to Indiana. Said well let's start here.

Yeah. And we did that in 2020. And then um there was a long journey that included COVID, a lot of different you know dynamics that ultimately from that point took us to 2024 to ultimately to get it here. Thought we had it in 23 but there was new dynamics that was happening with the World Food Championships because they had got a significant investment from the folks at IMG and Endeavor. that's the leadership that is now with the World Food Championship now had just come in and they were still sort of figuring out where everybody is at the table. So even though they didn't think uh that Dallas was the place to be, they needed one year more.

Yeah.

So we had all the coalition ready. It probably one of the toughest days. You've had those tough days. That was a tough day in this was like February of 23 where I get the call from Mloud and said, "Man, you did everything that you could do, but we've got to stay here one more year." That was tough. They had their new plans for where they were heading.

And our value proposition was this. The World Food Championship wanted to go out there and build that brand and build that competition globally. And if you follow them, they're doing a great job. They got great leaders. uh Mike Eaton who heads it up, Michael Han, their marketing, their whole team is really, really strong. They were telling everybody about what that story was and how they wanted to grow the franchise.

So I had an opportunity to sit down with those individuals and said, "I love what you're doing. We love what you're doing." Said, "But it seems to us that there's two things. If you're going to go do that and where we can help is that if you're going to go aggressively on this expansion, you don't want to have to worry about the home base. you don't have to worry about this operation needs to be where it can run and get better. And also it's also if you're going to go do this and you're really going to blow this thing up, then you've that same partner that is taking this over for you today, you can't get too big for them.

I said, "And if that's the case, then it's a no-brainer to come to Indiana and Indianapolis because one, we know how to do what you're doing right now. We've done your final table. We've been to five or six of your events. We have team Indiana folks that understand it, so we know how to run. Oh, and by the way, we had a bright new shiny uh star out there with the Indiana Farm Bureau Pavilion that they could put it that they could put it into state of state-of-the-art where you could go put, you know, gas and fire inside there and cook and put all their competition kitchens. And then after you do that, well, it's a no-brainer.

You know, we host Super Bowls. We we do US Olympic trials. And you can't get too big. you like dangle that out too where you're like, "Hey, you know, you really get this thing big. We have this we have this place called Lucas Oil Stadium. We have the convention center.

We have the new Signia Hotels and all this stuff.

You you cannot get too You cannot get too big for us.

I'm fired up."

And and and and that they said, "Okay, I got the call and says, "We want to come out. Can you give us a tour?" This is at Christmas at at Christmas time. And we walked them in. It was a great great day. you know, when you have certain days.

Oh, Christmas time at the at the

Christmas time of Well, what was it was just around the Christmas time and they were trying to make a decision now for where they're going to go. So, we brought them in. This is the beauty of our state and our in our leadership. We sat him down with Cindy Hoy who runs state fairgrounds. We took him over to to Sueman, the president's office. Sue Ellman at IvyTech and met with her chief of staff. We took him and met with Don Don Lamb from agriculture. uh Leonard and Chris Gaul took him to a Pacer game I believe that that night and we started with them sitting down with the late Bill Stinson who did a phenomenal job down at Indie airport to talk about how the Indianapolis airport could get their people in from all around the country and all around the world. That's how it happened.

Wow. Isn't that cool?

So from the tour, how long did it take for them to say like, "Hey, we're coming to Indiana."

It was probably about 3 weeks. Said, "Let's draw it up. Let's go.

Let's go." That's awesome. And then they came here in 24. They came here

and was it was it set that they were going to come for two years?

No, it was set there to come here. And to just be very clear, our you know, from Colinary Crossroads standpoint, bringing it back to Colinary Crossroads, our initiative was to get it here. We accomplished what we wanted to do because for all the same reasons that we're doing, the programs that we had, these same institutions, great institutions, they they don't necessarily come up on the front end when there's sort of a, you know, a new investment to make. Well, they don't they don't play. They usually take more established programs that are in place, but they all could see said, "Okay, I'll put a portion in." And said, "We believe that if we get it here and they see it, then those leaders know how to cultivate relationships."

And the World Food Championship leadership know how to cultivate relationships. So that is now in the hands of those institutions with the World Food Championships and we go out on things like get in and tell people how exciting it is to have.

Absolutely. Well, the World Food Championships is uh October 16th through the 19th this year.

Um going to be at the fairgrounds. Yes. What I mean, so through year one, what can we expect for year two? And how how can listeners get in? How can leaders in our community help retain the World Food Championships here in Indianapolis

there? Mike McCloud who's kind of working with Mike Heaton on that. Uh if they were interested in that, uh if you know, make that connection, I could help to make that connection with them. Uh but those are the those are the folks that they would turn to. Um I think what you're going to see and we s kind of saw this last year to where anytime you got a new product we talked about in the World Food Championship folks understood this very very well is you're going to get people for about three hours. You know you're going to go out from 11 to 2 or 12 to three and what can you do when they when they come in to make it a really good experience?

Can they get some food? Will they understand the competition? Well, they get a chance to see some demonstrations. And I think that now that we have a year under our belt and there's a lot more individuals and organizations know about it, you're going to see this thing sort of take hockey stick and going up.

So tell me what to expect. You show up at the fairgrounds October 16th through the 19th. Like what does it look like? What's what does it look like for a spectator?

You're going to walk in and you're going to see things that you've never seen. A lot of people there have watched reality TV and they they've watched cooking competitions. So they they kind of see it when they're there, but you're talking about taking them inside the ropes behind the scenes. And this is not taped and then edited. This is live. And you're just going to see a lot of action. They have chefes that are there. It's really

chef because in the competition to make sure that all the chef like chef

chefies because you have to play and you can get whistled and you can lose time. No way.

And it's 90 minutes.

Okay. Wait. Well, let's let's like So, that's the competition that's going on. Uh Colin kind of talks about the journey from like local event to the World Food Championship to the final table. As a spectator, like people that are listening here, if they're like, I'm looking for something to do. I'm kind of interested in food. Like, you drive, you drive into the fairgrounds, uh October 16th through the 19th, you park your car and you're going to the pavilion. Like, what does it look like for a spectator to come in there? And like, what are they doing? Are they watching? Are they eating? Are they drinking? What What does it look like?

40 competition kitchens. Two two arenas of 20. Okay. So, they're going to see them cooking. There's going to be demonstrations out in the barbecue. There'll be live fire barbecue that's out there. You can go get samples.

These are competitors.

These are competitors from around the world that uh that are that are there. And you're going to see the intensity of any sort of a competition because you got 20 folks there and then they wait till 90 minutes and you can't turn in until the last two minutes. Then all of a sudden they've got to plate their entre. They got to take it along this carpet. They've got to lay it down before the the time runs out. Wow.

And you would think like how could they take 90 minutes? But there's ones that literally get it down to the last 30 seconds and they're making their way. So there's strategy and tactics of saying, do I want to be the first one the judge is going to see? Do I want to be the last one? But the idea of bringing it back to Culinary Crossroads for those folks that come in, we're excited because when they come in, they're going to see the Indiana contingency that's there. So, what are they going to see, Nate?

They're going to see the people and the products and learn places in Indiana that come in there that's related to culinary. We got something to fire up your weekend plans. Indie Grills is unveiling their brand new showroom, and you're invited. This Saturday, October 4th, from 12 to 4 pm, you can come see it in full force at 4540 East State Road 32 in Lebanon. Pop in and experience Elevated Outdoor Living. They'll have free snacks from Moody's Butcher Shop.

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Head to indiegirl. com for more details and bring your game face for cookouts to come. Let's get back into the episode. Wow. Like, what are some of the staples in Indiana's culinary scene from like a product or people perspective? I mean, you've been talking about a ton of people that are doing great work.

Are there products?

We we we feed the world. Our our pro, you know, our proteins and producees are feeding the world. Our meat producers

tomato number two from from red gold to, you know, what we what we do there to uh our, you know, our beef producers that are out there or, you know, our corn producers that are putting food out across the the country. You know, we you've probably seen this, you know, we're big on melon production here in the state. Watermelon and all the different types of melon. What happens is that people don't understand that throughout here, we're feeding the world. And and the subtlety of it is that all those same products that are being developed and feeding the world, they're right in our backyard. So, when people talk about farmtotable, we live farm to table.

And you'll see our restaurants switch over and they're not getting their tomatoes from anywhere around the country. They're coming from our fields. They're they're using our proteins to put their uh dishes together. Did you know that that up at Maple Leaf Farms, they're the first or second largest producer and distributor of duck in the world?

I believe number one. Do

you know how many how many ducks they process a day?

I can't imagine.

50,000.

That's a lot of ducks.

That's a lot of And that's a that's a lot of that's a lot of ducks.

I need to get someone from Maple. Can you make that intro?

Absolutely.

I need to get you need to get Bring a live duck on.

Any Liv Tucker to come in here.

Liv Tucker.

Olivia Tucker.

Olivia Tucker. I'll set you up with Livuck. Absolutely. That would be so fun.

With Colony Crossroads. Getting that initiative was two things. One is if you could get those in here and you could tell those stories and you could keep it here, then you rinse and repeat. Then you and and that's goes back to you know a lot of times if you get if you get one Super Bowl the Super Bowl doesn't come back for a while. What we do is we have the Indianapolis 500 here every year. So the the hope is is that it keeps coming back and right now we are the food sports capital of America Nate until somebody tells us we're not.

the whole beginning of this episode, you talk about travel, tourism, visiting, like for people out there listening that might not be foodies, like that they might not like, you know, they eat food like whatever, but they're not like, "Oh, I want to see food championship. I want to see competition. I want to do all this stuff." Why is World Food Championship, why is Culinary Crossroads in the work that you're doing so important to the Hoosier State even if you're not a foodie?

Great question. because those people that are not necessarily foodies, they still uh love their state and they still see the value proposition for living in this state. They they live in, you know, our our tier three communities in our small towns there. They work for you know we have what probably 10 or 15 of the top global brands in any particular industry you want to pick whether it's uh you know it's it's u medical devices or pharmaceuticals or manufacturing or whatever they're dispersed all over there and and those people would love to continue to be able to have the lifestyle that they've had. Uh and to do that you have to go out and recruit and rebuild some of those areas and develop some of those areas. So you have to have a a way to start the discussion with people about why they want to think about living working in in Indiana.

And the culinary crossroads initiative is the one to where we will go externally and raise the awareness and find an incentive for people to make their visit here. And then once we get them here, let's go back to that triangle that the culinary park gets them here. And then what happens is they connect to the community. And when you talk about those communities, you're talking about not just the downtown area and the restaurants, but then you start talking about, wait a minute, um, this is right next to, you know, thoroughares that I can take off and get anywhere that I want to very easily or go to Indianapolis and fly out. Yeah. Oh, by the way, I didn't realize that when I came in here that in this area there are five or six colleges and universities that are in that area that are are wonderful and they bring a cultural side there to it.

And I can look at these different businesses and I take a look about um you know what I what I want in 21st century here where I want to live, work in places. I really need to think about you know Indiana differently.

You had to start you had to start the discussion somewhere. So they care about that.

And and you said the the first big goal for Culinary Crossroads was to get the World Food Championship to Indianapolis.

That's correct.

You accomplished that.

We accomplished that.

What's the next goal?

We are, if you go into that orientation, education, and action. We now have proof of concept that says you need this coalition to come together to make these kind of things happen. And bringing the World Food Championships was exactly that. it was a true public private partnership to go and get it done.

And so now that that is in place and we see that people can come together and you can get through those silos and I don't necessarily say silos because in a critical way but you know whether it's public sector institutions or big businesses they have a lot of work to do but if you go across the board they all say lifestyle is important and conro allows us to talk about lifestyle. So the next phase for us, all of our work in terms of pursuing the world food championships and when we did all these on the road dinners, this is sort of the inside setting the structure in place so that we know that we can we can deliver on the value proposition. Everybody would say you want really good advertising know that you can deliver on it. So now what happens is the next phase for us is to take it externally. We now are ready to go out and start talking to consumers about the culinary crossroads of America.

And we talk about that in the sense of saying experience the crossroads, taste the crossroads. And so now what we want to do is and we want everybody to start singing that song along the way internally.

Is it similar to what indie sports corp is for our sports scene?

The the sports corp is much more taskoriented in that they go out and find

events events to come to

and with the idea that says it's going to spur economic development and they've worked to develop relationships where they can keep them here for a long time. You know, that's why we have the Big 10, the NCAA. So, they do great work on it. This is a little bit this is a little bit more about a a narrative. This is this is this is more about about defining the way people not just foodies, but all people think about think about food.

Okay. So not like it the answer isn't like okay we're going out to get whatever the next we have world food championship whatever the other food competitions are.

Yeah I think that will feed that will feed on itself there'll be a whole there'll be a whole that level that will that build on that itself. So that so there's two things one is that we want to and working on building the formal colony a crossroads coalition to make it a nonprofit. This is an entity that my, you know, my shop myself started and being the cheerleader for all this happening.

Yeah.

I didn't believe that it made sense to create a nonprofit before we knew that what the nonprofit was going to do.

Yeah. Because the answer was we need to get world like we have to if we don't get world food championship

we we have to get people to sort of understand the uh the power of that. And so now when we get to the point where we work now to get that coalition in place and be able to tell the story and you have to break it up, it's like a movie in five parts. So we've got it to regions like and you appreciate this. We got northeast, northwest, central that cuts across the from Richmond to Teroot and then southeast and southwest because as we're telling this story and it's nuanced as you can pick up. There's a little bit different variation when you talk about the colony crossroads in the northeast than it is in the southeast. You've been down there, right?

Oh yeah. I mean you're talking like you kind of get a lot of Chicago perogi fest up in Whiting up in the north. That would be the northwest. Uh, and then you go down to the southeast, that's fried chicken country. That's Wagner's, right?

And it it has all those and and and in those particular areas where you go and sort of, you know, where are you trying to take that region today from where they were, where or where they want to go.

Some of those really does get perceptions. If you get up in the Northwest, you have to deal with a perception that says it's just got um smoke stacks and old steel mills and rough and all that area, which is couldn't be further from the truth, right? You've got you got you got the dunes that are it's beautiful, beautiful communities. You've got the central area that is going back to the Norman Rockwellish times where I grew up when Anderson had 75,000 people, 15,000 of them worked for General Motors, one of two divisions in General Motors and and you get that back and then down in the

southeast and the Southwest is that where you didn't even necessarily think about that to where people would go down there to build up business relationships and build businesses. But in today's world, when you can go and you can recruit folks there that can work from anywhere in the world, you're sort of creating a new environment that's down there.

I love it, man. Uh, this has been fun. We've come to sort of the end of the show where we have a few fun Indiana wrap-up questions for you. So, this question is brought to you by our friends at JC Hart. They're a leader in creating enjoyable living experiences at apartment communities all across Indiana and beyond. Check them out at homejart.com. My question for you, Larry, you've lived all over the country. You've traveled the world. You've been here, there, and everywhere. Why do you call Indiana home?

For all the reasons that we've been talking about for the for the last hour in terms of, you know, lifestyle. for for myself, it comes back to I can be around family and friends uh that I wanted to be around, but quite frankly, I call Indiana home now because I think Indianapolis I know Indianapolis is one of the the top, you know, three or four tier one cities or tier 2 cities in the in the in the country. Uh that's out. You have Boston and New York, but but man,

tier one in people.

Tier Yeah, absolutely. and and and so when you go down there and you can live in that environment and living all over the world and in in large areas, you get all that in at Indiana, but then you can get out of there and you have the lifestyle that all of us love here. So, that was a that was a big motivator for coming back to Indiana.

Now, let's talk some rapid fire questions. Our lightning round.

Let's go.

What was the most surprising dish at the World Food Championship? more of a category that I didn't realize that you could put 90 minutes into burger competition and what people could do for that and people would sit there and like how remarkable it is in terms of all the the the the attention to detail and what it takes and they need every bit of those 90 minutes.

Take me back to a moment somewhere in your life where food just brought together community for you.

One of the most significant was when I was at school. I had an opportunity to go um over the pond and work for three GM divisions over an 8-week period of time and each place that we went to. I lived with families and they and they took me out, you know, was in France and in Belgium and in Germany and uh going out with them and getting introduced to foods I'd never had, you know, any idea about and seeing that social interaction and how it worked in those communities. What's your favorite local ingredient that you see being used by who's your culinary you know chefs that's from local

right now at this time it switches over right now corn they find corn and everything they can do they take the tomatoes uh that are that are coming that are coming in and I think when they make that transfer of the particular produces and and build those in

you talked about the five different regions

and like their different kind of uh their identities which one is your favorite and What food is it from there that makes it your favorite?

I'm not going to go there, Nate. I love I I I love them all, but I'll tell you I'll tell you some of the the items that are that are great. I mean, you're you get um uh some pretty creative folks up in the Fort Wayne uh area that are doing some cool stuff. Uh you got a guy named Marcus Daniel that worked with Pete Echelman. Uh have I don't know if you've ever been to Joseph Dqui. That's place that you

Oh, yeah. That's But it's not It's Ron Oak, right?

It's in Rono.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like a It's like a f like a nice nice restaurant.

Oh, it's a it's a it's a world-class restaurant that that that came it's a great story. It ca it came from Echerman came out here. He was the first one in his business to do guaranteed contracts for for um Major League Baseball players. Started with Reggie Jackson and the insurance company up in Fort Wayne said, "You had we want to have you do your business, but you got to come to Indiana." So he came out here, went to Rono because they had real good access to the airport that was out there and needed when he was flying in owners, agents, players, a place to feed him. So he had been from New York, so he brought a chef in. That's ultimately how he got to that way.

And that a great that's very cool story.

I'm going to do a deep dive on that. Yeah.

What dish screams Indiana to you? pork tenderloin still screams I mean you know look we're we're not running away from those great things that are that are there but um you know the what you can do and what they have in terms of with the proteins that they that they do you know you can go to a lot of different places around the state and get some different uh little riffs on uh you know on beef or pork and I I think I think pork products are just are just phenomenal. the Indiana pork producers. They commented on one of my recent state fair videos and were just like hyping. I mean, and if you ever got one of those like pork burgers at the state fair,

that stuff is unreal.

It's really good. And

you know why we're on the the rapid fire cuz I I was told do my do my homework on them. Yeah.

You're going to like um you talk about an unknown gym. I'll give you I'll give you

Oh, we're almost there. Oh, I thought I I didn't know we'd you threw me some curve balls there.

Yeah, these are our final three questions. They are always the same. We ask every single guest that comes on the show these three particular questions about Indiana. The first one, as you traveled the world,

you talked to all these different people. You know, you talked about how they never really had that perception of Indiana or this that they said who's your hospitality, but what is something that the world needs to know about Indiana? Indiana is probably the most efficient, effective, and enjoyable place in the country to to live. I firmly firmly believe that it's not just the pitch from that that if you take everything into consideration about what you have here and what people are looking for in today's world where they can get anywhere they want to. So they don't necessarily have to choose to live in the mountains on the beach. They don't necessarily want to.

and you can come and operate and have access to the kind of communities and also not just the communities the intellectual firepower that we have here that if people start to see that be ready because it's going to as Malcolm Gladwell said we're going to hit the tipping point.

Hey, now we're talking. Okay, this is the question, Larry. This is where you get to shed some light, share some love with something that more Hoosiers need to know about. What is a hidden gem in Indiana?

The Lemon Drop.

What is the Lemon Drop?

The Lemon Drop is in Anderson. You've got to go over there. It's a It's a little diner over there that has been there. I know at least from the 60s because I used to go over with my mom and dad with my dad when my mom would be working and on shift. And they have the toasted cheeseburger that that they have. They have the onion burger that's there. 20 20 seats. Do you know how I know the restaurant is going to be good and that I'm going to like it is when their Google like my business page leads me to a Facebook page. Like they don't have a website website. It's just on their Facebook. No. I'm like chef's kiss. That's spectacular.

The waitresses don't write anything down on paper. They never have. They take the order. That's that that's right there. You're sitting there. They're putting it on the griddle. It's on white toasted bread. It's it's awesome.

Wow. I'm like looking at the lemon drop. Yeah. Toasted cheeseburgers, onion burgers, tenderloins. This thing looks wild.

If I've had folks that I've brought in and I have any time at all with them, I said, "Come on, where are we going?" said, "Just get in the car."

4,873 people like the lemon drop on Facebook. That's a for a small a 20 seat diner.

Yes.

Heck yeah. That

doing the same thing they were doing in the 60s.

My friend Larry, that is a spectacular hidden gem. And okay, so we've done 180 something episodes at this point. And anytime at this point when you're almost 200 episodes in that someone can pull something new, that's a literal chef's kiss. Incredible. Great job, Larry.

Finally, you get to share the love, share the mic. This is where we get recommendations for future guests or just people that we need to know about. Who is a hooer that we need to keep on our radar? Someone who's doing big things.

His name is Brian Furer. F U R E R. He started and still leads uh an organization called Biottown A and Bottown Biogas and they are one of the leading uh producers of natural gas and energy uh and electrical energy that all being done by using protein and produce waste uh that they're generating it up there. He also uh is the head and and owns Honey Creek Legacy Maker uh beef. And what's significant and also is working on and I've had the pleasure of working with him on big plans for revitalizing this small little town called Walcut. He's a guy to keep uh to keep on to keep on the radar

in Walcott. That's uh kind of by like the Loganport area a little bit right

now. Walut is just off of about four miles off of 65 on 24 little uh little town uh that is there. There's a there's a restaurant that actually is owned and operated by his daughter Amber Furer Roots that was identified as uh one of the top 50 restaurants by USA uh today up there for its unique little offerings it has.

Oh wait, yeah. Yeah, you're totally right. It's It's like just down the road from Monaceel. Uh kind of off of 65.

I'm in White County.

Yes. Okay. Walcott, not not Loganport. I was thinking Monaceel Roots Eater Pub. Someone has told me about this and said that this place is is incredible. Oh. Oh my lord.

Yeah, it's great. You need to set up. You need to go up there and

Roots Eery and Pub in Walcott, Indiana. That's the spot. I wonder how what's the population of Walcott?

I think it's under a thousand.

952. Heck yeah. That's my kind of place.

Keep keep an keep an eye on that place. That's that that's going to be a rising star and u Brian is uh just a incredible entrepreneur, incredible family man. He represents all those attributes of of of Indiana and the people side that we're talking about.

Amen. And you know the one thing that I will you know take this opportunity and going back to Culinary Crossroads and it is about singing that song and and where we're where we're heading now and why I was so excited when I see the guest that you have on here. Uh you had Chelsea uh Coupleman over. Oh my gosh, I I learned so much and and you know we we've been on building the institutional relationships to get us here. all that orientation and education. On the action side, what's going to be great is to get folks like you and you know, Adam Grub and Chelsea to, you know, that song, you sing it, it's a narrative that you put in there and it's just something when we all start doing that, uh, we're going to be see a significant change in the way the world sees Indiana.

Absolutely. I love it, man. Larry, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for all you're doing to help just tell that narrative of the Culinary Crossroads of America, all the work that went into bringing World Food Championship here. I'm really excited. The dates on that again are October 16th through the 19th. It's going to be at the the fairgrounds in uh the what's this?

Farm Bureau.

The Farm Bureau Pavilion.

Remarkable facility.

Oh my gosh. It's like brand new, right? Like two years old, maybe one year old. it. We were in the first year uh that they were rolling.

This is year two for that. It's an incredible event. Lots of local partners. I know that our friends at like Barkeepers Friend is involved and Hard Truth is involved and I mean so many great organizations there. I wonder if Colin hopefully he's going back to defend his title.

I I'm sure I'm sure he will be back there. And the beauty of it is in in terms of of keeping it here. Think about it. if like every year that you were going to, you know, go battle for the championship that you were always being able to play on your home turf.

Yeah. Yeah. Like the Colts got to play every game as a home game. That would be sick.

Yeah.

Um we appreciate you. Appreciate all your hard work. If people want to connect with you, if they want to find Culinary Crossroads, where can they do that?

They can go to culinarycrossroads.org u and they can get about anywhere they want to go from there. It's got all of our social media areas where they can go to, but they can they can start there. And I would encourage them to uh go there and visit, but sign up for the uh newsletter. We we do a bi-weekly newsletter where we're talking about 15 different events or activities every two weeks. We're putting it putting it out there. Oh boy.

Uh and that might give you a little good target list of some places that uh that you want to go chase up after you go to the lemon drop. And if you go to the lemon drop, let me know. I'll go with you.

There we go. I do have before we go, I have one final thing. Yes.

Can I ask you like if you had a top five? I know you can't pick and blah blah. If you had five restaurants, if I was bringing someone from out of town that are iconic to the state of Indiana, where what are the five places I need to take people?

You know, I think if you go to Oakley's Beastro, I mean, Steven Oakley has has been great. I think John Brooks, what he's doing over at Beholder is is phenomenal and what's happening there. Um, I think that um Marcus Daniel is getting ready to open up a restaurant. Uh, I don't know the name of that, but just follow Marcus Daniel.

Marcus Daniel.

And I think folks going to Joseph up there uh is a is a great uh uh great. And finally down in New Albany, uh if you go to um uh Butcher in the Block uh down there uh where uh they're they're doing some great things. They've got a restaurant called Outcast. Over in Evansville, there's a Bad Randies. A guy named Jeremiah Gaye is doing some really cool things down in the Evansville.

Look at that. We just gave I mean um five or six different road trip and what I love about that was that they aren't just like the iconic ones here in Indianapolis. It's like no these are places for you to go and try out around town.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because we we one of the things that we did is one of our initiatives is that we did these on the road dinners. We're getting ready to go to our fourth one and and we've done in those areas and the reason why we know is that we went in we went in and identified who are the ambassadors in that marketplace.

I love it, man. Hey, keep up all the great work. Uh I'm excited. I'll probably see you out at World Food Championships and we'll talk soon.

Great. Thanks, Nate.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Get In. If you like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all of my gear recommendations at sweetwater.com. If you want a behind-the-scenes look at everything we're doing across the state, make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok, Nate Spangle. Thank you so much for listening and being part of what makes the Hoosier State great.