Building a Better Chew: Chef GW Chew is Working to Create Better Plant-Based Meat

Business for Good Podcast

As a young man, GW Chew saw his family dying early of lifestyle-related diseases, and he thought maybe he could do something about it. With a last name like that—yes, “Chew” is his real last name—maybe GW was destined to become a chef—that’s exactly what he did.

Because of his interest in Seventh Day Adventism, GW gradually became Chef Chew by experimenting with Seventh Day Adventist recipes, ultimately leading him down the path of opening up his own restaurant and now to being a plant-based meat manufacturer. His company—Something Better Foods—is already selling six different plant-based meats to school districts and some Whole Foods Market locations.

As you’ll hear in this interview from Chef Chew, unlike most plant-based meat, he doesn’t rely on extrusion of plant protein isolates, but rather uses a layer-ization process he pioneered using whole soybeans to make his brand of alt-meat called Better Chew. As Chef Chew says, “it looks like chicken; it tastes like chicken; but it ain't chicken!”

In this conversation we talk about Chef Chew’s life path, his alternative financing strategies for Something Better Foods, where he’s been and where he intends to take the company.

Discussed in this episode

• Chef Chew went through the ICA Fund accelerator program.

• He recommends watching Live to 100 on Netflix.

• He loves the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek.

• He started with the Country Life Cookbook, which you can get for $2 on Amazon!

• Both Paul and Chef Chew love Butler’s Soy Curls

• Our past episodes (51 and 108) with Plant Based On a Budget’s Toni Okamoto

More about Chef GW Chew

GW Chew, aka Chef Chew, is the Founder & CEO of Something Better Foods Inc. and has been a vegan food inventor/restaurateur for over 15 years. Adopted at birth into a family with the last name “Chew,” Chef Chew believes that he was born with a mission and purpose to change lives for the better, one chew at a time.

Chef Chew grew up in the “country” amongst a family of very heavy meat eaters and noticed over time that a lot of different diseases, from diabetes to cancer, plagued the members of his family. He later discovered that many of those same diseases have been linked to poor diet and overconsumption of animal meat products.

Inspired to begin living a healthy lifestyle, Chef Chew switched to a plant-based diet in 2001 and started experimenting with creating vegan food products in 2004. He painstakingly invented the Better Chew proteins in his mom’s kitchen and has perfected the textures and taste over the past 15 years.

As part of his mission to democratize the access of healthy food, Chef Chew most recently created the Better Chew Box to deliver healthy and affordable plant-based protein solutions directly to your community!