6
March
2024
March 6, 2024
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Community is the heart of Brigad and we love celebrating the wins and successes of both the talents and businesses on the platform.
Clyde Boris Ngounou is a Talent on Brigad and has been using the platform for over 5 years. He recently launched his own project, The CalorieFinder, and caught up with us to tell us all about it
Brigad: Tell us a bit about yourself!
Clyde: l am Clyde Boris Ngounou, also known under the pseudo "legend" by other chefs; So l am a professional Chef and also a nutritionist, registered in England and with a combined experience of over 15 years. Over recent years, l have worked with Brigad, supporting hospitality businesses with food production and menu planning.
Working with Brigad has been so positive in many ways; l have been able to work my own way, with a lot of flexibility and achieve a better work/ life balance at a moment when l needed it the most to focus on my passion for nutrition. l have also been able to connect with so many hospitality businesses hence establishing the base relationship l wanted with food businesses.
Brigad: What is The CalorieFinder?
Clyde: I am also the founder of a small company in nutrition, called The CalorieFinder, initially set up to support food businesses in understanding the nutritional quality of their menus and obtain detailed nutritional information for their menus. Now The CalorieFinder has evolved to become a tech company focused on food and nutrition, an online food dairy and nutritional analysis platform; The CalorieFinder app allows users (individuals and food businesses) to develop recipes, boxes and meals and obtain detailed nutritional information of the meals, instantly.
The app is rapidly growing as a global platform for recipes, and recipes inspiration on the "Shared Recipes" page. I felt proud today to wake up and see recipes in French on the platform and hopefully soon, we can also see other users being inspired to share recipes in more languages (Chinese, Polish, Arabic...).The app has been approved as a global app by Google and Apple, meaning the app can be accessed anywhere in the world, in most countries, giving more people the opportunity to understand the nutrition of the foods we eat.
Brigad: How did you come up with the idea?
Clyde: The CalorieFinder was born out of my passion for food and nutrition. Earlier in my career, working as a chef l have always wondered how the food we eat is responsible for our growth, gives us the energy we need to go and be productive in our everyday activities, our mood, and also our health status. So, l went on to study Nutrition at Kingston University London and that's where Istudied the art of recipe analysis. I came out of a lesson so inspired, l was convinced that would be useful to food businesses and support chefs in creating healthier alternatives of their recipes.
Brigad: How does it work?
Clyde: On The CalorieFinder homepage, you will find thousands of food ingredients with their nutritional values per 100g in a beautiful gallery of pictures. Users are also able to suggest new ingredients on the platform using the button "Add New Ingredient". These ingredients are verified by the team before validation on the platform. You will also find your own recipes and the community shared recipes on the homepage.
On the "My Recipes" page, users develop their recipes, and obtain a beautiful gallery of recipes that are kept private to each user, unless they decide to share with their community or publicly. The recipe builder allows you to develop a recipe, with the ingredients, the preparation method, input a certain number of portions or shares, and would automatically calculate the nutritional values of the recipe "per portion", if you used the built-in nutritional analysis tool.
On The "Shared Recipes" page, users share their own culinary creativity publicly and other users can be inspired by other recipes on the platform.
The app is free for personal accounts and allows users to develop up to 4 recipes a day, presumably for breakfast, lunch, a snack and dinner. Business account users can develop a lot more, depending on the plan they decide to use.
Brigad: Why is being able to know the calories and nutritional content of a dish so important?
Clyde: In today's age, it has become even more important to understand the nutritional value of our foods as it makes us healthier; knowing the nutritional values of foods helps me make healthier choices when choosing what l want to eat for the day. So, it supports consumers in making informed dining choices for example. Nutrition information can also help you choose between food products. As a hospitality professional, it helps create healthier alternatives to recipes and menus. And it is not just about the single nutrients, but also about the ingredients in your foods and you have all those data available on the app.
Brigad: What advice do you have for aspiring hospitality entrepreneurs?
Clyde: My advice to aspiring hospitality entrepreneurs is to get started, chase your dreams, and to get the job done nicely, someone will notice it and recommend your products or services.
Brigad: Where can people find The Calorie Finder?
Clyde: The CalorieFinder app is now available on web at https://web.thecaloriefinder.com or by searching "the caloriefinder" on the Google Playstore or Apple App Store
