Hi there,

There’s a moment in every great meal when time suspends.

Conversation halts. Forks pause. Eyes close as flavors unfold like a story told in an ancient language.

I saw it recently in a local food market in Spain, where strangers became conspirators over a dish that meant more than its ingredients. The silence lasted maybe three seconds, followed by that “disgustingly good” look, the kind that says everything without a word. We realized we were experiencing culture itself, distilled and shared across human divides.

In our rush to optimize and scale, we’ve forgotten this truth. We overlook that the most powerful communication happens through experiences that speak directly to memory, identity, and belonging.

Chefs know this instinctively. My absolute idol Anthony Bourdain knew it better than most when he said that food is never just food, but “everything we are,” served on a plate.

Making people feel remains the oldest form of persuasion.

What follows are three stories about brands that remembered this — stories that might reshape how you view your own work.

The Weight of Heritage

In the mountains of Oaxaca, Hilda Pastor washes heirloom corn in her backyard sink to make tortillas the way her grandmother taught her, and her grandmother’s grandmother before that. These kernels have existed for thousands of years — landraces carrying the genetic memory of pre-Columbian civilizations.

Most people have never tasted what Pastor makes. Somewhere between ancient milpas and modern supermarkets, tortillas became a commodity — engineered for shelf life, not soul.

Jorge Gaviria knew this loss well. Raised in Miami by Mexican and Cuban parents, he grew up eating tortillas that left much to be desired. Training in New York’s farm-to-table restaurants, he began to wonder why the same principles of terroir and provenance that elevated other ingredients weren’t applied to the foundation of Latin American cuisine.

His research took him to Oaxaca, where he experienced something transformative:

In 2014, Gaviria founded Masienda — masa + tienda — merging business with cultural preservation. Working directly with smallholder farmers, he brought heirloom corn to the U.S., creating a market that could sustain both tradition and innovation.

This was more than better-tasting tortillas. It was about preserving biodiversity in an age of agricultural homogenization. About supporting Mexico’s two million small-scale farmers. About protecting what can’t be left entirely to market forces.

Today, Masienda’s tortillas with just corn and alkaline water, nixtamalized the ancient way sit in Whole Foods nationwide. But each one still carries the stories of the farmers, the traditions that shaped its cultivation, and the knowledge that made its transformation possible.

The Theatre of Fire

In Patagonia, Francis Mallmann cooks as if the land itself is part of his recipe. Whole vegetables char directly in embers. Meat roasts slowly over open flames, sometimes for an entire day. Even bread gets kissed by smoke.

Mallmann isn’t chasing perfection in the Michelin sense. He’s after emotion — flavors that carry the soul of fire, landscape, and the moment itself.

Raised in Argentina and trained in classic French kitchens, he eventually rebelled against white tablecloths and fine-dining precision. He returned to the elemental traditions of gauchos and Andean kitchens, then reframed them for a global audience.

Mallmann's genius lies in how he moves tradition forward without polishing away its character. His cooking respects old methods, but it's not a museum piece. It's alive, evolving, and theatrical enough to hold you captive.

Everything is about intent. Every scorch mark is a signature, every ember a lighting cue. You leave smelling like smoke, wondering if you've eaten dinner or been part of an installation.

Mallmann knows something a lot of brands don't: people remember the scene as much as they remember the taste. He took the patience of the pampas—that gaucho understanding that good things happen slowly—and weaponized it against a world obsessed with optimization. Burnt-out bankers from Manhattan to Tokyo pay obscene money to remember what it feels like to sit still.

The most subversive thing you can do in 2025? Refuse to hurry. And if you're confident enough in that refusal, people will pay handsomely to join your rebellion against the clock.

The Rebellion in Room Temperature

On the other side of the world, Jing Gao was writing her own story of identity and belonging. Born in Chengdu, raised in Canada, she spent twenty-five years answering to “Jenny” — a small concession with a larger cost.

Returning to China, food became her way home. But it wasn’t a sentimental homecoming. In her grandmother’s kitchen, watching Sichuan chili crisp being made, she understood that tradition could be both anchor and launchpad.

Her version, Fly By Jing, wasn’t her grandmother’s recipe, though it honoured her wisdom. It was new: the first all-natural chili crisp made in China, free from artificial preservatives and shortcuts. And it came in packaging that rejected Western clichés of Chinese food.

No red and gold. No dragons or pagodas.

Instead: neon yellow typography that shouted, spiky borders reflecting its heat, and copy that read like a conversation with your most irreverent friend.

The tagline — Uncensored Chinese Flavors — wasn’t marketing bullshit. It was a manifesto. It will always sit as one of my favorite food brands to disrupting what’s out there.

For Gao, authenticity meant not diluting culture for easy consumption, but inviting others into its full complexity. The result was a brand that felt ancient and urgent, rooted and rebellious. It spoke to anyone who’s lived between worlds and had to choose between being understood and being themselves.

The Conversation We're Really Having

The thing that ties these stories together isn't food. It's how they make something deeply personal feel universal and then scale it without killing what made it special. That's the hard part in any creative field. You can keep things small and pure, or you can go big and risk losing the soul. Doing both? That's the magic trick.

The real challenge is finding that line. Knowing what to protect and what to let evolve. Staying rooted in your own voice while still making room for strangers to pull up a chair. And resisting the urge to make everything neat, safe, and easy to swallow.

The people who pull this off don't think in terms of "products" first. They think in terms of what it means. They're building connection, not just distribution. They're starting conversations that outlast the campaign. They're creating space for stories they didn't even write.

The Table We're Setting

Some of the most important exchanges in life happen in moments that demand you be there — around a meal, sure, but also in the workshop, the studio, the late-night Slack thread that turns into a breakthrough. It's those rare times when you drop the performance and actually let people in.

• Masienda carries centuries in something you can eat in two bites.

• Mallmann turns fire and char into theater.

• Fly By Jing slaps you awake before the lid's even off.

And here's the thing — this isn't about food. It's about the kind of work that makes you feel something because the person who made it gave a shit. It's about the unglamorous patience to build something from the ground up, knowing when to follow the recipe and when to burn it.

Great work isn't rushed. It's messy. It's layered. And when it's done right, it lingers long after the thing itself is gone.

The ones who get this don't endure because they've gamed the algorithm. They endure because they've remembered the whole point of making anything in the first place: to move someone enough that they remember it tomorrow.

And if you can do that, you've already won.

A bit of a memory to Anthony Bourdain to finish.

@digitalartifax

move. #anthonybourdain #edit #motivation #hopecore

Brand Wars: Battle of Burgers

Shake Shack

Shake Shack turned fast food into lifestyle branding with a $2.4 billion IPO and the audacity to call a burger joint "hospitality."

Danny Meyer's Madison Square Park experiment became the poster child for "premium fast-casual"—green packaging screaming sustainability, crinkle-cut fries that cost more than a Big Mac meal, and locations that look like Apple Stores serving beef.

Their brand strategy? Convince millennials that paying Sweetgreen prices for burgers isn't insane—it's conscious consumption. Every ShackBurger comes with a side of moral superiority.

The genius: Making fast food feel like self-care.

In-N-Out

In-N-Out's brand bible is literally the Bible—Revelation 3:20 printed on every cup since 1987, because why separate your salvation from your Double-Double?

75 years, same logo, same menu, same cult following that treats Animal Style like a religious experience. Their "brand strategy" is having no brand strategy—just quality control so obsessive they make their own patties and refuse to franchise.

While every chain chases trends, In-N-Out weaponized scarcity. No delivery apps. No plant-based options. No international expansion. Just West Coast exclusivity that makes people plan vacations around burger stops.

The genius: Being aggressively, unapologetically themselves.

Ad Vault: Wendy’s

"Where's the beef?" (1984)

In 1984, Wendy's was getting crushed. Instead of another boring "our burgers taste better" ad, they unleashed Clara Peller—81 years old with a voice like gravel and zero patience for bullshit.

Three grandmas examine a competitor's pathetic burger. Clara squints at the tiny patty and delivers the line that changed everything:

"Where's the beef?"

The phrase exploded beyond fast food into presidential debates and cultural shorthand for calling out anything that's all hype, no substance. Wendy's sales jumped 31%.

Lento Vibes

A bit of random inspo from around the grounds:

• Brands Go Episodic IRL:Forget one-off posts. State Farm, Argos, and others are doubling down on social-first episodic content. Story arcs, characters, and cliffhangers—long-form plays for today’s algorithm.👉 Read why it’s working

• Chrome Gets Smarter Perplexity AI is now offering to replace Google Chrome’s search bar with its AI-powered alternative. The irony has arrived. 👉 See the update

• Ketchup Smoothie—Yes, Really Heinz and Smoothie King teamed up for a tomato-forward smoothie—berry-sweet with a ketchup twist. It’s either "genius" or "gross." Fans are divided.👉 Dive into the debate

• Ads Live in Real TimePerplexity is literally buying ad space on Theo Von’s podcast—so listeners can ask questions and get answers live during the show. Bold move for on-the-fly engagement.👉 Check out the campaign

• McDonaldland Makes a ComebackMcDonald’s just brought back McDonaldland characters in a nostalgic outdoor campaign. Childhood icons, now big and bold in 2025. 👉 Watch the revival