Neil Rankin applied for a job at Pret after the 2008 financial crisis closed his sandwich business. He didn't get it. What followed was seven years in professional kitchens, a Michelin-level career built around fire and meat, and then slowly, a growing conviction that the most important thing he could do with everything he'd learned was to stop cooking meat altogether.

Simplicity Foods started in a home kitchen during Covid, hand-making sausages and shaping burgers with an ice cream tub lid. Its first customers were Soho House, Dishoom and Gordon Ramsay. It is now in Waitrose and 3,000 restaurants across the UK and every product is still made by hand, using wild lacto-fermentation, everyday vegetables, miso, flaxseed and flour. 

In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, Neil sits down for an extended conversation about the journey that brought him here and what he's learned along the way. 

He explains why he thinks everything truly delicious in the world has been fermented and why he believes the plant-based industry's fatal mistake was starting with bitter proteins and working backwards. 

He opens up about the genuine tension of being a meat eater building a meat alternative and why retail remains the hardest frontier of all.

If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com