#011 Foddies Cafe’ Owners Luke and Chrissy Bring FODMAP Friendly Food To Australia

Foddies Cafe’ is the restaurant that everyone suffering from IBS and other intolerance and allergies wish they had near their home.

If you suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome and live in Australia, around Melbourne, you are in luck. Foddies Cafe’ is a gluten-free, low FODMAP restaurant offering mouth watering dishes for all of us suffering from various food intolerance and allergies. The owners of Foddies Cafe’ Chrissy and Luke are also working hard at providing tasty low FODMAP options to the rest of Australia and who knows…eventually the rest of the world.

Starting off with an online store, the popularity of their low FODMAP food products prompted Chrissy and Luke to start up a café where the public can physically go to enjoy intolerance-friendly dishes. Taking their commitment seriously, gluten cross-contamination is minimised by keeping dedicated food prep areas, appliances and utensils. Though their emphasis is on low FODMAP and gluten-free diets, they also cater to other dietary needs. They coined the name Foddie to help create a positive spin on digestive problems that are so often discussed in a negative light.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • When did the couple discover their particular food issues?
  • How did Chrissy develop a passion for cooking?
  • Are women more prone to IBS than men?
  • How did the low FODMAP diet help their IBS symptoms?
  • What is their biggest challenge on following the low FODMAP diet?
  • How did Chrissy’s background help her food intolerance and malabsorption?
  • How did the Foddies Café start?
  • What is a Foddie?
  • What can we expect to find at Foddies Café?
  • What are their guidelines in preparing recipes?
  • What are their biggest challenges in running a restaurant?
  • What is their pre-packaged meal all about?
  • What is the purpose of their crowdfunding campaign?

LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THE LOW FODMAP DIET & IBS PODCAST EPISODE 11 HERE

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Can’t listen to this episode right now? Read the transcript below!

LARAH: Hi and welcome to a new episode of the Low FODMAP Diet and IBS Podcast.  My guests for today are Chrissy Glentis and Luke Lucas. Luke is a long time sufferer of Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Chrissy suffers from fructose malabsorption and lactose intolerance.  Because of their personal food intolerances and malabsorption, Luke and Chrissy understand very well what it means for other people suffering from similar conditions to be able to eat at a restaurant without worrying about each ingredient on the menu, especially the hidden ingredients, and be able to choose from a good range of safe and delicious food for their condition. For this reason, they have opened a wonderful low FODMAP and gluten free restaurant in Melbourne called Foddies Café. In addition to providing tasty, low FODMAP and gluten free recipes in their restaurant, Chrissy and Luke have also developed a range of food that can be purchased online like sauces, dips, cookies, protein balls and other treats. And for those living in and around Melbourne, Luke and Chrissy make FODMAP Friendly gluten free ready-made meals which people can enjoy in the comfort of their homes.

LARAH: Hi Chrissy, hi Luke.  It’s amazing how much you’re offering in the low FODMAP and gluten free space to people in Melbourne.  I’m so jealous.

LUKE: Thanks, Larah. Yeah, hey look, we know how frustrating it is, so we thought we’d go out and do something about it.

LARAH: That’s awesome, so welcome to the podcast.  Would you like to tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself and explain when you realised you had issues with certain food and what happened next?  We can start with Chrissy first and then Luke.

CHRISSY: Yes, sure. So, I was diagnosed with fructose malabsorption and lactose intolerance probably seven to eight years ago now; so quite a long time ago for myself.  It started when I was just in uni. I just wasn’t feeling right. I was always feeling lethargic and tired and just wasn’t functioning like I used to. I got some prompting from my sister, who was a dietitian at the time. I went and got some tests done and, yeah, confirmed fructose and lactose. So, from then that’s when my journey started and from there, I just started making food for myself — making, as we said in my family, Chrissy’s friendly food, and just altering recipes…and that’s where my passion for food really started.

LARAH: That’s excellent. Thank you, Chrissy.

CHRISSY: No worries.

LUKE: Yeah, for me, I’ve always had issues and I kind of assumed it was normal because, I guess, if you don’t know anything different, you don’t know anything different. So I always assumed that the way my bowels worked… was how it was meant to be. But it was not until I went to the doctor a few years ago that I kind of stumbled upon it, and that’s when I was diagnosed with IBS…which kind of, started making sense. I probably didn’t do as much following that diagnosis as I should have done. It wasn’t really until I met Chrissy, and Chrissy explained the knowledge that she had learned. Then it started making a bit more sense to me, so I figured it out through trial and error what didn’t work. It wasn’t perfect but, as I said, it wasn’t till I meet Chrissy that she was able to add her knowledge and then I kind of figured out on how to make my feeling better, even better. So that’s where I came from.

LARAH: Yes, thank you, Luke. Okay, so when you were diagnosed, did you then start a low FODMAP diet or a different type of elimination diet at all? What was the advice that the dietitian gave you?

CHRISSY: Yes, I was on the elimination diet which was quite tough at the start and I’m sure everybody that’s been on the diet knows what it feels like when you can’t eat anything.  So I did the six to eight weeks’ elimination diet and then started to try and slowly reintroduce, but it’s definitely taken a while to get to where I am today.  You have to stick with it and it’s hard and it sucks, but the long term benefits really do make it all better.

LARAH: Yes, I agree. What about for you…?

LUKE: As I said, for me, it was really just I’d kind of learned to live with it, so it wasn’t as much of an adjustment for me. Really, it wasn’t until I met Chrissy, that I put more structure behind it. It was really just sort of a gut feeling kind of thing and I just followed what didn’t make me feel bad.

LARAH: Yes, that excellent, Luke, because I’m not sure if you knew, but it seems like more women than men have been diagnosed with IBS, but then talking to a dietitian we almost came to the conclusion that one of the reasons it might be, is because men don’t tend to talk about their problems or their symptoms or their health issues as much as women do and they don’t tend to seek for help as much as women do.  So, yes there you go.

LUKE: You know, I think that’s about right. We’ve experienced that at the café and the shop as well, even if men have sought help, they still don’t follow it, as well as females do. It’s been a very clearly defined rule almost, that women seek it out a lot more, but when diagnosed they also follow the diet a lot better. For guys, they’re much less likely to do anything about it and even if they do know, they are still very unlikely to follow it anyway.

LARAH: Yeah, I know. Since starting the elimination diet and then following mainly a low FODMAP diet, have you felt that your IBS symptoms have improved?

CHRISSY:  Yeah, definitely. For me now, I’m tolerating a lot more foods that seven or eight years ago I couldn’t even look at, let alone ingest. So, yeah, definitely. I can have some bread every now and then and little bits and pieces here and there and it’s definitely made my tolerance a lot better.  It’s just knowing my threshold. If I have a bit one day, then I have to be really good the next two to three days, but, yeah, definitely, definitely a big improvement.

LUKE:  Yes, it does make a difference. It’s hard not to. I mean the physiological effects of what it does to your body means that when you don’t ingest it, it’s very hard not to feel better, and for me, it’s about getting out of bed a bit more easily. And then in the morning, I’m more likely to jump out of bed as opposed to force myself out of bed because I ate the wrong thing the night before. I’m bloating. For me, I’m a pretty bad sufferer from bloating which gets quite uncomfortable and I’m not having to put up with that or walking around feeling terrible and sitting down and unbuckling a couple of buckles on your belt. You know that kind of thing, is very nice to have.

LARAH:  Yeah, thank you. What I found that after I’m having done elimination diet, I can have a bit of high FODMAP food as long as I don’t go over my threshold.  So do you find that the same for you?  You can have bits but not too much?

LUKE:  Yeah, and that’s the thing. That’s what needs to be remembered. People get a bit afraid when it comes to eating this way, but it’s low FODMAP, not no FODMAP. You can have something. It’s not like celiac disease where you can’t have any gluten; it’s not like that at all. It is low FODMAP.  Now we’re certainly very careful. In the shop we’re very careful with how we go, but generally speaking, as an individual, it’s important to remember that it’s low FODMAP not no FODMAP.

CHRISSY:  It’s all about portion control really.

LARAH: Yeah, that’s good. So what did you find was the biggest struggle with following mainly a low FODMAP diet, and was there any food that you used to love and can no longer eat? Or have you been able to reintroduce the food that you love?

LUKE:  Chrissy’s a very good cook.  So the home cooking for us isn’t as tough because she spent the past eight years perfecting her craft. I would say that the biggest issue is absolutely going out to eat and going out to the supermarket to buy ingredients and going out to restaurants and cafés.  Obviously, we run a café, so for us we can eat out every now and then. But for us, we spend our entire working life at the Café cooking and doing that kind of thing. We often don’t want to do even more of it because we’ve just spent our entire day doing it and we forget often how hard it is, because we do go out to have some lunch, or go out for dinner, or whatever. Because we’re used to cooking at the café and the restaurant, we’re not used to how difficult it is when we go out to eat somewhere. All of a sudden we have to start thinking, “Hang on a minute… What can you eat and what can I eat and where are we going to find somewhere?” And it’s almost a good reminder for us, because it does remind us of what it is out there because we almost live in a bubble now where everything can be eaten, but that’s not the case at all.  So I would say that’s probably the biggest struggle, when it comes to eating low FODMAP.

CHRISSY: Yeah, definitely. I completely agree. I forget and look at the menu and think, “Oh, that’s right. That’s why we started this place! You can’t eat anything.”

LARAH: That’s all are very true, and if I were you, I would just save a portion of anything I cooked and just be able to eat my own food. You have such a fantastic place; I wouldn’t even worry about going anywhere else.

CHRISSY: Yes.

LUKE:  We usually do, but, you know, sometimes you can’t be bothered with that. It’s just easy to go get something.

LARAH:  Yeah, and also if you want to socialise…

LUKE & CHRISSY: That too.

LUKE: We don’t have much time for it, but if we do get some time, we like to take advantage of it.

LARAH: Yeah, absolutely. I understand that Chrissy is also a registered and qualified health care professional. Would you be able to talk about that, Chrissy, a little bit and how your knowledge has helped you with your food intolerance and malabsorption?

CHRISSY: Yes, sure. So I was a nurse for five years so I worked in all kinds of various nursing — emergency nursing theatre and all of that, so I’ve had quite a bit of exposure to a lot of the different areas in health care. For me, being a nurse has helped my understanding of the complexities of the fructose malabsorption and the low FODMAP diet. I think having the science background, when I read information, I understand it a lot. I can comprehend it just because I’ve got that science degree behind me.  When I was in nursing, it would help when we’d get patients that came through that were low FODMAP and nobody knew what they could or couldn’t eat and try to order food for the patients. They’d always come running to me and I’d always end up educating the patient as well on the low FODMAP diet. So it sorts of furthered my passion thinking that I have to do something and follow what I’m passionate about.  So, yeah, that’s really a little brief background about me.

LARAH: So that’s excellent that you were able to recognise a lot of the issues due to those malabsorption and intolerance because of your background.

CHRISSY: Yeah, definitely.

LARAH: Unfortunately, a lot of people that suffer from IBS don’t have that knowledge and even struggle to understand the ingredients labels on packaged foods, on sauces… so that makes it harder to recognise what’s good for us and what isn’t.

CHRISSY: Yes, really difficult. It’s really complex learning about you the fructose to glucose ratios and everything in it. It can be very, very difficult on how to get your head around it all.

LARAH: Yeah, that’s true.  Now let’s talk about your wonderful restaurant called Foddies Café, which I visited in April and I was just amazed at how much choice there is on the menu. Let’s hear the story behind the decision to open this restaurant together.

LUKE: It started when we were dating. It was really difficult that when you date, you typically have to eat somewhere, even if that’s after an activity or whatever it was, and for us, it was really, really difficult to find somewhere where we could go and eat safely and enjoy each other’s company. When you’re just getting to know someone, you don’t really want to go into any great detail about any malabsorption or intolerance that you may have. It’s not really pillow talk. It became quite open as we got to know each other a little bit better, obviously, and as we kept going, it became obvious that there was a frustration there. It was a dream of Chrissy for a while to open a café to provide food for people like us, but she hadn’t really had much business experience before, whereas I had had some business experience before, but I didn’t know the first thing about food. So theoretically, together we made a good team. I could run the business and Chrissy could make the food and that’s exactly what happened. So it wasn’t long after that that we established our online store and started shipping orders Australia-wide. Then, about six months after that, we started the café to do a menu that was entirely low FODMAP, entirely gluten free and with heaps of lactose free and dairy free options.

LARAH: What a wonderful partnership you guys have. Let’s talk about the food now that you serve at the restaurant. What type of food can people expect to find at Foddies Café?

CHRISSY: So what we try to do at Foddies is not only give food that’s low FODMAP and gluten free, but give food that isn’t ordinarily low FODMAP or gluten free. More often than not when you go out to eat the gluten free and low FODMAP, your options are a salad or something that’s already gluten free or low FODMAP by default.  What we try to do is to make food that you would never get anywhere else. So, for example, chicken parmigiana, to get gluten free crumbed schnitzel with the sauce that’s got no onion or garlic in it and, as well, you can have lactose free and dairy free cheese options. You can’t get that anywhere, to our knowledge, in the world to have all of those specifications, dietary requirements.  So we really try to focus on food that is a challenge to eat and to get anywhere else and be made specifically to the diet.

LARAH: Yes, that is amazing and it’s so true. When I saw your menu I thought, “I can have anything on this menu.” Everything that you have will be suitable for my gut, but also very tasty. And it’s true because most of the time when I go out, I limit myself to a salad or grilled chicken or grilled fish, or some rice dish that is not covered in some type of sauce or whatever. Yeah, but there isn’t really that much choice and coming to you guys, it was just like being in Aladdin’s Cave.

CHRISSY:  Yes, you can eat what you feel like, not just what you want.

LARAH: Yeah, so good.

CHRISSY: Yeah.

LARAH: So what guidelines do you use when preparing your recipes to make sure they’re low FODMAP?

CHRISSY: We follow the Monash University research quite closely and, as well, the FODMAP Friendly.  So we use all the information, the most relevant up to date information. We’re still very young. We’re just a year old, but in that time when we started the café we had rice milk in a lot of our dishes because it was gluten free, low FODMAP and nut free. Then research came out saying that that’s no longer low FODMAP, so we had to change it all and now a new research has come out saying that it is low FODMAP…

LARAH: Yes.

CHRISSY: … you can use that again now.  So, we do really try and stay on top of it.  So whatever the researched says, we will adjust our menu accordingly so that we are on top of it, as best as we can because it’s very important.

LARAH: Yes.

LUKE: That was actually disastrous back when we first found out that it wasn’t low FODMAP, because we found that three days before our opening. We had a launch week-end and it was quite literally three days before we were about to open. We found out that the rice milk was not low FODMAP and it was in a lot of our food, a lot of our gluten free, dairy free — especially dairy free versions.  We used rice milk in a huge number of menu items and I had to find a replacement so we ended up going with almond milk. Obviously it’s not nut free, but we really didn’t have a choice and we didn’t really want to be in that position three days before we had our big grand opening. So that was stressful, but we got through.

LARAH: That is just incredible and I remember that going on with the rice milk. Everybody was on alert, “I cannot believe it, but I can tolerate it quite well and what should I do?” And then all of the sudden it became low FODMAP again and I was like, “Yes, hurray!” But you know what’s funny is that on the FODMAP Friendly app, they had it as low FODMAP all along.

LUKE: Yeah, and that’s the thing. There are differences and that can be quite frustrating, especially for the consumer. They all want to follow and so it’s “How do I test it? Do I try and risk it?” For us, our approach is we tend to go on the conservative side. Generally, they tend to agree. If, for whatever reason there is a disagreement, we tend to go with the conservative side because we are not prepared to take that risk on behalf of our consumer. They can do as they please.  It’s obviously their choice, but from our perspective, we don’t want to take that risk for even a small percentage of the population that might actually react fully to it, so we tend to go the conservative option just to play it safe.

LARAH:  Yes, for sure. That’s a good approach.

LUKE: Yup.

LARAH: On your website you often talk about Foddies. Your café is called Foddies Café, so can you explain to the listeners what a Foddie is?

LUKE: Yes. It started at the start. Chrissy actually came up with the name and I spoke to a few people and someone suggested that they liked the name, because you could use the term “Foddie” to describe someone on the low FODMAP diet. When we start thinking about it and talking about it, we decided it was actually not a bad idea because at the moment, when we discussed this, Chrissy would say, “I’ve got fructose malabsorption, lactose intolerance,” or I’d say, “I’ve got Irritable Bowel Syndrome.” Outside of being very long, the words are physically quite long…it’s also very negative and it does sound very negative. It’s got a negative connotation; it’s got a negative spin.  So we thought, why don’t we try and turn it into something that’s easy to say and something that’s a bit more positive as well? So contracting FODMAP, we came up with Foddie and we thought we’re going to start call ourselves Foddies because it’s just easier and it sounds a bit more positive and maybe we can try to create a bit of a community. And that’s it. That’s exactly what the name means now. That’s exactly what we wanted it to mean.  We’re finding that a lot of people are adopting the name themselves to describe themselves which is kind of cool because we wanted to do that. We want to build a sense of community and we want to put a bit of a positive spin, on what has previously been quite a negative perception.

LARAH:  Yes and I can imagine in a few years that the low FODMAP diet and FODMAP is just going to be normal common term like gluten free is now, and people will start to use Foddies just to make it easier. I know in Australia we are all about abbreviating words.

LUKE & CHRISSY: It’s very Australian.

LARAH: So what do you find now are the biggest challenges with running a restaurant that has to cater for so many different food intolerances and even allergies like the gluten free?

LUKE: Yeah, look, there are few. The first is costs. It is more expensive to run, especially the gluten free side of things. We need to duplicate all of our appliances, so every toaster that you would ordinarily see in a café, we’ve got two. Every processor, we’ve got two; every blender we’ve got two, all our appliances, all our utensils. So it’s more expensive to establish and it tends also to be more expensive to run from an ingredients perspective because we do need ingredients that are gluten free and they have to be 100% gluten free because we can’t, obviously, use anything that contains gluten in our food items, certainly in term of sauces and that kind of thing, and breads are a bit separate and we have a way to manage that risk.

The cost is another big ones.  Staff can be a challenge as well – we found people who have food allergies or intolerances themselves, so we made a deliberate strategy, I suppose, to employ staff that understood that and lived that themselves. In the kitchen it’s a bit more of a challenge because usually, in the kitchen, people don’t care that much. That’s been our experience.  When we’ve brought people in, we’ve had to really educate them and train them on why it’s so important, and to be perfectly frank, their knowledge isn’t really that great. We really found that that’s probably why people get so frustrated when they go out to eat because when we bring people on board, we see what the approach is like elsewhere, and we’re shocked. That’s why there’s such a problem because no one else really seems to care, and that’s quite frustrating. But for us, it’s a training and a learning process, and when they’re educated, they understand. It’s just that we have to go through that process.

I think the final thing is really just catering to everyone because different people react differently, especially on the low FODMAP diet. It is different things, so you often have to have those conversations, as you mentioned earlier. “Why are you using this? You cannot be using this because it’s not low FODMAP,” and, “I don’t react well to this.”  That’s more of a challenge, but look, it’s an education thing again. It’s an understanding, “Yes, I get that. You may react fully to that, but it does consider a low FODMAP. We’re happy to direct you here, here and here and will give you a substitution where we can, but otherwise….it is an education piece more than anything else I think.

LARAH: Yes, because some people don’t realise that in addition to FODMAPs, there might be actually other food that they might be intolerant to as well, and that could be for any sort of reason, you know.

LUKE: Yeah, that’s right. There’s a lot of confusion and really, a lot of people that really don’t know whether they’re lactose or dairy intolerant, for example.  So there is a lot of confusion. We’ve got to be careful because we don’t want to be giving people advice because it’s not our job, but certainly we don’t want to be giving them the wrong advice. It’s very hard not to try and help when people come in and clearly demonstrated the need for help.  So there does need to be a lot more education out there in general, because people are really, really confused about this.

LARAH:  Yeah, I can see with the lactose and the dairy — people not understanding that if they’re lactose free or they’re thinking that all dairy is not good for them and where they get that information. Have they done any tests before or have they done an elimination diet and tried to introduce dairy back, and were they low lactose and they reacted?  Yeah, who knows? Sometimes people are fixated that certain things are not good for them, but it might not even be true.

&CHRISSY: Yeah.

LARAH: Most of my podcast listeners suffer from some sort of food intolerance, mainly due to IBS and other digestive issues. What would you recommend to people who are not sure what they should eat and obviously don’t have a Foddies Café near them?

CHRISSY: Yes, so we always say that it’s best to see a dietitian; someone who specialises in the low FODMAP and IBS category, which can be difficult to find sometimes. But we always say that the best thing to do is to go and see a professional. There’s lot of things on the Internet, a lot of people that want to help other people, which is great. There’s a bit of a community that has been established, but the bottom line is that the best information, and the most up to date information you can get, is through a health care professional. So we really advocate going to see a dietitian. If you are in Melbourne, for example, there is the Sue Shepherd Works dietitians or FODMAP friendly. I think they’ve got a lot of online help as well, just to really get the knowledge and the information, so that you really understand what the journey you’re about to embark in is all about.

LUKE: Yes. It’s having them with you on the journey because they’re the ones that are going to help when it’s feeling too hard and all that kind of thing and answering some of the questions that you may have along the way.  And as far as your experience going out, it sucks, but there’s not much you can do. You’ve just got to kind of get through the initial stage, and it can be quite difficult. Typically, you might feel a bit overwhelmed and feel like, “I can’t do this and it’s all too hard, and how am I going to do this?” Again, that’s not uncommon to have that feeling, but it is important that you do push through that, and that’s where health care professional dietitian will be able to help you with that. But once you do get through it, you’ll start seeing the benefits. You’ll start feeling a lot better and you’ll actually be able to start eating a lot more. It will be difficult, but we would absolutely recommend that you follow the instructions as best as you can and you push through that really tough period at the start.  You’ll see results actually, after.

LARAH:  Yes. Thank you for those suggestions to both of you. I completely agree that it is a very difficult diet to attempt on your own, even with all the help that we can get out there on the internet. It should always be followed by someone that has the qualifications, the knowledge and the experience. Then, you can always get help on what kind of choices you can make when you go and eat out because you know what you can tolerate, even if it’s in small doses. You’re not going to worry too much, or as much, about going out because you know you can tolerate a minimal amount of certain things.

CHRISSY: And especially because it is so individual. What works for one person might not work for another person, and that’s why getting the proper advice and help from someone who’s a professional can help, because one person might say, “I can eat that and I should be able to eat this…” but if you can’t, you end up thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Maybe something else is wrong with me.  Why I can’t have that?” So again, it’s just really important to see someone who can help and guide you in the right direction for your personal allergies and intolerances.

LARAH: Yes, Chrissy, well said, thank you. As part of the Foddies brand, you’re also offering take away pre-packaged meals and you have an online store, so can you just talk a little bit more about that, please?Melbourne Foddies Cafe' Protein Balls

LUKE: Regarding our online store, we ship Australia-wide for our line of protein balls, baked goods and sauces. We ship all three of those products Australia-wide. We also do, as you said, our pre-packaged meals. We do sell them online, but we only deliver them within a circle around our café in Melbourne.  We are looking to grow that circle, the meals are also available to be picked up in the store, but we do only ship them within a small circle around where we are.

The meals we’ve got — we’ve just recently launched them and we did a product called FodBox which we put together at home. The feedback was that people wanted ready-made meals — something that is more easy and convenient, and so we did that. Now we offer full, ready-made meals. They don’t have any preservatives, They’re low in sugar and they’re low in salt and we freeze them to lock the nutrients in once we’ve cooked them. That way, we also don’t have to use preservatives and salts that typically you’ll see in this kind of meals.  We’ve got five at the moment. We’ve got chicken parmigiana; we’ve got a lasagne; we’ve got a butter chicken, a Thai green curry and we’ve got a vegetable ragout. And, yeah, they’re available now. They’re available in the shop to pick up and they’re also available in that delivery circle. We’ve just chatted with someone and we’ve got a distributor in northern Sydney, in the northern beaches of Sydney…

CHRISSY: It’s very exciting.

LUKE: …which is very exciting. So our meals will be available in the next couple of weeks in the northern beaches of Sydney, which is pretty cool.

LARAH: Oh, so lucky the people from Melbourne and now people from Sydney. So what about people in the Gold Coast here?

LUKE: Yes, look, and we want to. That’s absolutely something we want to do. So we want Sydney to be the start of what we hope will be a national expansion. We also want to have a Foddies Café in every city. We do because we know that people want to go somewhere to eat, not just in Melbourne, but all around the country.  We want our meals to be available in every city because again everyone wants to be able to eat at home, not just in Melbourne. We want our products to be available in supermarkets so that they’re accessible for you wherever you’re going. And on that, we’ve actually just started a crowdfunding campaign on Pozible. We’re asking for pledges to help make our vision become a reality because the truth is, for us to do what we want to do and to keep expanding, we do need the support of our customers because it takes money to do everything and it’s only really the two of us at the moment. With the limited resources that we have, we need all the support and all the help we can get which is why we just literally today started a crowdfunding campaign.

LARAH: That’s so exciting and I can’t wait to contribute to that pledge.

CHRISSY: Thank you.

LARAH:  And please send me the link so that I can post it on the show notes and for everyone that is listening this, please help as much as you can and very soon you might be able to have low FODMAP food in your supermarket, in your convenience stores or in a café near you.  So that’s a very good cause to donate to.

CHRISSY: Thank you, thank you. Yes, if you want us to get to you, then help us get the message across. We want to come but we need everyone’s help in the community. We want to work together so we can get to you and get you as quickly as we can.  So we’re very excited and, yes, thank you, thank you. And hopefully everyone gets behind and helps us out.

LARAH:  Yeah, and I have no doubt that will work for you guys. I know you’ve been very successful already with your restaurant in Melbourne and I can just see this expanding. It’s really going to make things so much easier for everyone on a low FODMAP diet.  It is just going to be amazing. I can’t wait to see franchises of your café all over Australia and even all over the world. That will be absolutely fantastic.

LUKE: Neither can we. We’re excited about it, but ultimately we’re doing it to help ourselves and to help our consumers, because we understand what it’s like. Our mission is to unite and bring people together through the freedom of food choices and we’re really, really passionate about it, because we know how difficult it is and we’re sick of it.  So we’re absolutely excited about the potential of it and we really, really hope that we’ll be able to do it and deliver on our vision.

LARAH: Yes, and anyone in Melbourne, I would recommend it. If you haven’t yet visited Foddies Café, you must go. The food is delicious and as you can hear, Chrissy and Luke are really wonderful hosts. So please go.

CHRISSY: Thanks, Larah.

LUKE: Yup.

LARAH: All right. Well thank you so much for all the content and all the information you shared with us today. It’s absolutely fantastic, the work you do, I know it’s very hard that you have a new business and just started one year ago and you’re thinking about how you can help as many people as possible to be able to enjoy a night out, to be able to enjoy good food and you’re doing great work. I thank you so much for all you do and, of course, for being on the podcast.

LUKE: Thanks Larah.

CHRISSY: Thank you so much for having us Larah. Thank you.

LARAH: Another great episode today with Chrissy and Luke from Foddies Café.  Wouldn’t you just love to have a restaurant like this near the place you live? I certainly would, but in the meantime, I would even be happy if I could purchase their safe pre-packaged low FODMAP food from a distributor near where I live. To help them to make this happen, I will surely support their crowd funding project at pozible.com that is P, O, Z, I, B, L, E dot com.  And to all the listeners, please donate and share their message as much as you can. The link to their pozible.com project and all the other links we talked about during this episode are on the show notes and on my website www.lowfodmapdiets.com/11. Thank you so so much for tuning in and I hope you will come back next week for a brand new episode of the Low FODMAP Diet and IBS Podcast. All the best to you and take good care. Good bye!

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

About Larah

I have been suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome for many years, but it took a longtime to get a diagnosis, since then I have been following a low FODMAP diet, which has changed my life for the better. This is my story and experience with IBS and the low FODMAP diet.

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