The Bend Like Bamboo Resilience Show: Tobie Puttock, celebrity chef, and founder of Made by Tobie, Ep 39.
Welcome to The Bend Like Bamboo Resilience Show. Each week, I interview amazing people, who share their inspiring stories of resilience. Enjoy our dive deep into educational and amazing insights as I explore the stories of my special guests, learning how they have overcome adversity in their lives.
In each session, together we can learn actionable tools that can help us elevate our mindset, seeing our setbacks as an opportunity to grow to the next stage of our lives. No matter what we are going through, we can overcome it, and discover what we are made of.
To Bend Like Bamboo is to be flexible in our mindset, and when we can transform our ‘story’ we can also change our minds about what can be possible in our minds, bodies, and lives.
Introducing Tobie Puttock.
Tobie Puttock began his cooking career at Melbourne’s Cafe e Cucina, before traveling to picturesque Lake Como, Italy to work at the beautiful Hotel Florence. After years of perfecting his culinary skills, Tobie travelled to the UK to work at the famous River Café, cooking alongside a young Jamie Oliver, who shared his passion for simply cooked Italian food and became a close friend.
Tobie returned to Melbourne, Australia in 2000 after further stints in Italy and Switzerland, to set up restaurant ‘Termini’.
In 2002 his old mate Jamie presented him with a new challenge – to return to the UK to become Head Chef of the first Fifteen Restaurant, a social enterprise to teach under-privileged youths to become chefs in a gourmet environment.
Tobie seized the opportunity and was instrumental in helping Fifteen, London achieves its status as ‘Tatler's - Restaurant of the Year' in 2003.
In 2005, Tobie returned home to Melbourne to establish Australia’s own Fifteen Restaurant and Charitable Foundation. Opening in September 2006, Tobie continued Jamie and the Fifteen Foundation’s work - giving 15-20 under privileged Australian youths each year the opportunity, training, and support to become qualified chefs.
Tobie’s honest, light-hearted approach and passion for topics such as organics, sustainability, seasonality, and ethical eating, has seen him in high demand as a guest on some of Australia’s favourite television programs, The Circle, Good Morning Australia and Ready Steady Cook as well as writing for Australian titles such as Good Taste Magazine, Delicious and Sunday Life.
Tobie also appears regularly at major food events around Australia including the Good Food and Wine Show, Organic Expo, Great Barrier Feast and The Gluten Free Expo.
Since returning to Melbourne, Tobie has featured in the Channel 10 hit series, Jamie’s Kitchen Australia (2006) and Lifestyle’s FOOD TV series, Tobie and Matt - Europe and Asia (2008), several years as a Guest Judge with Channel 7’s ratings hit My Kitchen Rules, co-hosting ‘Wonderful Indonesia Flavours’ Season One and Two for the Asian Food Chanel (2015). and most recently The Healthy Cooks in 2020 on Channel 9.
Tobie has written and released five best selling cookbooks, Daily Italian (2006), Italian Local (2008), Cook like an Italian (2010) The Chef Gets Healthy (2015) and Super Natural (2018) which sees Tobie take a new direction toward plant based eating with a balanced lifestyle.
He has also created a series of short format video cook eBooks that are available via iTunes in 25 countries.
In 2013 after over 20 years in restaurants Tobie turned his focus to several new and exciting projects including a YouTube channel. He also worked closely with Jamie and Woolworths on an online video series ‘Jamie’s Table’.
Tobie has consulted for many companies and groups such as Jamie’s Italian Australia, Jamie’s Ministry of Food as a consulting creative director, Prahran Market in Melbourne and has been a proud ambassador to Jamie’s Ministry of Food Australia and Prahran Market. As well as these ongoing roles Tobie has featured in major campaigns for Heinz, Woolworths, Fisher & Paykel, National Australia Bank, Oliana foods and many more.
Tobie’s most recent focus is his own brand of frozen ready meals. “Made by Tobie” are single serve ready meals that started as something he made for friends during the continuous lockdowns in his hometown of Melbourne.
With years of experience developing recipes Tobie has launched a direct to consumer model through the Made by Tobie website. Meals are sold in packs of ready meals catering for plant based, pescatarian and meat eaters with a focus on producing meals that aren’t harmful to us or the environment. The meals are sold frozen to eliminate food waste and are sold in garden compostable packaging.
Learn more about Tobie’s amazing story, and his business in the podcast and live video on YouTube below.
Tobie Puttcok
Tobie believes that resilience is not just our ability to keep going, but also our ability to recover from a difficult time, how we deal with our emotions, and how we process this is the important part.
I loved interviewing Tobie, he shares a passion for mine to make sustainable, ethical, and nutrient-dense foods more accessible to eat. His resume is extraordinary and he has accomplished so much as a chef and entrepreneur.
How does Tobie destress and reset? “I do this with meditation and yoga because it helps me to step away from things, to create a clear mindset so that I can be more solution focused. It is with this mindset, that I can create more of a structure to delegate and problem solve,” says Tobie
“When we had to close the Fifteen restaurant, it was a very difficult time for me,” says Tobie. There was a conflict he had to manage with opposing views with his business partners, and he was the face of the restaurant. He was feeling really hurt, and angry, and many emotions at this time. He was also on TV trying to keep a happy face while going through a really hard time. “It felt like being dragged behind a car,” he said.
Then someone said the most profound thing to me that was life-changing. I was in a dark place, I spent a lot of time at home. “This is business it happens all the time.” this shifted my mindset helping me to realise I was creating a problem by putting so much on myself.
I finally had 80 hours a week of my life back, I started running, I practice yoga and meditation, and got my fitness and vitality back. Mentally this was a huge help. I also found a therapist that helped me to manage my emotions,s I am a huge fan of therapy it is not a modality to go to if there is something wrong, it helped me to understand myself and to be a better person.
“Allowing myself to stop and concentrate on my health was key in helping me to deal with this difficult time,” says Tobie
”Working in kitchens that had a lot of structure, and having more time at home led me to my turning point when my wife and I found out we were pregnant. This was life-changing for me, I found a new purpose that took my focus onto another being and away from myself.”
“After the lockdowns, we had in Melbourne, some of my contracts dropped and I had to figure out how to transform my business so that it wasn’t always me as the business,” says Tobie
That is how Made by Tobie was born, a good friend of Tobie’s helped him see that his experience in Youtube editing, website development, Tv, and food all married together putting him in a strong position to back himself to start a ready-made meal business. The first year he used it as a proof of concept, and Tobie taught himself to do every component of the new business.
Made by Tobie is a food business that focuses on seasonal produce, using minimal waste with no preservatives. He achieves this by creating packs of food meals that are vegetarian, pescetarian, and meat. In Australia, about 40% of food produced is not consumed and ends up in a landfill. This makes Tobie very unhappy. His solution is to produce delicious meals served to you snap-frozen allowing him to eliminate waste and deliver you the ultimate convenience food.
Tobie has a passion for creating solutions that will reduce the impact our food production has on the environment while creating meals that are delicious and not harmful to us. The packaging is called Begasse (yep, weird name) and it's made of pulped sugar cane. This packaging is fridge, freezer, oven, and microwave friendly and when you are done the packaging can be rinsed and recycled or put in the compost.
Tobie’s tips:
Discover your ability to believe that you can tackle anything.
Look after yourself, your mind, body, and health.
Be kind, spread kindness.
Learn more about Tobie’s amazing story, and his business in the podcast and live video on YouTube below.
You can also listen to the interview on the Bend Like Bamboo Resilience podcast
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