April 26, 2024 0 comment

Empowering food professionals for global food system transformation with Kaan Demiryürek, R&D Director for Sustainable Packaging at PepsiCo | FoodGrads Podcast Ep 88

On today’s episode we are talking about the Kaan’s career journey, his book “Food for Thought” and philosophy.

About Kaan Demiryürek

Kaan Demiryürek is the Research and Development Director for Sustainable Packaging at PepsiCo. Pepsico products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo foods portfolio include products such as Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Quaker and SodaStream.

Kaan has over two decades of career experience working at PepsiCo in food science, engineering and R&D spanning multiple geographies. Kaan holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Food Engineering from the Middle East Technical University and His first role at Pepsico was as an R&D intern in Turkey. Since then he has worked in various business units in Europe (Turkey, Balkans, and East Europe) and North America across different foods categories. Before his current role in sustainable packaging Kaan led the R&D team for Potato Chips for North America.

Things mentioned in this episode:

This week’s episode is sponsored by:

CareersNow! is Food and Beverage Ontario’s multi-year workforce development initiative that is connecting students and job seekers with employers in Ontario’s food and beverage processing industry for exciting career opportunities. Check out CareersNow.ca for more information on exciting jobs, career information, industry mentors and training opportunities for professional development.

Other things we mentioned in this episode:

Timestamps

- - [0:00] Introduction
  - [1:52] Kaan introduces himself and career history
  - [5:36] Difference between food engineering and science
  - [7:00] Why Kaan transitioned to sustainable packaging
  - [12:52] Discussion about “Food for Thought” Book
  - [20:00] Philosophy and R&D
  - [25:13] Sponsor: CareersNow!
  - [30:17] Importance of curiosity
  - [34:55] Prioritization in work
  - [42:00] Advice for inspiring food professionals
  - [45:39] Outro

Kaan Demiryürek Quotes

I could help influence humanity’s future through food, science and engineering which is as important as medical sciences in my opinion because you can save millions of lives. – Kaan Demiryürek

That’s the only thing I’m trying to improve with this book and with all those posts on LinkedIn because I don’t know how to solve all these problems. I am not that good. I’m not that knowledgeable but but I know who I should look to and I know that group does not feel empowered and that bothers me. –Kaan Demiryürek

I really believe that it all starts with curiosity for R&D… I put curiosity at the top of everything because I think it provides the propelling force for the internal motivation to change things. R&D is all about change. –Kaan Demiryürek

I always try to think about what matters most and what is the biggest impact I can make. Because intellectually asking or going after some questions is really good for philosophical terms –Kaan Demiryürek

So I think philosophy brings you a a different level of wisdom. It’s because philosophy is less about knowledge, but it’s more about how to use the knowledge you have. Science is more about knowledge. Right? We as scientists and engineers, we go after the unknown and we try to bring more clarity through scientific research and theories until the next truth comes. –Kaan Demiryürek