Combining food ideas and tips for an attainable eco-friendly lifestyle, Marley’s Menu is a web-based collection of recipes that promote sustainable living. It’s the brainchild of our guest this week, Marley Goldin, who labels herself as a mom, foodie, creator, and qualified environmental scientist. Marley shares her personal story about career switching, discusses food waste and sustainability, and offers insights about the business side of influencer marketing.

Episode Transcript

Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS:

Marley Goldin: Something that a lot of people don’t know about food blogging as a business is that a lot of the recipes we create are based on intensive research about what keywords are good opportunities to either rank for on Google or maybe go viral on a social media platform to really drive traffic. 

Adrian Tennant: You are listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on the business of advertising, produced weekly by Bigeye: a strategy-led, full-service creative agency, growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. Do consumers really care about buying environmentally and ethically sustainable products? Well, according to a joint study by McKinsey and Company and NielsenIQ, it turns out the answer is yes. The study finds that products that claim to be environmentally and socially responsible averaged 28 percent cumulative growth over the past five years compared to 20 percent for products that made no such claims. And, according to research from Incisiv and Wynshop, 73 percent of US consumers want more transparency about sustainability on in-store displays and on product packaging. Over three-quarters of grocery retailers now consider sustainability to be a C-Suite issue, with 43 percent reportedly planning to name a senior executive to head their sustainability efforts in 2023. Targeting consumers, combining better-for-you food ideas and tips for an attainable eco-friendly lifestyle, Marley’s Menu is a web-based collection of recipes that promote sustainable living in an easily digestible way. It’s the brainchild of our guest this week, Marley Goldin, who labels herself as a mom, foodie, creator, and qualified environmental scientist. In 2020, Marley made the leap from her studies in environmental health to becoming a full-time content creator. In addition to her website, Marley has established herself as an influencer, creating content for Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest, including commercial partnerships with brands. To talk about career switching, food sustainability, and the business side of being an influencer, Marley is joining us today from her home and studio in southern coastal Georgia. Marley, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS. 

Marley Goldin: Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be here. 

Adrian Tennant: You earned a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Health Science, and a Master’s in Health Services Administration. Can you tell us a bit about your journey from environmental health to being a creator of food and sustainability content? 

Marley Goldin: Well, I have a classic, “the pandemic changed the whole trajectory of my career” story. So, when the pandemic hit in 2020, I actually got furloughed from my job, and I am one of those people who really need a creative outlet. I have to keep moving. I needed something to feel productive throughout the day, and so I decided to start an Instagram account and just kind of share my food and recipes for fun. And pretty quickly I realized I was completely in love with coming up with new recipes, with styling food, with taking pictures of my food and pretty quickly there was a really positive response. And so I just kind of started researching if this was, you know, something I could do on the side maybe and make a little extra money. And I found out that it actually could be a full-time career if I really focused my energy into it. And once I kind of launched my blog and social media accounts, I knew I had to weave in sustainability somehow, just because it’s such a huge part of my life. And I have all this knowledge and background and I studied it for years, so I knew that I had to weave it in somehow. And luckily, food and sustainability are so closely related that it was really just a seamless way to integrate my two passions into one career.

Adrian Tennant: So what can folks expect to find when they visit the Marley’s Menu website? 

Marley Goldin: It’s a collection of primarily recipes. Within each recipe, I put three to five of what I call green tips. And what those are is they’re little tips about maybe how you can source an ingredient or maybe a specific brand you can use of a particular ingredient or an approach to cooking with a technique that might be more sustainability-focused. And the idea is to delicately and easily inform the reader about how to bring a sustainability mindset to your cooking. And outside of the recipes, I actually have a whole sustainability section that kind of shows how food and sustainability are related. So it’s a collection of articles about food and climate change, food waste, the food industry and microplastics. I have how to compost and why we should compost and composting particular ingredients that are maybe tougher to break down in your backyard compost. So it’s really a compilation of recipes and sustainability, on one platform.

Adrian Tennant: Well on the Marley’s Menu website, you state that and I’m going to quote, “with the environment always front of mind, I stand strong in my belief that you can live a modern lifestyle while still making sustainable food choices,” end quote. Marley, can you unpack that for us? 

Marley Goldin: Yeah. So what I really mean by modern lifestyle is kind of the convenience we’ve all really grown to, really have ingrained into our lifestyle. So food is available to us regardless of its seasonality or its regionality. Or maybe single-use plastic that is targeted to be more convenient for the consumer. And what I’ve found is that that modern lifestyle or that convenience that we’ve grown to know and love, doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with sustainability. And what that means is the idea of sustainability can sometimes be overwhelming to consumers. And I think because of that, a lot of people think, “Oh, I can’t make a difference” or “What I do doesn’t matter,” “What I do in my own household isn’t gonna really move the needle.” And I think it’s important for people to realize that yes, while we do need systemic change on a higher level, deepening our commitment on an individual scale to sustainability can actually make a change over time. It can make an impact. So what we’re doing, not only over time, can make an impact in our own individual lives, but it can also, you know, encourage other people around us to be more sustainable. And it can increase demand for more sustainable practices within corporations or within governance. So what I mean by that is: Yes, it can be overwhelming, and yes, we do need change at a higher level, but that doesn’t mean that what we’re doing doesn’t matter in our own individual lives.

Adrian Tennant: Marley, how did you arrive at your current mix of food and sustainability content?

Marley Goldin: When I created Marley’s menu, I really wanted to create a platform that maybe wasn’t as intimidating cuz there’s so many great bloggers who do, you know, full zero waste, or completely organic vegan, no meat, no cheese, all that stuff to be, really, really intensely sustainable, which I so look up to and I so appreciate. But I think there was a gap in our industry of people who are putting food out there that’s maybe a little more approachable in terms of people who either are just sustainability curious, or sustainability isn’t really even on their radar. I really wanted to cast a wide net and reach the most amount of people I can and teach in a very delicate way to kind of show that you can still eat what you want to eat and you can still have those modern lifestyle conveniences and luxuries, but you can do so in a way that is more mindful of sustainability and you can take small steps. And maybe that’s by starting with, practicing Meatless Monday. So cutting meat out one day a week and trying one of my vegetarian or vegan recipes, and maybe that’s just adding one organic produce ingredient to your cart when you’re shopping. You know, you can take these small steps and over time you can build upon that, but I just really wanted to make sure that people felt included, and they didn’t feel guilty about the choices they’re making and they understand that there are small things that they can change and still have an impact.

Adrian Tennant: In the US, responsibility for sustainable agricultural practices rests with the Department of Agriculture. Rules for the labeling of food products are set by the Food and Drug Administration, and the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines inform the kinds of environmental or green claims that can be made about products. So Marley, with information coming from multiple government agencies, how can consumers be confident that the food they’re purchasing is from sustainable sources or ethically produced?

Marley Goldin: I think what we’re touching on here is greenwashing, which is, you know, when marketers use buzzwords like “sustainably sourced” or “responsibly sourced,” “all-natural,” terms that aren’t necessarily regulated, so can be used by anyone without any evidence to back those claims up. And it’s used as a technique to sometimes over-exaggerate or even trick consumers into thinking that the practices that these brands are using are environmentally friendly when they’re sometimes not. And you know, that’s a problem because even people seeing like a green label or packaging with like a tree on it. Sometimes they just automatically assume that this is a safe choice in terms of sustainability. But what people really need to realize is that these terms are not regulated at all. So I think the easiest way for consumers to be more confident that the purchases they’re making align with their ethoses. I even do this at the store, like I’ll take my phone out and do a quick Google search of the brand. And if a brand is really sustainability-focused, oftentimes their website will have a whole page dedicated to sustainability, and the practices and the steps they’re taking, the goals they have for sustainability. If you get a brand that just says “sustainably sourced,” or “all-natural,” and then you Google them and there’s nothing more on their website at all about those practices that actually give you proof that these are real things that they’re trying to make a difference on, you can safely assume this might be a way of the brand greenwashing. So aside from doing a quick Google search and doing your own little research, you can also look for a certification. So within food that would look something like a Rainforest Alliance certification, Fair Trade. In coffee and chocolate, you can look for UTZ certification, USDA Certified Organic, Non-GMO Project. When it comes to seafood, we have Marine Stewardship and Friend of the Sea. And these are all just certifications within food. So outside of food, other brands can have other green certifications, and if you’re interested in learning more about that, you can just do a quick Google search of green certifications for business and you can see lists of different certifications that you can look for on different brands. And the process to getting certified is pretty rigorous. So if you’re seeing any of these certifications, you can feel confident that the brand is sustainability-focused.

Adrian Tennant: We’ll talk about certifications again in a moment. I mentioned in the introduction that nearly three-quarters of consumers here in the US say they want more transparency about sustainability on store displays and product packaging. 

Marley Goldin: Mm-hmm. 

Adrian Tennant: Do you think our current system is set up to support it? 

Marley Goldin: No, I really don’t. I think based on what I just discussed with greenwashing, I think it’s very apparent that as the demand for greener products increases, we continue to see more of these greenwashing practices where brands really want to capitalize on the fact that people want more sustainability, but they’re not necessarily putting in the work to back up those claims. So I think just even being aware of that is really important for the consumer Because a lot of people think they can blindly trust these claims. They see sustainability source and they’re like, “Oh, okay, they must be sustainably sourced.” But really that can just be a marketing technique that is not grounded in any real evidence of green practices.

Adrian Tennant: Here in the US, the equivalent of 130 billion meals are thrown away every year. That’s around $408 billion worth of food. Marley, this seems like a crazy waste of time, money, and resources. What can consumers do to reverse these numbers?

Marley Goldin: Yeah, so that’s where we touched on overwhelm before. We hear those numbers, and it’s scary. But for me, what I perceive as good news about food waste is that it’s estimated of all food waste, that 50% of it happens in our homes. Which means we can really have a big impact when it comes to food waste. I just wanna touch on really quick why we should care about food waste and the reasoning is pretty much twofold. One is that the actual strain that the food industry has on the environment is astronomical. So the food industry accounts for 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. It consumes a quarter of our annual freshwater supply, contributes to deforestation, and air, water, soil, and noise pollution. So for any of the food to go waste that all of that strain has been put on the environment, that’s pretty catastrophic. So there’s that. But then there’s also the fact that food waste itself is a problem. So people think that “This banana went bad, but it’s organic. It’s okay, I’ll just throw it out and it will decompose naturally.” The problem is when food is diverted to a landfill and it no longer has access to the oxygen it needs to break down naturally. Instead of decomposing and, turning into soil, it will actually turn into methane and water. So the food waste itself is producing even more greenhouse gases. So what we can do at our homes, there’s a lot we can do: we can shop smarter, we can plan ahead, we can think about what we’ll actually need. We can take stock of what’s in our fridge and pantry once a week and try to use that up before it goes bad. We can properly store and reheat and consume our leftovers. That’s another thing you’ll always find on my site. Every single recipe I make will always inform you how to store and re-heat those leftovers. We can understand labels better. So “use by,” when you see a “use by” date, that is usually pertaining to meat and dairy and that is genuinely something you want to really pay attention to. But when you see “best by” and “sell by” dates, those are just loose guidelines. So if you see a date that’s “best by” or “sell by,” you don’t need to automatically throw out that food. And on top of that, we can do things like composting at home to diminish our own food waste, put less into the landfill in our individual homes. So there’s a lot we can do and we can really move the needle on food waste.

Adrian Tennant: I know you’re a big fan of composting. I recently came across an American company called Mill Industries, Inc., that’s created a bin that conserves the nutrients from food waste and sends them back to farms. And interestingly, they’re adopting a subscription model. Now Mill estimates that customers can avoid almost half a tonne of greenhouse gas emissions per household, per year. Marley, what are your thoughts on these kinds of in-home solutions?

Marley Goldin: So this is exactly what I mean when I say we can have a big impact here. So, because a lot of the food waste happens at home, if we take these matters into our own hands, these kinds of programs can really, really make a difference. And this is when we were talking about the food waste itself is a problem. So instead of contributing to more greenhouse gas emissions in the way of food waste, we can actually turn our food into something that’s usable and in agriculture. So I think things like this are really great. I love that Mill Industries is having this subscription model. 

Adrian Tennant: Let’s take a short break. We’ll be right back after these messages. 

Adrian Tennant: Each month in partnership with our friends at Kogan Page, the Bigeye Book Club features interviews with authors who are experts in consumer research, retail, and branding. Our featured book for February is Lateral Thinking For Every Day, by Paul Sloane. IN CLEAR FOCUS listeners can save 25 percent on a print or electronic version of the book with the exclusive promo code, BIGEYE25. This code is valid for all products and pre-orders and applies to Kogan Page’s free paperback and e-book bundle offer. When you order direct from Kogan Page, shipping is always free to the US and UK – and it helps the authors too. So, to order your copy of Lateral Thinking For Every Day, go to KoganPage.com. That’s K-O-G-A-N, P-A-G-E dot com. 

Michael Solomon: Hi, I’m Michael Solomon. During my 40-year career as a marketing professor, consumer psychologist, speaker, and author, I’ve had the privilege of developing strategies with many Fortune 500 companies to help them connect with their customers. Now, you can have access to these strategies through my online course. It’s called, Engage! How To Turn Your Bored Customers Into Brand Fanatics. I’ll show you how to apply years of research on consumer psychology to your brand or business. And as an IN CLEAR FOCUS listener, you can receive a hundred-dollar discount on your enrollment. Just follow the link in the transcript for this podcast on Bigeye’s website and use the provided coupon code to take advantage of this offer. I hope you’ll join me for Engage! to learn how to turn board customers into brand fanatics! 

Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. I’m talking with Marley Goldin, a qualified environmental scientist who’s now a full-time influencer creating content focused on food and living an attainable, sustainable life. There’s a new global certification for farms and food products that meet stringent standards for soil health, animal welfare, and farm worker fairness. It’s called the Regenerative Organic Certification. Marley, could you tell us a bit about how this works?

Marley Goldin: Yes, so industrial farming, which unfortunately is the primary way we farm here, is meant to be efficient and productive and cheap -but it’s not really taking sustainability into mind. Whereas regenerative organic agriculture is designed to protect the next generation of farmers. So it’s built on sustainability, and it creates a standard for soil health, for animal welfare, for labor, and for farmers. And the certification itself encompasses the USDA Certified Organic standards, but then it takes it a step further to include things like the diversity of plants and animals on the farm to having continual live plants in the field to capture carbon year round. And minimizing soil disturbance, so no tilling. So basically, this is the highest standard in farming that can kind of give us hope that sustainability can be something that is built into our farming and agriculture system. So this is really optimistic.

Adrian Tennant: Can we talk about the plant-based milks category? I just came across a brand from Europe called DUG – D-U-G – which is a potato-based drink. Now it claims to be deliciously creamy, make perfect foaming coffee, and work just like any other milk, and according to their website is the most sustainable alternative on the market. Marley, what are the pros and cons of plant-based milk?

Marley Goldin: So this might be a little controversial, but I’m gonna say a blanket statement that for me, I can’t really think of any cons just from a sustainability standpoint, and that’s because the production of plant-based milk results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and it requires less land and water than dairy milk. So we’re not talking about, you know, a tiny local farm that you might go and get, a little pint of milk every now and then from your local farmer. We’re talking about industrial agriculture, we’re talking about dairy farms versus plant-based milk production. And while, within different plant-based milk, you can get, you know, like almond milk, it uses the most freshwater compared to, soy milk or rice milk. But then you look at rice milk and soy milk and almond milk has fewer greenhouse gas emissions, so there’s no clear winner within plant-based milk of what can be the most sustainable. Though I am optimistic about potato-based milk, I haven’t tried it, but, um, potatoes themselves require a lot less land and a lot less water to grow than things like almonds or rice. So that is something I definitely wanna look into. I can’t say I’ve tried it yet, but overall I would say yes, that plant-based milks are better for the environment than dairy milk, full stop.

Adrian Tennant:  Well, Marley, your passion for the topic of sustainability really comes through very authentically. In addition to your website, you are also creating content on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest. How do you feel about the term I’ve used to introduce you – influencer? 

Marley Goldin: You know, I think it’s important for people in my position who have platforms to take accountability that they are having an influence on what people are eating, or in some cases, buying. And so I like the term because I think it comes with an inherent responsibility that you actually are having an impact on people’s choices. And with that, hopefully, you know, you take on that responsibility in my case also, using my platform to inform people and educate people about sustainability. So I do like the term influencer, and I think it’s important for people in my position to have that label to really understand that they are having an influence, and with that comes a responsibility.

Adrian Tennant: Do your audiences differ in terms of the demographics based on the channel? 

Marley Goldin: They do. You know it’s interesting. I was actually looking at my analytics this morning and the demographics, and on my website, 61 percent of the users are aged 18 to 34, whereas on Instagram, 57 percent are aged 25 to 44. And on TikTok, it’s pretty much all 18 to 25. So there is a difference in age demographics depending on what platform you’re looking at, but my mission is always to drive people to my website, and that’s because that’s where I can give the most information. I’ve found that typically people don’t read through a long caption on Instagram, and I’ve also found that TikTok, with the younger demographic, really what performs well is kind of showing your face more and letting people more into your lives. Whereas Instagram, a lot of my content is very highly curated. So, the demographics do inspire the content I’m creating, but it also is always my main priority to drive people to the website because I think it’s the easiest way to get the most information in front of people’s eyes to consume in an easily digestible way, rather than just like a big, long caption on a social media channel.

Adrian Tennant: Well, let’s talk about how you partner with brands. Do they typically come to you? Do you reach out to them or some combination?

Marley Goldin: It’s definitely a combination of both. If I’m reaching out to a brand, it’s definitely a brand that I know and love and use in my daily or weekly life. If I have a dream partnership like that, you know, I won’t sit around and wait for them to reach out to me. But I do get brands that reach out to me as well, and that’s really exciting. I have on my website, I have a whole section dedicated to Work With Me and there’s a form that brands can fill out, which kind of gets the ball rolling in terms of what they’re looking for. and they’ll typically fill that out or email me, and then we get the conversation started from there. 

Adrian Tennant: How far in advance of an activation do you ideally need to prepare? Perhaps you could talk us through a typical timeline. 

Marley Goldin: Sure it depends of course on what the brand is looking for. And typically, I do try to work on a continuing basis with a brand because I’ve found, especially on social media channels, until I’ve mentioned a particular brand two or three times, I don’t generate enough interest by just mentioning it one time. So once I’ve mentioned a brand or create a recipe for a brand two or three times, I can look at my analytics and see people actually clicking through to their website or clicking through to their social media channels. So I do try to create ongoing partnerships with brands just to get the most, for both of us out of, the marketing there. But typically if it’s recipe development, I need at least a two-week turnaround because I will like to brainstorm ideas and research trends, and then I need to test the recipe at least one or two times to make sure it’s foolproof and then create the content, which of course means making the recipe, documenting making the recipe, taking the final images, whether it’s videography or photography, editing, and then coming up with the caption and writing out the recipe. So there’s a lot of work that goes into one single post. So typically, I need at least a two-week timeframe to get that done. But generally, if we’re planning out, I’ll give myself at least three weeks, to make sure that I have enough time to do all those things to my best ability.

Adrian Tennant: I’m also curious about how you assess a potential brand partnership. What do you look for in a brand?

Marley Goldin: You know, firstly it has to be something that I’m interested in eating because I think it comes across if I’m not genuine about a brand or a product. So for sure I don’t eat meat, So it can’t be something that contains meat that I wouldn’t actually eat in my daily life. I really, really prioritize brands that have a big emphasis on sustainability. It just works well with my brand and it performs better with my audience because that’s what they’re expecting to see from me. But aside from those things, there’s also so many different types of, aesthetics that brands can be looking for. I’ll typically look at their current content or their current branding and make sure it really aligns with what I do and my point of view and my artistic ability because I wanna make sure that we’re both really happy with the final outcome. 

Adrian Tennant: For brand managers and agencies, do you have some dos and don’ts you could share for getting the most out of an influencer relationship?

Marley Goldin: I think it goes hand in hand with what I was just saying, you know. For DOs, make sure you’re partnering with people who align with you creatively and you want to allow creative freedom for your influencer because you really want them to take ownership of the brief and really put their own spin on it, because that’s gonna translate the best for the audience every time. So if you’re getting an influencer who’s really out of their comfort zone in the brief and what you’re looking for, it’s most likely not gonna come across genuine. So you really wanna look for people who fit in with your ethos and with your aesthetic. And I think it’s really important to provide a detailed brief upfront to set the expectations, because, for my DON’Ts, I would say for sure, do not set unrealistic expectations. Look at what the influencer has done in the past. Assess their capabilities, and give a timeline that makes sense for both of you, because if the creator feels rushed or feels confused about the brief or feels like it’s out of their scope of, you know, their normal work, you’re not going to get a final product that you’re happy with on either end.

Adrian Tennant: Marley, I know your whole family is involved in the content you create. Your husband Rob, your child, Charlie, and your two dogs, Zazu and Lolo. Have you found that you need to set boundaries either around the use of your home or times of day when you’re creating content?

Marley Goldin: Absolutely. So first of all, my husband is my business partner. We both work full-time on Marley’s Menu. So he is very, very involved in my workflow. But as for boundaries for me, I have chosen personally not to, share Charlie’s face on any social media or on my website except for a couple of family pictures on my bio. Just because, for me, I wanna make sure that he’s comfortable and when he gets to an age where he can choose to be involved, he absolutely can if he wants to. But for now, that’s just a boundary I’ve set for myself. And in terms of time, you know, when and where to work and all these things. I do utilize my kitchen a lot, but I also have a separate studio, which really helps with my workflow and allows me to kind of shut myself off. And the way that my husband and I work it is with, we split the day. You know, half the day he will be with Charlie and I’ll be working, and half the day I’ll be with Charlie and he will be working. And that’s really, really made a great flow for us and obviously we’re very privileged to have the opportunity to both be home and both be with him and both be working on this. But you know, it’s worked out so that we’ve been able to do that and it’s been really helpful and really awesome.

Adrian Tennant: Marley, do you have a favorite recipe that was either passed down to you or inspired by a family recipe that you’ve adapted to use contemporary ingredients? 

Marley Goldin: Yeah. I think something that a lot of people don’t know about food blogging as a business is that a lot of the recipes we create are based on really intensive research about what keywords are good opportunities to either rank for on Google or maybe go viral on a social media platform to really drive traffic. And so a lot of times things we’re creating, yes, they’re things that we love and are passionate about and would eat in normal lives, but they also have a very particular focus in terms of being a really smart business choice to create that recipe. So a lot of times when food bloggers are coming out with new recipes, they can’t necessarily do, you know, great grandma’s this or that, because it’s not a smart business choice. But for me, I try to mix that with at least two, what I call passion projects per month. And I ended up doing one of my great grandma’s potato Latke recipes, and it has, even though, based on my research, it may not be the best keyword, it ended up being one of my most popular recipes. And I think that just goes to show, you know, advice for any other people who are in this business or in a creative business is that having a good balance of strategy and passion is really gonna give you the best outcome in the end.

Adrian Tennant: If listeners would like to learn more about you, your recipes and social content, or discuss a brand partnership, where can they find you? 

Marley Goldin: So MarleysMenu.com, that’s M-A-R-L-E-Y-S-M-E-N-U dot com is my website, And I do have in my About Me section, I have a Work With Me section that can give you an overview of my services as well as a form that marketers can fill out that would give me an idea of what they’re looking for and get the conversation started there. My social media channels, I have Instagram, and it’s @MarleysMenu. I have TikTok, @MarleysMenuOfficial. I have a Facebook page, which is also @MarleysMenuOfficial, and my Pinterest is @marleysmenuofficial. So you know, if you do a quick Google search of Marley’s Menu, you should be able to pull up all the best ways to find me and reach me.

Adrian Tennant: Marley, thank you very much for being our guest on IN CLEAR FOCUS.

Marley Goldin: Thank you!

Adrian Tennant: Thanks to my guest this week, Marley Goldin of Marley’s Menu. As always, you’ll find a transcript with links to the resources we discussed today on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at Bigeyeagency.com. Just select ‘podcast’ from the menu. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider following us wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, produced by Bigeye. I’ve been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.