The Last 50 Ft

Saimah Chaudhry, Co-Founder of Zevo, joins Cam on The Last 50 Ft to break down the EV car sharing marketplace built for gig workers. Saimah explains how Zevo connects directly to Tesla and other OEMs for keyless, contactless rentals, how it builds trust between hosts and drivers, and why maintenance is the hardest part of scaling an EV fleet. She also covers charging and battery health, host education on depreciation and unit economics, and how Zevo sees itself as an infrastructure layer for autonomous vehicles. Plus an animal left in a car and the do it yourself duct tape job on a car.Learn more at Zevo.com

Oakland chef and owner Paul Iglesias (Parche, Jaji) discusses the future of intentional hospitality, the realities of running modern restaurants, and his culturally rooted menu design. Paul walks us through industry pressures like rising labor costs and delivery margins while showing how Oakland's energy, influences his concepts. He also shares insights into menu design as cultural translation, the storytelling power of small plates, and what it takes to keep full-service dining sustainable.

Most people picture drone delivery as the flight. Alex Norman, COO of Matternet, says the hardest part happens before takeoff, when an order has to get from the kitchen into the drone.Alex went from aerospace engineering in Austria and big aircraft at Airbus to one of the earliest drone delivery companies. Matternet started out flying medical samples between hospitals in Switzerland. It now operates in the US, Switzerland and the UK, and works with partners like UPS. Food is quickly becoming its biggest source of volume.

What started as a joke about opening a nightclub turned into a career in the kitchen. Chef Nelson German, the chef behind alaMar and Sobre Mesa in Oakland and Meski in San Francisco, joins The Last 50 Ft to talk about the night at the Copacabana that sent him to culinary school, how Top Chef Season 18 reconnected him with his roots, and the Afro-Latino flavors that define his restaurants.We get into opening Sobre Mesa just ten days before the pandemic shut everything down, partnering with World Central Kitchen to feed laid-off hospitality workers, and why his team is everything. Nelson also shares his new book, Caribbean Cocktails, and what it takes to get great food from his kitchen to your door.

Before Autolane, Hamei spent 15 years in hospitality and ran his own restaurant. In this episode he talks about what delivery apps did to restaurant margins, how COVID changed what customers expect, and why autonomous delivery gives operators, big and small, control of the last 50 feet again.He also covers why people skills still matter most, the time autonomy frees up for operators, and advice for owners weighing new tech. Plus celebrity visits, favorite shift meals, and why a cold burrito can ruin the experience.