Do you know how Canadian food gets from the farm to your table? I don’t.
I also don’t really know how Canada’s food industry is responding to the ongoing tariff threats, and how much the ‘buy Canadian’ movement is softening the blow.
“ By the time these companies are ready for B and C [rounds], their cap tables are super clean, too. So it doesn’t really make sense that we’re not putting money into them.”
Dana McCauley
CFIN CEO
But our guest does. This week, we’re talking to Dana McCauley, CEO of the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN), a member-based organization representing over 6,500 players in Canada’s food sector.
CFIN has just released an ecosystem report on the state of foodtech investment showing Canada lagging in the later stages, leaving foodtech overly reliant on public funding—something I actually do know about, as it matches Canada’s venture sector broadly. Tellingly, public grants account for nearly one-third of all investment rounds in Canada, compared to 5 percent in the United Kingdom and 8 percent in the United States.
At the early stages, Canada does actually match its global counterparts. As McCauley put it, “ We don’t have a startup problem. We have a scale up problem. We’ve kind of orphaned these companies.”
But what is food tech? And what do these innovators need to compete and succeed, particularly in a time of global uncertainty and threats to national sovereignty?
I guarantee you’re going to be hungry by the end of this episode. But we’ll try to fill your tummy first with data. So let’s dig in.
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Feature image courtesy CFIN. Edited by Darian MacDonald.