Calgary-based Knead Technologies already embarked on its mission to curb food waste by deploying its software solution at the 2024 NFL Draft. Now, it has closed an $800,000 pre-seed round to connect food waste donors with food rescue organizations through its white-label app.
Lourdes Juan
“The curse of food waste is that it happens at every stage.”
Knead Technologies
The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) Capital’s Thrive Lab led the all-equity, all-primary round, which closed at the end of December, with participation from ScaleGood and the University of Calgary’s UCeed Social Impact Fund. Knead also previously received an undisclosed amount of non-dilutive support from the Canadian Food Innovation Network and Sustainable Development Technology Canada. The company says it raised the money at a $3.5-million valuation.
Pitching itself as the “Uber for food waste,” Knead sells a customizable software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for non-profit organizations that redistribute food donations, such as food banks, emergency shelters, and soup kitchens. Organizations must register as food recipients, then Knead matches them with local food donors. Organizations can onboard their own volunteers or employees, depending on their model, and match them to appropriate food pick-up and delivery routes.
According to Knead, the company’s platform has facilitated the redistribution of over 2 million pounds of surplus food—which it says is about equivalent to 1.67 million meals and 236 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Detroit-based community organization Metro Food Rescue deployed Knead’s platform to help pick up and redistribute 100,000 pounds of food from vendors at the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit last spring, which hosted more than 775,000 people. The Canadian company is also working with community organizations in Phoenix, Ariz.
Founded in 2022, Knead is the platform that its co-founder and CEO, Lourdes Juan, says she could have used 13 years ago when she founded the Leftovers Foundation, a food rescue non-profit. “Logistics for food rescue is very hard and there was no software to help,” she said.
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A six-time founder of diverse ventures, including a spa and a mobile grocery store, Juan said she was inspired to get into food rescue when she redistributed over 200 pounds of bread from a local bakery to a food bank. That’s also where Knead got its name, she said.
Knead wants to be the software solution that allows leftover food to get from place to place efficiently. The company wants to make things simple for food rescue organizations, which the company says currently “rely on a jumble of different platforms that can complicate logistics.”
Canada wastes a staggering proportion of usable food, with a recent Loblaw-funded report by food rescue charity Second Harvest estimating that 41 percent of wasted food every year could be redirected to people who cannot afford it. This wasted food also accounts for roughly 25.7 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually.
“The curse of food waste is that it happens at every stage,” Juan said in an interview with BetaKit. Knead aims to reduce it by selling its SaaS platform to food rescue organizations, which can onboard their own volunteers or employees. The goal is to improve pick-up and delivery logistics and move products before they spoil.
Knead’s team will use the pre-seed financing to improve its software platform with analytics and potential artificial intelligence (AI) integration, land more clients in the US, and build more partnerships with municipalities, environmental organizations, and corporate partners.
Juan said that if the team decides to add AI features to streamline administrative tasks, it would be co-deployed with a carbon-credit verification option for customers.
“We don’t know the full extent of the environmental impacts of AI so we have to get to a point where we are confident that if we integrated it, the net benefits in terms of food rescued would be positive overall,” Juan said.
Several early-stage ventures have attempted to tackle the scourge of food waste in Canada. Toronto-based Flashfood allows customers to purchase food close to its expiry date at a discount, with integrations in several chain grocery stores nationwide. Montréal-based Bopaq is tackling food waste through catering with hardware containers, which it then washes and reuses. Meanwhile, Toronto-based Genecis is turning food waste into bioplastics.
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Knead is the first Alberta-based company to receive support from Thrive Lab’s $35-million envelope dedicated to women founders. Sévrine Labelle, managing director of Thrive Lab, told BetaKit that the organization’s investment was due to the “clear growth potential as well as the social and environmental impact of this woman-led company.”
Juan said that she was thrilled that Knead’s cap table also believes in “changing the world through business” in the context of souring sentiment on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in tech.
Raising this first pre-seed round was an 18-month “uphill battle,” she said, especially as a woman of colour. A recent Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub report noted that only four percent of total venture capital (VC) dollars go to women founders in Canada.
Juan said that though social impact-oriented ventures take political will, Knead is in a unique position due to its universal mission.
“Food waste is non-partisan,” she said. “We can make a huge change without having to convince anyone that no one should go to bed hungry and that food-insecure households should be a priority.”
Feature image courtesy Knead Technologies.