Creating a network of innovation and inspiration

Through a collaborative approach, the Canadian Food Innovation Network is providing a platform tohelp enable the continued growth and success of Canada’s food ecosystem // By Sean Tarry

When it comes to the need for innovation and the development of strategies and ways by which to continue satisfying the needs of today’s consumer, few sectors can attest to facing as much pressure as that of food and grocery. Fulfilling the needs of Canadians each and every day while consistently increasing convenience around the experience, creating greater efficiencies, enhancing digital capabilities and making it all tick along seamlessly, is daunting enough.

However, when considering the fragmented nature of the Canadian food ecosystem, the notion of actually executing on this vision can often seem impossible. In order to address this issue, and others, the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN) was recently founded. And, according to Dana McCauley, the Network’s Chief Experience Officer, its already helped to start filling a critical need within the industry, consolidating its many players to facilitate growth.

“The food industry is an incredibly important contributor to the Canadian economy,” she explains. “However, it’s also a very fragmented one that’s segmented by regions. Unlike other sectors and industries, it’s next to impossible to get all stakeholders into the same room to discuss the big issues impacting the industry. CFIN was born of the impetus to highlight the importance of the food industry to the overall health of the country and to help facilitate connections and partnerships between retailers, manufacturers, ingredient purveyors, technology providers and others that are often operating in siloes. Essentially, we’re a platform and a network that helps bring all of these players together, encouraging innovation and collaboration in order to help the entire industry grow. A win for CFIN is when a project is initiated in the Atlantic with service providers located out West and a consumer in Ontario. It’s collaboration and connections that the industry has traditionally found it difficult to achieve.”

Increasing innovation capacity

McCauley goes on to explain that the benefits that result from the facilitation of these partnerships is most obvious in the bottlenecks that are avoided within the innovation stream. She says that most of the food industry’s innovation capacity is consumed by attempts to problem solve and find partners, resulting in extended timelines and increased friction within the process. CFIN has been created to help remove that friction and free up the time and resources of those operating within the Canadian food industry that can be applied to innovation and development.

Founded in 2021, CFIN is a pan-national organization that operates virtually without a head office. It allows for a nimble and flexible approach to servicing its members. And, unlike most other networks and super-clusters that are funded by the government, membership to join CFIN’s growing community is free. And, perhaps more interesting is the way in which CFIN and its services are structured, enabling the organization to approach funding in a significantly different way when compared to other agencies, differentiating its offering.

“We don’t follow the same linear flow that others follow, which involves receiving funding, putting out a funding call, attracting applicants, and then funding those that align with the challenges being addressed, before doing it over again,” she explains. “Instead, we’re taking more of a community-building approach that’s anchored to the launch of our YODL platform – a place where members can come to share ideas, truth test, seek information, put out a call for help and assistance or to offer theirs. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that, built on the premise of thought-leadership, content should lead to conversations, the identification of partnerships within the community, and newer and better ideas. CFIN monitors and analyzes all of the conversation that’s taking place and tailoring our funding calls to reflect the real problems and challenges. It results in really good applications and the opportunity for us to fund really great projects. And it also allows us to provide thought leadership to government who are creating policies.”

Revolutionary projects

Although CFIN does not lobby government or advocate on the behalf of those working in the food industry, they do condense the insights generated through its community conversations and engagement between members to identify trends and sentiment. They share these insights in their reports, some of which are shared with their government funders who are keen to learn more about industry’s needs. It’s an incredibly inventive way to harness a very grassroots approach via digital means, helping to accelerate meaningful connections. And, it seems to be an approach that’s working wonders thus far. In barely more than a year, CFIN has reviewed hundreds of applications, put somewhere in the region of $4 million into Canadian business and attracted in excess of 1,700 members. And, it’s also been involved in some meaningful projects that are set to improve and enhance the grocery experience for Canadians.

“We’ve been working with a number of innovations that are going to change the way some aspects of grocery retail work, helping the industry become more efficient and profitable,” she asserts. “On the operational side, we’re working with a company called Gastronomous which is ostensibly helping to solve a foodservice and meal kit problem through robotic automation that integrates into current operations. It’s essentially a tool that portions fresh ingredients, removing manual labour that would normally be required, completing the task much more efficiently and safely, extending shelf-life. We’re also working with companies that are focusing on the convergence of health, nutrition, wellness and eating. For instance, Canadian Pacifico Seaweeds works with indigenous communities in efforts to get more value-added seaweed products into the ingredient supply chain in order to aid in the development of new functional foods.”

A thriving industry

In addition to these fascinating projects and innovations, CFIN is also working with a member partner on ground-breaking developments that could revolutionize the traditional supply chain and the way retailers and foodservice providers look at product sourcing. Innovations from Ontario Genomics concerning cellular agriculture has resulted in a potentially revolutionary discovery. The not-for-profit organization responsible for the management of genomics research projects has learned that it not only has the ability to produce protein using precision fermentation and cell-multiplier technologies, it can also produce an array of flavours and ingredients like vanilla, chocolate or coffee bean. The impacts of such an innovation could lend to the creation of a much more local supply chain, resulting in a complete supply chain rethink. And, according to McCauley, these examples are just the start of the innovations that CFIN are going to help bring to market.

“We’re constantly engaging in conversations with members and other stakeholders within the industry, looking for the next big thing, with an eye on the ways the local sector would be impacted as well as potential international impacts. We truly believe that Canada can compete on a global stage when it comes to being first to market with technologies and innovations that are complex. And, in the work that we’re doing, we’re learning a lot about where there are gaps in knowledge and ways those gaps can be properly filled through the introduction of dynamic services, learning opportunities and partnerships. This learning and experience will allow us to build more capacity, provide more innovators with the chance to see their developments through to fruition and help the food and grocery industry in Canada continue to thrive.”

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For more information about the Canadian Food Innovation Network, visit cfin-rcia.ca/home