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Welcome to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s podcast series that explores the freshest ideas in agriculture and food. Each episode explores a single topic in depth—digging deep into new practices, innovative ideas, and their impacts on the industry. Learn about Canada’s agricultural sector from the people making the breakthroughs and knocking down the barriers! Farmers and foodies, scientists and leaders, and anyone with an eye on the future of the sector—this podcast is for you!
Dr Jean-Charles Le Vallée : There will be pressure on Canada and the rest of the Americas to feed the world. The issue right now, if you look at UN figures, is close to a billion people who are suffering from food insecurity daily.
And we actually, we produce enough food to feed everyone now. But because of all the losses along the supply chain, from farming to purchase and then food waste post-purchase, and that includes, you know, our ability to manipulate food, store food, cooked food and our understanding of best-before-days -- all those have an impact. If we were able to then use that, we could reduce food insecurity in the world.
Kirk: That’s Dr. Jean-Charles Le Vallée. He is an expert in food waste and food security. And he was also one of the judges of the first stream of the Food Waste Reduction Challenge
Marie-France: In a way, he just summarized why the Government of Canada launched the challenge, and why we as a society need to address it.
Kirk: Right. It’s not by growing more food that we’ll feed the world. It’s by not wasting the food we already produce. And that is what this challenge is about.
Marie-France: And what a challenge? To start, there were 343 applicants in the first stream of the challenge. There were 3 stages over three years.
Kirk: So what amazing innovations does this type of prize bring to the forefront?
Marie-France: And how do you choose a winner?
Kirk: That’s why we have Dr. Lavalee on today’s episode.
Marie-France: And it’s why we have the two grand prize winners. You’ll see why they were chosen.
Kirk: It’s salient, timely and exciting stuff! This is the future of our sector. These two winners are going to surprise you -- and surprise the world. This is the type of story we love to bring you.
So, welcome to The First Sixteen. I’m one of your hosts, Kirk Finken.
Marie-France: And I am your other host, Marie-France Gagnon.
Kirk: Before we get into it, let’s just first give a quick overview of what the Food Waste Reduction Challenge was and is all about.
Marie-France: It’s an initiative of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in partnership with Impact Canada.
Kirk: Impact Canada is a special organization within government. It manages these competitive challenges, of which there are a few. These sorts of challenges are great mechanisms for kick starting or accelerating the adoption of new solutions or technologies. They are effective funding models in the business, science or social spheres.
Marie-France: First, you need to know, there were two streams to this challenge. One was for business solutions – people with a business model for preventing or diverting food waste. The other stream was for novel technologies.
Kirk: In this episode we are only focused on the first stream, the business models. Our next episode will be about the novel technologies stream.
Marie-France: In this, the business model stream there was a good diversity of applicants. Many were young companies or brand new start ups. Some were existing companies. It was really very cool how the solutions were all along the value chain, from farm to fork.
Kirk: The 24 semi-finalists were given training and coaching, such as business pitch skills. Those 24 were then reduced down to a final twelve .
Marie-France: And then, ten of those twelve finalists competed for the grand prize. Two of them opted out as they were already on a path to success.
Kirk: Over the course of 10 months, from July 2022 to April 2023, the finalists were challenged to see just how much food waste they could reduce. They were provided with measurement tools for determining the volume of the food waste that they managed to divert, as well as mechanisms for measuring the amount of greenhouse gases and water use that they reduced. They were subjected to audits by a third-party.
Marie-France: And it was from that final group of 10 that two were chosen as grand prize winners.
Kirk: And I think that’s where we cue the drum roll.
Marie-France: Oh, we have a drum roll? I thought these winners had already been announced on March 20th.
Kirk: Yeah, but these people merit all the fanfares and drum rolls. They are slaying food waste. Cutting GHG emissions. Saving water. Optimizing the food system and more.
So, drum roll, please!
[Drum roll]
Kirk: Our first grand prize winner of the Food Waste Reduction Challenge is….
Marie-France: The company, Loop Mission, represented by co-founder and CEO, Julie Poitras-Saulnier.
Kirk: Julie, welcome to our show. And congratulations! We are really interested to know where this food waste reduction mission all started for you.
Julie: I was working as a sustainability specialist in the food industry. And one day we received a phone call from, like the most important producer distributor. He said that he was throwing away 20 tonnes of fruits and vegetables every single day. This was a life changing moment for me. I visited his warehouse. I saw the fruits and vegetables that were rejected. I had goosebumps. And this is when I decided to quit everything, quit my job, sell my house and start this project to find a way to give a second life to these fruits and vegetables. So that was really this moment, and it was for me, really an opportunity to show the world and all the corporate world that sustainability has a value.
Kirk: You quit your job!
Marie-France: You sold your house!
Kirk: And you founded Loop. Tell us what Loop Mission is all about.
Julie: Sure. So Loop Mission is a circular economy company that fights food waste by upcycling different types of produce. And we transform it into clean label premium products such as cold pressed juices, probiotic sodas, iced tea. So basically, we take all the food that is wrongfully rejected by the food industry and we make something out of it.
Marie-France: Loop was established before the challenge, right? With the challenge, you opened a new wing of the company, Loop Synergies, to produce ingredients for other food processors to use, right?
Julie: When they launched a Food waste challenge, everybody contacted me – the consumers, but also all our shareholders, stakeholders, everybody in the industry, everybody said this contest is for you guys. And at the same time, I had this idea because we got so many phone calls from everybody in the food industry when we started this project, food manufacturers, distributors, farmers, retailers, everybody said we also threw away so much food, and it was so challenging for other companies to implement similar business model than ours, because the food industry isn’t set up this way.
It’s really complicated to use a rejected food because of the inconsistencies, the short shelf life. And so we came to this realization that we needed more companies similar to us. But for that to be able to happen, we needed to help food manufacturers to actually like, create something and to like, surpass or find a way to reduce these challenges and make it easier for them to use upcycle fruits and vegetables or any ingredients. So I had this idea, but I didn’t know how to start. And when I saw the challenge, it was the perfect opportunity to develop this ingredient branch that’s called Loop Synergy that would upcycle ingredients for food manufacturers.
Marie-France: So you are enabling others in the supply chain to innovate, to change their practices.
Kirk: There’s a radiating impact. Yeah. We also heard along the way about these other benefits that happened as a result of the challenge itself.
Julie: Yeah. First of all, I mean, just the fact that it’s a challenge, it really like it pushes us to always give the best of ourselves because you want to win this challenge.
And we were challenged a lot along the way with different reporting that we had to do. We had to present the whole methodology about how we’re going to reduce food waste and how we’re going to calculate the amount of waste that we’re going to we’re going to reduce. So it was a really interesting to see how I started with an idea. And 2 or 3 years later, because it was a process that took three years, it was a totally different project that has such a bigger impact than the idea we had at first.
Kirk: You mentioned the measurements. Can we dive into that a little bit?
Julie: At first I was like, oh, but that’s quite easy. I just look at what I buy as upcycle ingredients and that’s it. But we had like a third party that verified us. We had monthly meetings. And they challenged us a lot.
Kirk: That’s great. So it pushed you to go deeper on your processes and the measurements. And you got solid and verifiable metrics.
Julie: It really helps with consumers because upcycling food is something really new. So people don't necessarily know, like, how we do it. Like, what is the percentage of what you have that is really upcycled? So we really look at what's really wasted, what is the amount that is really supposed to go to the landfill. And this is a way for us to show consumers that what we do is real and it's not greenwashing.
Kirk: So let's speak about your innovations. What are the benefits that your innovative business model are now bringing to the industry?
Julie: You need consistent ingredients all the time. And it needs to taste exactly the same all the time. It needs consistency along the chain. And we wanted to ensure that other people in the food industry, like join the movement and upcycled food.
So we just made upcycling food easy for any food manufacturers. And we started with a lot of like smaller companies as a pilot test during the contest. And now the next step is really to move with like the like the major players of the food industry.
Kirk: You are at the quick growth stage of a, well, a movement. And it is different than other movements that we have seen in the business world. There's competition. But there’s a friendly and collaborative aspect to your business movement. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Julie: Yeah. For us, every time there is somebody else doing a business model that is similar to us, we're not really a competitor. It's somebody that has the same mission as us. We want to collaborate with them to create this big movement together. And we actually, like many of the other finalists, we had, uh, projects with them. So we collaborate with most of them. I was surprised to see how it's just one big circular economy family out there.
Marie-France: And to come back to the challenge… Over those three years of the challenge, did anything kind of surprise you?
Julie: What really surprised me is we just did one video on the on the social media saying, oh, like I just wanted to see like, what is the market response? If we say we're going to have ingredients for food manufacturers? The response was crazy.
Everybody started to contact us saying like, oh, we want to buy, uh, we want to buy it. Even like huge companies started to call us. Uh, and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, we're not ready first. Uh, I didn't think the impact would be so quick and so big, um, that we had to also focus a bit and change. So I had to put aside the part that was dehydrating fruits and vegetables because we didn't even have enough room in our facility. I realized, like, after receiving the right equipment, looking at all the plan with our technical director said, no, it's not gonna fit.
Julie: And I realized that there is so much demand just for what we currently are able to do with our current equipment. I was like, why would we need to go in so many different directions? We're going to focus on a core of what we already have and the equipment we have, and we're going to be able to have like even a bigger impact and without buying even more equipment.
Kirk: So by that reaction, is sounds like the market is ready.
Julie: Yeah. Yeah, the market is ready. And it's. That's why, like, we realized, like we just need to overpass these barriers because, like, the food industry really wants to be part of this.
[transition music]
Kirk: When I looked at images that Julie sent us of the warehouse with all of those tons of wasted fruit and veggies, it doesn't look like gold. It’s a mess. Some good, some rotting food. But she and her team saw gold in it! They established repeatable processes for saving that waste. They have a great line of products for consumers. And a great line of ingredients for other food processors.
Marie-France: Yeah. Now, Kirk, before we introduce the other grand prize winner, you know, there were a lot of other benefits that sprang out of the Food Waste Reduction Challenge.
Kirk: I heard that, overall, 5.2 million kilograms of food waste were diverted by the ten finalists, and Loop Mission was responsible for diverting 66% of that total.
Marie-France: But it’s so much more! In the total calculations of the ten finalists, in ten months, close to 12,000 Metric tons of CO2 emissions were prevented.
Kirk: Snap! That’s a lot.
Marie-France: That’s like 2,657 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles being driven for one year.
Kirk: Just from the ten finalists in those 10 months?
Marie-France: Yeah. That’s not all. There were 545 million gallons of water saved. And in terms of nutrients, the equivalent of 3.3 million meals were recovered.
Kirk: Fantastic! And our next guest was a part of it. Can I cue the drum roll again? So we can introduce the other grand prize winner?
Marie-France: Yes, you may.
[Drum roll]
Kirk: Our other grand prize winner of the Food Waste Reduction Challenge is….
Marie-France: The company, Still Good, represented by co-founder and CEO, Jonathan Rodrigue.
Marie-France: Congratulations, Jonathan! And welcome to the First Sixteen!
Kirk: Hi Jonathan. Let’s jump right into it. Tell us about your company.
Jonathan: We upcycle byproducts from the food industry into new ingredients. So we've developed technology, we've developed specific processes to take any type of waste stream generated by the industry. But also to scale it. So it's not just about upcycling. It's being partners with the industry and being able to take the volumes of waste and transfer them into new ingredients for human consumption. So into new edible goods.
Kirk: I always like origin stories. What motivated you to start this company?
Jonathan: We would be going back about 20 years. I started doing volunteer work in nonprofits. And we were handing out food baskets. And as I was doing that, I was kind of wondering where all this food was coming from. It was either food that wasn't going to retail or that companies were throwing out or surplus foods. And I really had an issue at that time where I was looking at the situation where we had thousands of tons of food that was going to waste. And on the other hand, I was here doing volunteer work with family and with kids that had a hard time making ends meet and didn't have food on the table. So to me, something didn't work.
And in 2016, I actually started working on a model, which is the Still Good model today, based on all of those years of experience and knowledge.
Marie-France: Tell us about the challenge?
Jonathan: The challenge for us was way more than a prize at the end. We had people helping us in building our way of reporting all of our data, teams that were helping us in how to do our pitches, how to better communicate what we're doing and kind of structure the whole project for us. It pushed us into always going further and moving forward.
Marie-France: So during the challenge, you were asked to measure your food waste reduction.
Jonathan: What we really wanted to focus on is making sure that our model was not generating more greenhouse effect gases. Is it equal or is it negative? So, we worked with Ivy School of Business and we worked with a bunch of universities and other specialists to help us in building a model where we would not be only taking into consideration the waste that we were eliminating from going to landfill, but our whole operations -- what does it look like?
So we're generating less CO2 than we're actually generating through our whole operations, which is very which is good news for the food industry and businesses that work with us.
Marie-France: That's amazing. And how do your innovations benefit Canadian food processors?
Jonathan: Yeah. So, the Still Good model is actually a model that's very interesting for the food industry for two reasons. It's helping and reducing waste and greenhouse emissions. But there's the whole economic factors of what we're doing also. We actually work in partnership with the food industry where if you have food byproducts that are generated through your operations, which is the case for every food generator, what we do is we come alongside the company, we have a team that looks into what's being generated.
We have an R&D team that takes that looks at what can be done with it, and works hand-in-hand with the company to be able to transform that into new ingredients that can be then reintroduced in their own products or create new product lines under their own brand. So we're taking a waste and a cost stream, and we're turning that into a new revenue stream for the industry.
Marie-France: You’re company acts as an enabler, and also a hub. We understand that you actually did that with some of the other competitors in the challenge.
Jonathan: Yes. Um, definitely. So, so well, you know, being being in circular economy or being in food waste reduction, um, you know, we understood that we're part of the solution. We have byproducts that are coming in. Unfortunately, there's always a percentage that we also have that cannot be used for human consumption.
So out of everything that we source, uh, there's a percentage that doesn't pass control quality, for different types of reasons. But what do we do with that? I mean, if we're if we're looking to be a model that's zero waste and that's reducing food waste. What do I do with what's generated through my own operations. And that was a reflection that we had. And then what we decided to do is we looked at other participants in the challenge and other organizations that we knew that were also looking into, you know, reducing food waste. And we realized that whatever I couldn't use for human consumption could be used to feed insects, for instance.
So we started working with, a company that was in the challenge who use byproducts that feed insects. And now we supply them with that. Could we use it to grow crops? Yes we can. I'll look at that. There's another company that challenge who uses the byproducts to grow mushrooms. Let's work with them. You know, so that's how we started building synergies and saying is there other companies out there that can use it.
Kirk: So, tell us more about this hub model is a hub model and others that grow with you – both food producers and food waste reducers.
Jonathan: So that's pretty much where we're going with this, where we're saying, how about we learn from what we're living here in Montreal and, and in synergies that were developing with other organizations that that we that need that want to use, uh, and, you know, byproducts and want to be involved in reducing food waste. And how can we structure something that can be then replicated pretty much anywhere around the world?
Kirk: What's next for you? What's next in terms of the growth to scale up your company?
Johanthan: We're just finishing building our new facility. And we've just finished that and I'm already working on the next one because I know that in about two years from now, we're going to outgrow this. Well, what's next is quite exciting. Where now, today we've got, you know, revenues in the millions and we're a team of 25 plus and, and you know we've we're expanding and growing rapidly and always you know growing our volumes. We're in flours. We're exporting to the USA. Uh, we've got, you know, manufacturing businesses that are working with us where we're involved in so many different types of products. We have over 25 types of different products that are available through food service and B2B. I'm actually working with our financial partners and other partners around the table and looking at this and say, the next facility I'm going to need will be a facility where I can treat anywhere between 150,000 tons of byproducts for the Montreal region only. And that's going to be here in about 2 or 3 years from now.
What we're doing right now is we're actually documenting everything to be able to replicate this pretty much anywhere. So where are we going with this? Still good, it's more than a company. It's Still Good as a movement.
Kirk: Are you getting phone calls from other countries?
Jonathan: Well, look, um, we're getting a lot of phone calls from the US. And mind you, for us, exports in the US is not the end game. Exports is not something that makes any sense when it comes to upcycling or, you know, food waste reduction. Um, but it does in a way where we need by doing that. What we're actually doing right now is we're seeing where the demand is mainly coming from. And by that, it's going to show us where the next hub in the USA will be.
We are getting a lot of traction from Western Canada also. So involved with City of Vancouver and a bunch of partners out there, we're looking in creating a hub where we're feeling the same traction, uh, you know, in Halifax where there's all this initiatives around the hub also that are, that are, um, that are, you know, that have been started with the, you know, Canadian National Food Waste Council.
And mind you, we're working with companies right now that, uh, on on several projects with, with large corporations that that also have, uh, international, um, uh, you know, other, other, uh, facilities in Europe, in the US, uh, South America, Asia, and, uh, we're working on different R&D projects right now with these companies, uh, with different facilities here in, and in Canada.
But it is very out in the open and clear with these, with these organizations that what we're doing right now here is a pilot project that would be replicated in all their facilities around the world. And that's going on with a few different corporations right now. That's also very good news, where you have these companies that are willing to move forward with this, but are also willing to invest financially with us in making that happen in their other facilities because they, you know, they come to the conclusion that alone, they didn't know what to do. And now we arrive and we, we, we find ways to do stuff and we innovate and we develop products. And for them this is just amazing. This is not a local initiative. This is a global initiative that will be done locally at different local levels.
Marie-France: Did anything surprise you during the challenge?
Jonathan: Everything surprised me, though, during those four years. Um, look, I think what surprised me the most was to see our own evolution and how things changed so rapidly. So we had a situation in Montreal where you had the City of Montreal who told us, look, we have microbreweries that are popping up everywhere in the city. We have an issue with spent grain collection. Can you guys figure out a way to scale more rapidly what you guys are doing to help us out with that? You know, and along came the challenge pretty much at that same time. So what surprised me, to what extent we were able to take the technology we've developed and take the processes we have developed and find ways to apply that to different types of waste streams and now move way beyond spent grains.
Kirk: You grew during these past five years – especially during three really tough years. And you had lots of challenges.
Jonathan: Yeah, starting a business is hard. Now starting a business, being hit by a pandemic and being an innovation in food and working in R&D with ingredients and with products that don't exist, where you can't rely on what you've done in the past is harder also.
Kirk: What do you see for the next five or ten years?
Jonathan: So what we've done in the last five years, starting from nothing, I can only be excited of what's coming in the next five or 10 or 15 years is just going to be amazing. And for this to be coming out of this great country is something very interesting. Also, where it puts Canada in the forefront and saying, look, we're innovative in what we're doing and we're creating models that they can be replicated anywhere around the world. The challenge challenged us year after year in our model and pushed us in making our model better.
Without the challenge, maybe we would have gotten there eventually. But the challenge, what it did is it pushed us to get there faster.
It's way more than a company. We're on a mission over here.
[TRANSITIONMUSIC]
Kirk: It was such an inspiration to speak with Jonathan ad Julie. Two great and energetic entrepreneurs! Two great business models! Ready for scaling up on the national and international level.
Marie-France: Their stories give us a great insight into this new movement in our sector. They’re extracting more nutrients and value from the food that is already available in the system. They’re reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Kirk: And it is why, Marie—France, you spoke with Dr. Jean-Charles Lavalee, one of the jury members for the Challenge.
Marie-France: He’s one of Canada’s and the world’s leading experts on agriculture and food systems. He is the country representative and agriculture ambassador for the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agricuture in Costa Rica. He works in 34 countries in the Americas and brought his experience in international food waste to the challenge.
Kirk : Yeah, he’s grounded in this very necessary humanitarian and science-based approach.
Marie-France: I really wanted to know what it was like to be a jury member for a challenge like this..
Dr Jean-Charles Le Vallée: Well, honestly, I was I was thrilled. I was excited to be surrounded by other jury members from the sector, from a range of expertise and backgrounds that really made the experience for me personally very enriching. And given the wide range of wisdom and expertise across the sector, across Canada in the committee, I felt I had strong trust in the committee members together to come up with the two winners of the entire challenge.
And I think for your audience, it's important that they understand that it's food loss along the supply chain from farming to purchasing. So at point of purchase at the retail sector post-purchase, it becomes food waste. So we worked along on this challenge to reduce food waste to to see what we can do as a country to attack it. Canada is among the most wasteful societies in the world, so we've got lots of work to do.
So this challenge is wonderful because it inspires. It's a way to scale up. It's to demonstrate what we can do to reduce the environmental footprint, to reduce waste, and to improve the overall food sector performance as a country to lower our contribution, uh, in terms of using waste, post-purchase or food losses, improving efficiency, productivity or lowering our environmental impact, uh, and it has an impact on food prices.
Marie-France: Uh, can you talk about your first impressions of the participants in the challenge?
Dr Jean-Charles Le Vallée: Well, I was blown away by. There's so much there's a breadth of interest in different ways in attacking this solution. Uh, this problem with solutions that are all over from coast to coast, you know, from upcycling to other solutions, really inspired by the the innovative ideas. Some are less ready. They're early stages.
Dr Jean-Charles Le Vallée: Others are well-established. They have a market. And clearly these are solutions that could be scaled up, that are worthwhile investing in.
Marie-France: By all accounts, the actual process and criteria within the process of the challenge were also important factors. Can you speak to that?
Dr Jean-Charles Le Vallée : What I really liked about this entire, uh, reduction challenge is that with the applicants who were then selected for the following steps were not left to their own devices. Really, they were accompanied with financial support, with training provided tools so that they could put into place and measure the impact of their idea and does the innovation work. And so that would for me, was it made the challenge even more worthwhile We have to act now. We have to invest more, have more policies in place, infrastructure and investments and will to attack this problem. And we can do it. Uh, we have sufficient tools available now. It's really about changing behaviors and providing more, uh, strategic goals to inspire change.
And the reality is that there's so much work to be done still, but they requires more investment and more infrastructure and a cultural shift so that we push for these kind of solutions. Everyone agrees that we need to do something. We have to be more responsible and more sustainable. It's part of our future, and this is one way we can do it. And the challenge is, uh, fantastic initiative to demonstrate a value added approaches that we can scale up across the country.
[TRANSITION MUSIC]
Kirk: I don’t know about how our listeners, but I feel energized and optimistic.
Marie-France: I share the sentiment! And I just want to tell our listeners to stay tuned for our upcoming episode. We’ll be interviewing the two winning companies in the novel tech stream of the challenge.
Kirk: And those will knock your socks off. Big game changers!
Marie-France: So until then, you know what to do.
Kirk: I do. I am going to try something new.
Marie-France: Like maybe some food products with upcycled ingredients!
Kirk: That too.