Five Years of Showing Up: Putting Canadian Foodtech on the Map

From the beginning, CFIN's strategy has been to give Canadian food innovators opportunities that were previously absent. Five years in, that approach has built a substantial events footprint and media presence — both of which have been critical to connecting innovators with the visibility, relationships, and credibility they need to grow.

CFIN Events by the Numbers

Since 2021, CFIN has hosted 20 in-person live events, gathering over 1,600 attendees. The trajectory tells the story of a growing platform:

The Foodtech Next showcase started with over 150 attendees in 2023 and 2024, and grew to nearly 300 attendees in February 2026 — becoming a key moment for CFIN-funded companies to present their pilots and results to investors, government funders, and industry partners.

Foodtech Frontier 2025 was CFIN's most ambitious event undertaking — a five-city showcase tour that drew more than 650 registrants. The events elevated the inaugural Foodtech Frontier cohort, connecting recognized companies with regional investors, media, and potential customers in markets across the country.

In 2025, CFIN launched its first webinar series, delivering 12 webinars with more than 1,700 registrants in the first year — extending the organization's reach well beyond what in-person events alone could achieve.

Going Global

CFIN's international ambitions moved from strategy to execution with the SKS Japan mission in Tokyo — a pilot program that aimed to shift trade missions from passive attendance to active commercial preparation and in-market acceleration. CFIN led a delegation of three member companies (Dispension, Food Cycle Science, and New School Foods) to the Smart Kitchen Summit. The mission validated CFIN's model for creating new international opportunities for scaling members who often lack trade supports purpose built for the unique challenges of foodtech.

Building the Profile of Canadian Foodtech

One of CFIN's less obvious but most consequential roles has been putting Canadian foodtech on the national radar — not just within industry circles, but in the business press, on mainstream broadcast news, and in front of policymakers.

Last year, CFIN released Foodtech in Canada: 2025 Ecosystem Report, released in the first comprehensive analysis of Canada's sector. It established the current extend of Canadian foodtech , and laid out the structural gaps achieving its full potential The report set a baseline reference that Canadian foodtech — and the media covering it — had never had before.

A year later, CFIN published Building Resilient Food Supply Chains Through Canadian Innovation, a report mapping Canada's food supply chain vulnerabilities and the homegrown technologies addressing them — from domestic processing capacity and operational efficiency to supply chain visibility and traceability. CFIN member companies were featured throughout as proof points. The coverage that followed put the work of those companies in front of millions of Canadians, generating 172 media hits and 39.4 million impressions.

Altogether, CFIN has secured more than 200 unique profiles and features across Canadian media over five years — the Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, Global News, the Logic, BNN Bloomberg, Maclean's, Techcouver, Calgary Tech, Entrevestor, Canadian Grocer, Food in Canada, and many more.

That coverage has served multiple purposes: national validation that elevates foodtech from a niche topic to an economic priority, regional profiles that spotlight local job creation and technology development, and industry deep-dives that put CFIN-funded innovations in front of the retailers, distributors, and manufacturers who can adopt them.

What Showing up Produces

Events and media are means, not ends. The value is in what they enable: the investor who meets a founder at Foodtech Next and writes a cheque six months later. The retailer who reads about a CFIN company in Canadian Grocer and picks up the phone. The international buyer who sees a presentation at SKS Japan and starts a partnership conversation.

Five years of consistent presence in person, online, and in the press has changed what it means to be a Canadian food innovator. The sector has a profile it didn't have five years ago. And that profile serves every member in our network.