Welcome to YODL! In addition to daily original content, YODL helps CFIN Members find new partners, resources, and funding opportunities to grow their food business. Learn more about this growing community and become a CFIN Member (for free!) today.
Canada has an extensive range of research centres, food incubators, accelerators and labs supporting food and beverage innovation through the research they do and/or the services they offer. Each week throughout 2023, we’ll be highlighting an organization that’s supporting food innovation in Canada.
Location: North Vancouver, BC
Mission: Good to Grow is a team of food industry experts and business educators who create success for food and beverage brands.
Focus: The company has supported hundreds of food and beverage brands in realizing business success through workshops, cohorts, one-on-one coaching, and signature events.
Services: Good to Grow offers one-on-one business coaching for growth and business development at all steps of the client’s business. It offers one-day workshops that cover topics such as business and financial planning, market access, product development, distribution, and trade, consumer and digital marketing. The Sprout Series, a seven-part workshop series, prepares new and emerging brands to diversify their market channels and sell into grocery retail, foodservice, and institutional foodservice. The Hatch Your Farm & Food Business workshop is a six-part workshop starting on November 4, 2023 in collaboration with BC Association of Farmers’ Markets, with support from the Island Coastal Economic Trust.
The company also offers commercial kitchen space for food and beverage businesses to create and store products. Good to Grow also offers product development and production services including nutritional labelling, ingredient sourcing, product improvement, sensory analysis, scale up support, co-packing support, setting uniform standards for production, food safety and quality support, development of a HACCP plan, and support with regulatory compliance and certifications.
What you Need to Know: Good to Grow is involved with several larger events, including the From The Ground Up Trade Show, featuring BC food and beverage brands; the From The Ground Up Conference, featuring a day of interactive panel discussions on expanding a growing food and beverage business; and Pitch & Plate, a Feed BC initiative, delivered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food in collaboration with B.C. food industry educators, Good to Grow and Feed BC public sector institutions. It is a platform for BC institutional foodservice organizations to learn about and connect with local food and beverage producers and processors. The next Pitch & Plate events take place online on November 23, 2023, with a deadline to apply by October 9, 2023, and in-person and online on February 7, 2024, with a deadline to apply by November 3, 2023.