Blogs

Thank you to the 280+ attendees who joined us at Foodtech Next 2026 last week . It was energizing to see funders, founders, policymakers, and industry leaders come together at the Rogers Centre to celebrate Canadian food innovation and chart the path toward Food 4.0. The event came at a pivotal time for Canada's food sector. The last few weeks have seen more capital and policy attention flowing toward Canadian agri-food than we've seen in years. M omentum is building , but the challenges we face remain immense — Foodtech Next laid out the roadmap we need to navigate those challenges. ...
Consumer-facing food technology occupies a unique position in Canada's innovation landscape. Unlike upstream innovations in ingredients or processing, consumer apps and services sit at the point of decision—the moment when a person chooses what to eat, how to prepare it, and where it comes from. That proximity to behaviour makes this category both commercially promising and increasingly influential in shaping how Canadians eat. Since 2021, Consumer Apps and Services has accounted for 6% of all CFIN program submissions and approximately $345,000 in awarded funding. While this represents the smallest funding allocation among CFIN's ...
Canada’s restaurant industry is caught in a structural squeeze. Labour shortages have left tens of thousands of foodservice positions unfilled—the h ighest vacancy rate of any sector in the country. More than half of operators are running at a loss or barely breaking even. Food costs have jumped 22% since 2022 , and 7,000 Canadian restaurant s permanently shuttered in 2025 . For an industry that employs 1.2 million workers and generates over $100 billion in annual revenue, these pressures are existential. That urgency show s up in CFIN’s portfolio of funded ...
Food waste in Canada’s supply chain rarely comes from carelessness. More often, it results from decisions made under uncertainty: processors hedging against unknown shelf life, distributors rejecting products out of caution, and retailers disposing of inventory because the risk of keeping it is too high. The system loses edible food because operators don’t know enough early enough. Canadian innovators are using artificial intelligence to tighten that information gap, giving producers, processors, and distributors clearer signals about quality, timing, and surplus. Earlier Signals From the Field ...
In a sector defined by thin margins and complex supply chains, food safety failures now trigger immediate economic consequences: product recalls, halted production, lost export access, terminated retailer contracts, and long-tail reputational damage that can take years to unwind. At the same time, regulatory pressure is intensifying. New traceability rules under the U.S. FDA’s FSMA 204, tightening EU import laws for seafood and animal products, and voluntary buyer mandates from major retailers are all reshaping the business case for traceability. This is forcing a shift from episodic inspection and after-the-fact recalls to continuous ...
New product development in food manufacturing has always been slow, iterative, and expensive. Formulation teams test dozens of variations, measure sensory performance, adapt to ingredient availability, and try to anticipate how a product will perform with consumers months after launch. Those cycles are shrinking, but the expectations placed on R&D teams continue to grow. Canadian companies are now using AI to cut through some of that uncertainty. Not to replace food scientists, but to give them better information before they commit to expensive prototypes and long development cycles. Predictive Insight Before a ...
Artificial intelligence is no longer an emerging technology in food and beverage—it is becoming ubiquitous . As AI accelerates research, formulation, quality assurance, and supply-chain decision-making, it is also compressing the timelines that once defined intellectual property strategy. That tension sat at the centre of CFIN’s recent webinar on Intellectual Property in the Age of AI . The session brought together perspectives from academia, legal practice, and industry, featuring Steve De Brabandere and Dr. Maria G. Corradini (University of Guelph), Lorelei ...
Canada's food sector faces a productivity paradox. With 4,700 small and medium-sized processors employing nearly 6 million Canadians, the industry remains fragmented, undercapitalized, and increasingly vulnerable to trade shocks and consolidation pressures. CFIN ’s CEO , Dana McCauley , and VP of Programs , Alex Barlow , hosted a webinar in partnership with Food in Canada on January 21 to discuss how CFIN's Food 4.0 Action Plan addresses these structural challenges. T he conversation largely centered on how we can scale Canadian ...
Few areas of food system transformation combine economic, environmental, and regulatory urgency quite like food waste. At every stage of the value chain—from farms to processing facilities, retailers to homes—Canada discards edible food at industrial scale. Every year, we toss out over 20 million tonnes of food intended for human consumption. That waste costs the economy an estimated $58 billion in lost value —the equivalent of nearly 3% of national GDP. It also generates more than 25 million tonnes of CO₂e in avoidable emissions annually , primarily from decomposing organic matter in landfills. ...
Image Courtesy of the Globe & Mail This morning, the federal government announced a new package of affordability measures, including a temporary increase to the GST credit aimed at easing grocery costs for lower-income Canadians. The intended immediate effect is household relief. The more important signal for the food sector is how affordability is being framed. Rather than focusing narrowly on retail prices, the announcement points upstream—to supply chains, production capacity, and the ability of the food system to absorb disruption before costs reach consumers. Critically, the measures aim ...
Canada’s food safety framework is one of the strongest in the world, backed by regulatory oversight, scientific validation, and routine inspection. But in high-volume food processing environments, even the best systems have blind spots. Random sampling, lab turnaround times, and human error leave windows where contaminants or spoilage risks can go undetected . Th ose blind spots are where artificial intelligence is starting to make a material difference. By pairing real-time sensors with machine learning algorithms, companies can now monitor every unit on the line—not just a subset. This improves detection accuracy, speeds up ...
Canada’s food supply chains stretch across long distances and multiple jurisdictions . For exporters, maintaining product quality and meeting documentation requirements—across languages, formats, and regulatory regimes—is increasingly complex. Errors in this chain can lead to spoilage, rejected shipments, or delays at the border. Large manufacturers often manage this through enterprise systems and compliance teams. F or small and mid-sized firms, however, the process is fragmented. Many still rely on manual entries, spreadsheets, and ad hoc coordination across suppliers and buyers. But advances in a rtificial intelligence ...
NextGen Food & Ingredients has become one of the most powerful drivers of Canada’s food innovation economy. Since 2021, this category has accounted for 22 percent of all CFIN program applications and nearly $7.7 million in awarded funding—the largest share across CFIN’s eight innovation priority areas. These projects sit at the intersection of biotechnology, nutrition, and sustainability, precisely where much of Canada’s future food manufacturing value will be created. This concentration of activity tells its own story. Canada’s food innovation ecosystem is shifting from product development to platform building—from brands that ...
Once treated primarily as a branding surface or a cost cent re , food packaging is now emerging as a flashpoint for climate action, regulatory enforcement, and operational resilience. From grocers trialing reusable container systems to startups commercializing compostable bioplastics, the packaging economy is entering a new phase. That shift is clearly visible in CFIN’s programming. Since 2021, Food Packaging has accounted for 11% of all program submissions and nearly $1.8 million in awarded funding, making it one of the most consistently active innovation domains in our innovation portfolio—trailing ...
Few areas of food innovation are undergoing more rapid change than supply chains. Once siloed, analog, and reactive, Canada’s food supply networks are being reengineered around real-time data, AI optimization, and predictive resilience. As cost pressures, regulatory demands, and consumer expectations converge, digital supply chain innovation has moved from a nice-to-have to a competitive imperative. That shift is sharply reflected in CFIN’s project portfolio. Since 2021, Digital Supply Chain Solutions have accounted for 11% of all program submissions and over $3.4 million in awarded funding—making it one of the highest-funded innovation domains in ...
As food businesses plan for 2026, a familiar set of pressures is converging: tighter consumer budgets, faster innovation cycles, rising expectations around value and performance, and growing uncertainty about where to place bets. These dynamics were at the centre of CFIN’s Outlook for Food Innovation in 2026 webinar that brought together senior R&D, culinary, and futures perspectives to examine how food innovation priorities are shifting—and what that means for product, technology, and strategy decisions in the year ahead. The discussion was host ed by Dana McCauley, CEO of the Canadian Food ...
Canada’s food manufacturing sector has lived through years of labour shortages, rising input costs, and increasing pressure to maintain throughput. Many facilities are still running lines designed decades ago: equipment retrofits bolted onto legacy systems, inconsistent staffing levels, and manual tasks that slow down or destabilize production. Most plants are not chasing futuristic, fully autonomous factories. They are trying to maintain stable operations with too few hands and increasing regulatory and commercial demands. That is the context in which AI-enabled automation and robotics are gaining traction—not ...
Missed our latest webinar on safeguarding your intellectual property (IP) in China ? You can now watch the full recording here . Hosted by CFIN’s VP of Programs, Alex Barlow, the session brought together experts from the Embassy of Canada to China, McCain Foods, and the Trade Commissioner Service (TCS). Together, they broke down how China’s rapidly evolving IP landscape works in practice—and what Canadian foodtech companies must do to avoid costly, sometimes irreversible mistakes. China remains a major opportunity for innovative food and agtech firms, but it’s also one of the ...
Missed Boosting Business Productivity with BDC’s Chief Economist ? You can now watch the full recording here . Hosted by CFIN CEO Dana McCauley in conversation with Pierre Cléroux , VP Research and Chief Economist at BDC, the session dug into Canada’s productivity gap, why it matters for food and beverage processors, and what practical steps SMEs can take to improve efficiency and margins without betting the farm (or factory) on massive capital projects. Three Key Takeaways 1. Productivity is about profit and resilience, not working harder. Pierre was blunt: if your business ...
Missed Data that Delivers: Unpuzzling Consumer & Category Insights with NIQ ? You can now watch the full recording here . The session brought together NielsenIQ’s Francis Parisien and Cedric Bélanger with founders Suzie Yorke (The Little Cacao Co., Love Good Fats) and Chris Magnone (Temple Lifestyle Brands / Thirsty Buddha, Rise Kombucha). Together, they broke down how Canadian food and beverage SMEs can use data to launch smarter, grow faster, and avoid expensive missteps—and why having NIQ category snapshots included in a CFIN+ membership gives smaller brands a level of insight they normally ...