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.
Name: Venturepark Labs.
Location: Calgary, AB (accelerator) and North York, ON (food incubator).
Focus: Venturepark Labs is a non-profit organization supporting early-stage entrepreneurs in the food and wellness industries. It is part of Venturepark, a business growth ecosystem in Calgary, AB.
Mission: To help aspiring food entrepreneurs develop their innovative ideas, grow their concepts, commercialize, and achieve accelerated growth.
Services: The Food Incubator offers shared commercial kitchens and private production spaces for early-stage food companies to develop their products. Other services include live events, an online resource library, mentorship opportunities, and support through the business incubator program, which offers help with research and development, production, business fundamentals, and scaling distribution. The organization’s four-month accelerator program helps entrepreneurs scale their products, while receiving one-on-one guidance from industry advisors, sessions on market research, training in sales strategy and forecasting, and connections to investment capital opportunities.
What you need to know: The Food Incubator features eight commercial kitchens of different sizes, refrigerated units, specialized food production equipment, onsite storage offering cold, frozen and/or ambient temperatures for ingredients and finished products, separate receiving and shipping areas, and access to meeting rooms.
Notable news: Venturepark Labs was founded in 2015 as District Ventures Accelerator and District Ventures Kitchen by Arlene Dickinson, and was renamed in 2021. Since 2019 the Food Incubator has helped establish close to 100 food companies, including Firecracker Pepper Sauce, Easy Peasy Pancakes, BUZZD and Yumba. More than 200 brands have worked with the organization’s accelerator program since 2015, together representing $180 million in sales annually.
Get involved: Contact Venturepark Labs at accelerator@districtventures.ca, or at (403) 237-2388, or reach out to our Regional Innovation Director for Western Canada, Hubba Khaton.
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