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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Michael Wolf

Join Us Today as We Discuss How Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Culinary Creation

Admit it: you’ve probably played around with making recipes using AI. At this point, most of us have.

If you’re like me, the early results were… rough. But over time, general-purpose LLMs have become surprisingly good at whipping up recipes. Still, there’s a long way to go before AI becomes a true sous chef in our kitchens, and plenty of questions remain about where this is all going.

To help us explore what’s next in this month’s edition of our Food AI Co-Lab, we’re joined by two people who’ve been working at the intersection of AI and cooking for nearly a decade: James Briscione and Lav Varshney, co-creators of Chef Watson—the world’s first culinary AI. Their latest project, CulinAI, is an AI-powered app designed to create personalized meal plans.

Want to join the conversation, ask questions, and see where AI cooking is headed? Register for today’s Food AI Co-Lab here.

Introducing The Tomorrow Today Show With Mike Lee

Back in 2017, I wrote a story exploring the idea of personalized food profiles. The piece explored whether, someday, we might walk into restaurants, shop at the grocery store, or have dinner at a friend’s house and be able to communicate our food preferences and dietary restrictions in advance, shaping our entire meal journey accordingly.

The inspiration for that article came from Mike Lee, who had just spoken at our Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle that October. During his talk, he introduced the idea of a “food passport” that could someday help personalize food experiences wherever we go. I had gotten to know Mike through his work at The Future Market, where he developed a concept store of the future for the Fancy Food Show. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Mike has a rare ability to imagine the many possible futures of our food system and to understand how technology and social change might intersect to bring those futures to life.

However, it wasn’t until he published his book Mise: On the Future of Food that I fully appreciated the breadth of his thinking and the ways he can masterfully get his ideas across. In Mise, Mike not only describes big potential technologies and changes we will wrestle with in the future, but he gave us stories of how these changes might unfold in our lives.

In short, Mike is not only skilled at identifying early signals and trends, but he’s also a master of using storytelling to illustrate how these futures might unfold, which is why I’m super excited to welcome his new show to The Spoon Podcast Network: The Tomorrow Today Show.

In his new podcast, Mike takes listeners on a weekly deep dive into the future of food, whether it’s restaurants, farming, consumer products, nutrition, or even food hedonism. Each episode features long-form conversations that go beyond surface-level takes, offering nuanced insights from some of the most thoughtful voices in the industry.

In this first episode, The Future of Restaurants, Mike has a roundtable conversation with Kristen Hawley (Expedite), Elizabeth Tilton (Oyster Sunday), David Rodolitz (Flyfish Club), and yours truly. We explore everything from the role of empathy in hospitality to why chefs are trading molecular gastronomy for comfort food like pot pies.

Season one is launched, and you can watch the first episode below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate and review!

Mike is my guest on this week’s episode of The Spoon Podcast, so make sure to listen to that as well to hear a little more about Mike’s background.

The Future of Restaurants

ClearCOGS Raises $3.8M its AI-Powered Forecasting Software That Helps Restaurants Reduce Waste

AI-powered restaurant forecasting startup ClearCOGS has raised $3.8 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Closed Loop Partners, with participation from Myriad Venture Partners and Hearst’s Level Up Ventures. The funding includes $2.3 million in new capital and the conversion of $1.4 million in pre-seed investments. The company’s software provides predictive analytics to assist operators in making decisions around food prep, ordering, and staffing, with an emphasis on reducing food waste and improving operational efficiency.

Company CEO Matt Wampler told The Spoon that he came up with the idea of ClearCOGS during the pandemic. He’d been being laid off and was exploring coding and analytics, when he discovered his cousin who ran a Jimmy John’s franchise was still using a decade-old Excel forecast. Wampler wondered if AI could help create a better predicitve forecasting tool, and before long he had teamed up with Osa Osarenkhoe to build a solution that uses machine learning and time-series forecasting that currover 100 million data points a day.

When ClearCOGS participated in our first virtual Food AI Summit a couple of years ago, Osa and Matt had started experimenting with leveraging large language models (LLMs) like those from OpenAI to create an interface for their forecasting tool. I asked Matt how those experiments with LLMs had gone.

“We did a whole big thing with it… It didn’t go well,” said Wampler. “And it wasn’t from a technical standpoint. It was from the standpoint of the restaurant brands we were talking to… they were like, ‘Look, my general manager can either just get on and play with your AI bot and it’ll tell them, or you can just send it to them? Just send it to them.’”

Wampler said the LLM interface wasn’t the problem. It was just that operators didn’t want to interact with it at all. Instead, they just wanted the answers delivered to them, simply and directly, through email and integrations with solutions from Toast or SevenRooms. This experience reaffirmed Wampler’s belief that proprietary forecasting (and not LLM-powered conversational AI) is where ClearCOGS can deliver the most value.

“LLMs are kind of a commodity at this point. Proprietary data sets are what really matters… You still have to be able to provide a fundamental business value before that AI is really helpful.”

While many platforms offer dashboards or raw analytics, ClearCOGS focuses on delivering direct, decision-ready insights to restaurant managers. This is central to how he differentiates the company:

“If you’re a brand, you probably have 20 or 30 questions that you have to answer every day… We go really deep on those and provide a systematic way of delivering those to your operators every day.”

With the new capital, ClearCOGS plans to accelerate its product development and customer acquisition efforts, with an emphasis of better positioning itself in the food service sector. The company currently serves a customer base of 100 brands in four countries, and Matt says they plan to continue building a lean team, prioritizing automation and AI over headcount.

Vow Gets Greenlight in Australia As It Hits 1,200 Pounds Per Week of Cultivated Quail Meat

Vow, the Australian-based startup making foie gras and parfait from the cultivated cells of Japanese quail, announced a couple of big milestones this week, including what it claims to be the biggest ever production run of cultivated meat after harvesting 1,200 pounds of Japanese quail in a single week. This milestone was achieved using the company’s custom-designed 20,000-liter vessel designed entirely in-house.

This news comes the same week the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) officially approved Vow’s application to add cultivated quail to the Food Standards Code. The final step is a 60-day review period by ministers from each jurisdiction within Australia and New Zealand. If no objections are raised, Vow could begin selling its cultivated quail products across ANZ as early as June.

According to CEO George Peppou, the secret to Vow’s rapid progress isn’t just about bigger tanks—it’s about rebuilding the entire factory model from scratch.

“Pharma infrastructure just doesn’t work for food,” Peppou told me in a recent episode of The Spoon Podcast. “We designed our second factory using a completely vertically integrated approach—engineers, welders, software, everything in-house—and built it for a fraction of what others have spent.”

Vow believes its new plant can make cultivated meat at a cost that is 20-50 times cheaper than its competitors, and now Peppou says that the company is now being approached by others as a potential manufacturing partner who see their approach as one that could scale.

“We’ve seen this sort of interesting uptick recently of other companies approaching us to ask about contract manufacturing. We’ve got the capacity. We’re selling continuously and we do have some excess capacity that we can provide to other companies. So we’ve got a few projects underway at the moment, which has been a very interesting insight into how other philosophies have played out.”

You can listen to my full conversation below.

A New Approach to Cultivated Meat with Vow's George Peppou

Tariffs Pushing Consumer Hardware Makers into Crisis Mode

During normal times, running a hardware business is tough. Throw in a tariff-driven trade war, and it becomes a full-blown crisis.

Just ask Robin Liss. When the CEO of kitchen appliance maker Suvie saw that President Trump wasn’t backing down from imposing steep tariffs on products from China and beyond, she realized she’d have to move manufacturing out of China or risk her entire business.

Liss told CNBC she’d need to reconfigure Suvie’s manufacturing and supply chain operations on an accelerated timeline or miss out on her most important sales season in the fall.

From CNBC:

Suvie’s products—kitchen gadgets that can whip up dinner in a matter of minutes—are built in a facility located in one of China’s largest manufacturing hubs and consist of more than 500 components sourced throughout the country.

After running the numbers and calculating the costs associated with the new tariffs, Liss headed to Asia in March in search of a Plan B.

“I’m going to run out of appliances,” Liss said ahead of her two-week trip to Taiwan and Vietnam. “I’ve got to figure this out.”

While tariffs impact nearly any company with a global supply chain, consumer hardware manufacturers—from Apple and Google to Suvie—are especially vulnerable. That’s because most rely on Asian manufacturing after decades of offshoring has hollowed out U.S. manufacturing capacity. Bringing production stateside would require massive cost increases and a multi-year transition at best.

Suvie is just one of many hardware makers now scrambling to rewrite their supply chain playbook in response to the tariffs. The question is: how many can actually make the leap—and survive?

Food Recycler Startup Mill Hits $20M in Revenue as It Launches Mill for Workplace

Today, food recycler startup Mill disclosed (via Axios, scoop by my ex-Gigaom colleague Katie Fehrenbacher) that it has reached $20 million in trailing 12-month revenue. It also announced it is launching a new product line extension in Mill for Workplace.

The company, which makes a home food recycler, made headlines when it launched over two years ago, thanks to both its pedigreed founders (the CEO co-founded smart home startup Nest) and its upcycling service that turns processed food scraps into chicken feed.

Since then, Mill has continued to check off key milestones—an achievement worth noting, especially in today’s tough startup climate and in a niche category like home food waste management. Today, they hit another couple of big ones with the launch of a new product line and positive revenue growth.

The move into the business market makes sense, particularly since, as founder Matt Rogers shared in a LinkedIn post, Mill’s food recyclers are already in use at offices like Duolingo and Bristol Myers Squibb. The company’s Mill for Workplace landing page emphasizes how it will help businesses meet their sustainability goals and highlights Mill’s fleet management software.

As for revenue, while $20 million in sales is impressive, the analyst in me wants to know how much of that is hardware vs. recurring subscription revenue, and what their year-over-year growth rate looks like. My concern for any hardware company right now isn’t just the tough funding environment (though I expect Mill will look to raise another round), but also how their bill of materials and overall costs will be impacted by Trump’s new tariffs.

That said, Mill’s management has proven savvy from the start, offering a digestible monthly rental plan ($35/month as of today). I’d also expect they can command a higher monthly rate for business customers. Given their track record, I expect them to continue to navigate this space relatively well.

If you want to hear more about Mill’s business and their new business line, Mill President Harry Tannenbaum will be at Smart Kitchen Summit in July.

How DIY Solar and Fractionalized Battery Backup Could Accelerate Change in the Home Power Stack

Last week, weather forecasters warned of something rarely seen in the Seattle area—a tornado—which could have meant widespread power outages and property damage across the Pacific Northwest.

The first place my mind goes during extreme weather is power outages. The second? Whether it’s finally worth investing in a whole-home battery backup system.

Thankfully, the tornado never materialized, but that didn’t stop me from revisiting the question. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it before, but the harsh reality is that installing a home battery backup system can cost anywhere from $9,000 to $20,000, depending on the size of your home and the complexity of the installation.

That steep price tag doesn’t make much sense for someone like me who doesn’t have solar panels, especially since I’m primarily interested in keeping the food in my fridge from defrosting and spoiling during an outage. But now, there’s a new option that might be a better fit: a backup battery made specifically for appliances.

That’s what I discussed on my most recent podcast with Cole Ashman, the CEO of Pila Energy. Pila debuted their appliance battery system last month at SXSW and is part of a growing wave of startups reimagining home energy storage by breaking it down—fractionalizing it—across individual appliances.

Over the past year, I’ve spoken with Sam D’Amico of Impulse and Sam Callisch of Copper, two startups building battery-powered induction stoves. So when I heard that Pila was developing a backup battery that could work with any large appliance, I was intrigued. Even more compelling was Pila’s vision for a mesh power network, where multiple Pila batteries can coordinate via software to optimize and distribute energy across the home.

“We’re taking the battery out of the garage and into the future,” said Ashman on the podcast. He explained that Pila’s approach is to fractionalize and virtualize what you’d typically get from a Tesla Powerwall or other whole-home backup system. That means creating smaller, more affordable batteries—each powering a single appliance—that work together as a virtual battery system. This lets users skip the five-figure investment and electrician, while still gaining insights into energy usage and unlocking cost savings through time-of-use optimization.

Ashman, who previously worked on Tesla’s Powerwall and led product at Span (makers of the smart electrical panel), sees Pila as a more accessible alternative. “Only about a quarter to half a percent of homes in the U.S. have smart batteries,” he said. “We want to make energy security something anyone can afford.”

According to Ashman, Pila’s battery can power a standard refrigerator for up to 32 hours. It plugs directly into the appliance and automatically kicks in during an outage. The company is also planning for future support of bidirectional power, meaning the battery could one day feed energy back into the home or grid—much like the latest EVs.

One especially interesting part of our conversation focused on the rise of DIY solar. In the U.S., most solar installations are handled by professionals and often cost tens of thousands of dollars. But in countries like Germany, consumers are increasingly turning to “balcony solar”—plug-in solar panels that hang off a balcony and don’t require professional installation or massive upfront investment.

Utah’s recent passage of House Bill 340 may help kick-start a similar trend in the U.S. The bill allows solar systems up to 1.2 kW AC to plug directly into standard 120V outlets without needing complicated interconnection applications or paying utility fees, as long as they meet NEC and UL safety standards. Ashman believes H.B. 340 could lower the barrier to entry for both renters and homeowners, creating a more democratized approach to renewable energy—and accelerating the adoption of home battery systems like Pila’s in the process.

For now, Pila is accepting $99 reservations for its first battery, which is expected to ship in late 2025 at a discounted price of $999 (MSRP $1,299). “We’re starting with the fridge,” said Ashman, “but this isn’t just about food—it’s about resilience, safety, and putting energy control back into people’s hands.”

Bottom line, Pila, and others like Impulse, Copper, and BioLite, are changing the in-home power stack, and I’m definitely here for it, especially if it means I don’t need to take out a second mortgage to do it.

You can watch our conversation on YouTube, listen to my full conversation below, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Food Assembly Robot Startup Chef Robotics Raises $43M Series A as it Reaches 40 Million Meal Milestone

Chef Robotics has raised $43.1 million in a Series A round to accelerate deployment of its AI-powered food assembly robots, the company announced today. The funding brings the San Francisco-based startup’s total capital to over $65 million, including equipment financing. Avataar led the round, with participation from Construct Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and others.

Founded in 2019, Chef Robotics is building what founder and CEO Rajat Bhageria calls an “AI platform for food.” Rather than building a single-purpose robot, Chef’s system is designed to work in diverse food production environments—learning and adapting through software to new tasks like portioning, topping, or filling.

When I first got a peek at Chef’s system last year, I was intrigued because the company had struck a balance that seemed to elude many food robotics startups. While startups in this space seemed to make either high-volume solutions with limited customizability or use off-the-shelf robotic arms that aren’t made for true high-production, Chef has built a flexible and scalable robotics platform that can be customized for any number of high-volume food production environments.

That’s because while many robotics companies focus primarily on hardware, Chef’s approach centers on a software layer that enables “Embodied AI”—giving physical robots the intelligence to operate autonomously in real-world conditions. Chef’s system combines a robotic arm with AI models trained on millions of real-world examples. These models, powered by production data from early customers like Amy’s Kitchen and Fresh Prep, allow the robots to generalize across new ingredients and dishes. To date, Chef Robotics has helped assemble over 40 million meals.

From the company’s announcement: When we thought about starting with restaurants, we ran into the chicken and egg problem – to enable robots that are flexible enough to add value, we need a highly capable AI, but to get a highly capable AI, we need real-world training data from the customer sites…. Thus, we decided to initially deploy robots in high-mix (read as highly flexible) food production and manufacturing environments where Chef could partially automate a food operation and thus add value in production to customers without requiring 100% full autonomy from the get-go. We built Chef’s systems on modern advancements in AI to make them highly flexible and adaptable enough to “pick” and plate almost any ingredient, no matter how it’s cut, cooked, or grown; this makes them an ideal solution for assembling or plating food.  

The new capital will support scaling up deployments and building out Chef’s sales and marketing teams. The company is currently active in the U.S. and Canada, with plans to expand into the UK next year.

Why Ag Has a Unique Opportunity to Be a Solution to Our Climate Problem With TNC’s Renée Vassilos

What if the food system could be a climate solution instead of a climate problem? That’s the question Eva Goulbourne explores with Renée Vassilos, Director of Agriculture Innovation at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), in the debut episode of Everything But the Carbon Sink. Together, they unpack the role of agriculture in addressing the climate crisis—and why capital and innovation are key to unlocking its potential.

“Agriculture has a tremendous negative footprint in terms of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Vassilos. “But it’s also uniquely positioned to be a carbon sink.”

Vassilos explained that by focusing on soil health, reduced inputs, and practices like cover cropping and rotational grazing, farms can become drivers of climate resilience, biodiversity, and profitability. “At the core of how we think about regenerative agriculture, it is about soil health. It’s about rebuilding soil health,” she said. “Because as we think about the role agriculture can play in climate change mitigation, halting and reversing biodiversity loss, and improving freshwater systems, it all anchors around rebuilding soil health.”

Goulbourne believes that the concept of regenerative agriculture can feel messy and hard to pin down. “There are practices, there are values. It’s not one-size-fits-all.” Vassilos agreed, noting that what works in one region or operation might not work in another. “Each operation will have to anchor itself in rebuilding soil health, and the tools they’ll use will vary.”

They also discussed the economic realities farmers face. “It all comes down to economics,” said Vassilos. “The operations that are shifting to regenerative are doing so because it makes business sense, often because they’re producing higher-margin food crops.”

However, with high labor costs, land leasing complexity, and limited short-term ROI, adoption remains slow. To address this, TNC is investing in early-stage agtech solutions aimed at removing the so-called green premium. One example cited by Vassilos is SwarmFarm, an Australian startup building autonomous, lightweight farm equipment. “Their robots enable precise nitrogen application without the heavy soil compaction of traditional machinery,” Vassilos explained.

My favorite part of the conversation is when Goulbourne asked Vasillos what the “ugly baby” in this space is – in other words, the problem in ag that no one wants to touch.

Vassilos didn’t hesitate: “Addressing labor challenges is just absolutely critical,” she said. “These regenerative systems are more complex. That often means they take different kinds of labor, sometimes more labor. We have to be honest about that.” She pointed to emerging technologies in automation as promising, but noted it’s still an underfunded area given its significance.

It was a great conversation, one that really highlights Eva Goulbourne’s unique perspective on the different pathways for capital to help address the climate challenge through the food system. I would encourage you to subscribe to the podcast to ensure you get all of the future Everything But the Carbon Sink pods and check out the video below!

Farming for the Future

Keurig is Beta Testing Compostable Pods as Partner CoffeeB Blows Past 400 Thousand Customers

It was a year ago that Keurig announced it had begun working with CoffeeB to create its next-generation compostable coffee pod. The new pod, a puck-shaped consumable called the K-Round, features a fully compostable, plant-based container and was introduced alongside the company’s next-generation single-serve coffee brewer, the Alta.

So when the company announced last week that both the K-Rounds and the Alta brewer are currently undergoing beta testing in consumer homes, I was intrigued, as it looks like we may finally be inching closer to a post-plastic future in the world of single-use coffee. According to Keurig Dr Pepper, they are leveraging insights gathered during consumer testing to optimize the unboxing experience, brewer performance, and the taste and aroma of the beverages produced.

Keurig said it has launched operations at a new, proprietary pilot manufacturing line at its R&D center in Burlington, Massachusetts, where it’s producing the initial batches of K-Round pods for beta testing. This facility will serve as the foundation for refining the manufacturing process as the company scales toward mass production. Keurig also noted it has broken ground on a new roasting and production facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

The company provided updates on the Alta’s variable pressure brewing technology, which allows for adjustments in brewing pressure to create different types of barista-quality coffee—including a golden, velvety crema (finally giving them the ability to rival Nespresso’s centrifuge-derived crema). Keurig says four varieties of K-Rounds have been developed and are currently undergoing testing, with plans to expand the selection in the coming months.

The company also disclosed it is undergoing third-party testing to certify that its K-Round pods are compostable in both industrial and home settings. They say they are on track to achieve certification ahead of the broader product launch, aligning with their goal to make 100% of their packaging recyclable or compostable by 2025 (and to further distance themselves from past criticism over unfulfilled sustainability claims).

While Keurig’s progress on a sustainable pod system validates CoffeeB’s technology (Keurig’s system incorporates CoffeeB’s tech along with some of its proprietary IP), the Swiss-based division of Delica AG has been experiencing rapid growth on its own, doubling the number of brewing systems in the field from 200,000 in September 2023 to 400,000 by early 2024.

The Food & Retail AI Rollup Continues as Crisp Buys Shelf Engine

Crisp, a New York-based retail data company, has acquired Seattle-based startup Shelf Engine. Founded in 2016 by Stefan Kalb and Bede Jordan, Shelf Engine specializes in using machine learning to optimize ordering processes for perishable goods, with the goal of reducing costs and minimizing food waste. The platform is now in use across more than 7,000 stores. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Shelf Engine was one of the earliest adopters of AI technology in food retail aimed at reducing waste and optimizing fresh food ordering. Kalb, who launched a food distribution business at 23 and holds degrees in actuarial science and economics, developed the idea during a 2014 ski trip with his friend and engineer Bede Jordan, a former Microsoft HoloLens developer. The pair questioned why food industry processes and systems remained outdated:

“Could we create a platform that enables retailers to buy food and eliminate significant waste? Could we create a platform that eliminates redundant busywork between vendors and retailers? Could we create a more perfect marketplace?”

These questions led Kalb and Jordan to develop a product designed to drive the food industry towards greater efficiency through technology.

Kalb reflected on the deal on LinkedIn:

“What started as a side project with my good friend Bede turned into a platform that’s now in over 7,000 stores across the U.S., helping reduce millions of pounds of food waste. It’s been eight years of wild highs, humbling challenges, and so much growth.”

Crisp plans to integrate Shelf Engine’s advanced algorithms into its commerce platform. The company believes the integration will help its retailer customers optimize in-stock inventory, improve shelf management, and drive revenue in an increasingly margin-sensitive retail environment.​

“Joining forces with Crisp allows us to scale our proven technology and deliver greater value to retailers and their supplier partners,” said Kalb. “Together, we will set a new standard in forecasting and inventory management, helping our customers thrive even in challenging market conditions.”​

This news is yet another in a series of acquisition announcements for early pioneers who are building technology leveraging AI to optimize different parts of the food value chain. Earlier this month AI Palette was gobbled up by trend forecaster Global Data, and before that Spoonshot was acquired by Target. Like other buyers in these deals, Crisp provides predictive intelligence software and services and is buying Shelf Engine to improve their AI insights capabilities.

Unlike these previous deals, Crisp and Shelf Engine focus more on retail and supply chain commerce optimization, which is one of the areas that is seeing the greatest leaps forward in productivity and cost-reduction. My guess is Afresh, which is similar to Shelf Engine and remains independent following its $115 million in series B funding in 2022, may also be one of the next companies gobbled up as bigger software and supply chain players look to add AI capabilities to their products.

How Tariffs Are Impacting Canadian Food Companies (and What They’re Doing About It)

Last week, I caught up with Dana McCauley, CEO of the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN), to discuss some of the challenges facing Canadian food manufacturers amidst the abrupt and surprisingly hostile stance taken by the Trump administration towards our northern neighbors.

CFIN is a national organization dedicated to helping Canadian food and beverage businesses enhance productivity, competitiveness, and economic potential through innovation and technology adoption, and in her position as president of the organization, McCauley had a bird’s eye view on how the Canadian food companies are navigating considerable uncertainty due to shifts in trade policies, tariffs, and antagonistic rhetoric from the U.S. administration

We discussed the disruption caused by sudden policy reversals on trade agreements previously established between Canada and the U.S., and what the imposition of tariffs has meant to Canadian food companies. According to McCauley, the uncertainty forces Canadian food companies to spend extensive resources on scenario planning, detracting from productivity and innovation. McCauley pointed out that these issues are magnified in the food business compared to other industries because of the food’s unique constraints compared to other sectors, such as limited shelf life.

Another struggle for Canadian food manufacturers under the new reality is figuring out how to move forward in a business that often involves complex products that historically have integrated cross-border ingredient lists. McCauley shared the example of organic dairy products, which traditionally have included American-sourced dairy components for value-added products. McCauley said that rising tariffs and trade barriers now render these business models economically unsustainable, prompting businesses to rethink their strategies drastically.

And then there’s the hostile rhetoric from an administration of a country that Canadians have long-seen as their biggest ally. McCauley has said that the result of this rhetoric has been a strong push among consumers to “buy Canadian”. The shift to Canadian and drop American products has been swift and one has to wonder about the long-term damage that Trump is doing to the American brand in Canada and elsewhere.

I asked McCauley how CFIN is supporting Canadian companies given all the sudden changes, and she said that CFIN is actively supporting Canadian food businesses through this volatile period by advocating for enhanced domestic innovation and accelerated regulatory approvals for low-risk food technologies. She emphasized the urgency for Canadian food manufacturers to diversify markets, embrace domestic technological solutions, and leverage Canada’s extensive international trade agreements to navigate ongoing trade uncertainties effectively.

We talk about lots more, so you won’t want to miss our conversation. You can listen to my full conversation below or on The Spoon Podcast.

How Tariffs Are Impacting The Canadian Food Industry