OUTCAST FOODS Raises $3M
by Outcast Foods
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(HALIFAX, NS) January 2, 2020: Shortly after winning Innovator of the Year, OUTCAST Foods announced it has closed a $3M financing round. The seemingly simple idea of upcycling surplus, misfit fruits & vegetables that are perfectly edible and turning them into long shelf life powders is attracting high profile investors.
When well-known entrepreneur Dr. Darren Burke & former NHL player TJ Galiardi co-founded OUTCAST Foods (formerly Beyond Food) they didn’t know how bad the food waste problem really was. “The more layers of the onion we peeled back, from grocers to farms, the more produce we found being tossed into a landfill” Galiardi said from his Halifax office. “We’ve found a way to create a full circle sustainable model out of highly nutritious produce that was needlessly being discarded.”
The pair has been conducting research on this problem for several years and have developed a unique sustainable food technology. Their patent-pending tech uses multiple innovations from machine learning to a novel, high efficiency drying invention recently commercialized. The combination of high-profile investors, advisors, and protected IP gives OUTCAST Foods a competitive advantage in this growing trend of upcycling.
The team has been working with a national grocer and several large-scale farms to help mitigate unnecessary food waste for over a year and has plans to move across the country and eventually, the globe. Dr. Darren Burke explains, “The magnitude of this situation motivates us. On one end of the food supply chain there are tonnes of fresh fruits & vegetables being buried and creating greenhouse gases (GHGs), and the other end there is significant food insecurity and children going to school hungry every day. By extending the shelf life of the valuable nutrients from food, we can find numerous beneficial uses such as natural health products, pet food, cosmetics, and more using our upcycling technology."
OUTCAST Foods is currently selling their upcycled nutrient-dense powders to large scale food companies across the globe, working with socially conscious grocers and farms to reduce food waste, and planning the construction of their first large scale zero waste facility.