At the Top of the Food Chain
Bradley Crepeau is on a mission to keep food waste out of landfills. It’s a bold ambition, and one he’s already starting to accomplish with Ottawa’s Food Cycle Science. Here’s what he told us about innovation, the FoodCycler and his journey with Ontario’s angel investors who supported this incredible endeavour.
By Suzanne Grant
Originally published in Ottawa Founders is an original Ottawa Business Jounral column prepared by the Capital Angel Network. The purpose is to celebrate leaders in the community creating the future.
When you see an opportunity to do something better—to benefit the planet and satisfy your entrepreneurial aspirations—you take it.
This business-first mindset stems from his inherent entrepreneurial spirit (his father owned multiple businesses), but also from his dedication to seeking out opportunities, taking calculated risks and setting goals. In this case, Crepeau’s mission has always been well-defined: Food Cycle Science aims to inspire folks to take ownership of their dinner scraps, the produce they forget about at the back of their refrigerators, half-eaten sandwiches that come home in school lunchboxes. Crepeau had been working in experiential marketing for Fortune 500 brands and property restoration until Arthur suggested they look at food waste in Canada and the US, comparing the landscape with what was happening in Asian markets. “We started exploring technologies being used in those countries to support more efficient food waste management systems than the traditional solutions, and we struck a deal with a manufacturer to be the exclusive distributor of their technology in North America. It was an innovative approach,” he says. “The value proposition back then was the same as it is now: How can we better handle food waste at the source—for average consumers and in places where there’s hundreds or thousands of pounds of food waste a week? How do we divert it from landfills and transform it into something useful? To achieve mass adoption, we knew we couldn’t come up with something that’s better for the environment but is more expensive and less convenient.”
Research led the partners to sobering statistics about participation rates in municipal green bin programs—it’s low; most municipalities struggle to get half of their residents to participate. “When you peel back the onion, it’s a really inefficient system. Trucks are sent to collect waste from bins left at the curb, it’s taken to a centralized processing facility, pre-screened, treated, and what’s left is often contaminated, so it ends up going to a landfill anyway.
Why go through all those steps to divert from landfills when that’s where they end up,” says Crepeau. “This isn’t always the best solution, especially when it comes to rural and remote communities, which make up a third of Canada’s population.”
Finding a better solution was the challenge the two took on, along with their product developers. Knowing people produce about 475 pounds of food waste each year, they started by designing a high-tech food-waste recycler for residential use—an appliance to replace the one that’s likely sitting on your countertop as you read this. Food scraps (everything except for big beef bones) can be tossed into the FoodCycler, which is about as big as a bread maker and has a five-litre bucket capacity. Inside the appliance is a grinding system that pulverizes, say, last night’s chicken wings and potato skins, turning them into a coffee-ground-like organic soil amendment within a few hours. This dirt can be used in your garden as a nutrient-rich fertilizer—the company has done extensive projects with Ottawa’s Carleton University to show its effectiveness. (And even if you’re not a gardener or simply uninterested in further usage, the waste can go in your green bin or garbage.) There are other huge bonuses here: Unlike your green bin, the FoodCycler doesn’t generate methane gas emissions or emit odours of rotting food or—its refillable carbon filter eliminates unpleasant smells. Plus, it’s quieter than an air fryer, uses the same amount of electricity as a microwave and it reduces food-waste volume by a whopping 90 percent.
To say interest and uptake in Food Cycle Science’s solutions have grown in the past few years is a major understatement. “Through our pilot programs, we learned residents are willing to take ownership of their waste if you’re willing to provide them with a good tool to do it. More than 90 percent of participants use it and reported impressive reductions in waste,” says Crepeau. Many cities and towns are jumping on the bandwagon—they’re investing in FoodCyclers and subsidizing the purchase price. “Some municipalities, like Nelson, B.C., have bought one for every single household, and they’ve provided them free of charge because they’ve done the math, looked at the impact and found it’s a cheaper and better alternative to curbside collection programs,” he says. “It wasn’t an easy sell to city councils, and it took us 18 months to get the first one to buy into this concept. Now neighbouring municipalities to areas using the FoodCycler are asking their councils why they’re spending more on a curbside program that’s not as good for the environment. The data speaks for itself; the proof is in the pudding.”
Ontario angel investors have also taken note of Food Cycle Science’s mission, but they got on board early on, back when Crepeau and Arthur were ready to make significant investment in the research and development of their own tools and manufacturing processes. “We started as distributors of products that already existed, but we knew if we could invest in further innovation, it would allow us to scale,” he says. So, in 2018, they did their first raise, and were efficient with capital, quickly generating profits to reinvest into the business. “There was one subsequent raise with the existing group of angels—which included investors from our local angel group, Capital Angel Network (CAN), and last year, we bought out the angels who originally invested. We were able to make an offer and delivered returns to early angels.”
It's hasn’t just been win-win for the founders and angels—residents have also reported incredible results. “When a typical family leaves the grocery stores, one in four bags end up in the garbage. And when you have a bucket of waste that’s overflowing on your counter, you start to consider the price of groceries and what you’re throwing out—people who use the FoodCycler are changing their habits,” Crepeau says. “When you begin to manage your own waste, you start to take closer note of what’s being wasted. We could have the best recycling solutions in the world, but if we don’t change our behaviour as a society, we’re never going to catch up to the ongoing food waste crisis that exists today.”
Crepeau and his team (there are now 50 employees, and they plan to hire 10 more this year) have their sights set on finding the best recycling solutions not just for homeowners, but for industries that see the most waste—businesses and municipalities. “We’re exploring how to take our portfolio of technology and apply it to these end-users. What’s on the market now is too expensive and it’s hard for restaurants that don’t have serious environmental initiatives to justify the investment. We can do something that doesn’t involve having a truck coming on a regular basis,” he says. They’re also looking far and wide for good partners. While they’re continuing to build out their business with municipalities across Canada, Food Cycle Science is already making a mark overseas—they’ve seen incredible success in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, to name a few, and they recently entered the market in South Korea. And with a new product on the way—the FoodCycler Eco 3 (which leaves a smaller footprint on countertops but processes more than the FoodCycler FC-50)—innovation continues to grow, and that’s key for Crepeau. “Innovation drives me. We have to continue developing this category from a user-experience perspective,” he says. “That—and the innovations we develop—is what will ultimately give us staying power and allow us to maintain our leadership in the category.”