Episode 23 of Bloom takes a big bite into some stories about food innovation in Edmonton and Alberta.
Mack Male joins co-hosts Faaiza Ramji and Karen Unland to discuss Taproot's recent story on Truffle, an Edmonton startup that seemed to come out of nowhere to secure $2.3 million in investment to further expand its cloud-based software platform for restaurants.
Truffle founder Omer Choudhary impressed Arden Tse of Yaletown Partners, whose Accelerate Fund III led the seed round.
"I could see that this is a guy that knows how to survive and can handle the pressure," said Tse, who is not only an investment manager but also a former restaurant owner. "So that certainly gave us a lot of confidence."
Learn more about where the idea came from, what makes Truffle different, and why Choudhary thinks his company can be "the next unicorn out of Alberta."
In the second half of the show, we dig into the new Agri-Food and Bioindustrial Innovation Program from Alberta Innovates, the farm-side innovations enabled by LandView Drones, and the limitations of online farmers' markets.
In our sponsor spot, learn more about Scaleup Edmonton from Darrell Petras of Innovate Edmonton.
Bloom is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and everywhere else you get your podcasts.