My perspective - Food fight!
- Details
- Published on Thursday, August 13, 2015
By Kate Jackman-Atkinson
The Neepawa Banner
Who doesn’t love a food fight? Especially one in which you’re unlikely to ruin your favourite clothes with food stains? When the Great Manitoba Food Fights returns this fall, food entrepreneurs will have such a chance.
It’s a pretty neat way to support and promote locally created food products.
The competition is for food entrepreneurs who have developed a new or innovative food product, but not fully commercialized it yet. Anyone can submit their idea in the first round. From those applications, 10 finalists are chosen to compete for the three top prizes. They are chosen based on the information in their applications and the commercial viability of their product.
The 10 finalists will showcase their products at the Food Fight and get feedback from industry judges. They will also have the chance to win one of three prize packages, which include credits towards product development and marketing. The awards help the winners accelerate the commercialization of their product.
Since the competition began in 2007, more than 100 entrepreneurs have taken part in the event.
Agriculture is an extremely important part of rural Manitoba’s economy but it’s missing something. While we produce lots of high quality raw materials, the development of value-added processing has been slow. For the most part, turning those raw materials into consumer ready products is being done elsewhere. We aren’t benefitting from the jobs or tax revenue or extra money Manitoba farmers could earn selling a specialized, non-commodity product.
While we want food processing, the failure of Rancher’s Choice/Keystone Processors highlights the challenges of setting up large-scale food processing from scratch. Manitoba Cattle Enhancement Council spent $6.5 million to get a slaughter plant in Winnipeg up and running, plus the millions it spent at the project’s initial location in Dauphin. It went defunct, only ever processing a few animals.
I’m glad to see the province has learned from this experience and I really like this initiative because it helps people take an idea to the next level. The prizes help them with product development and marketing. For some, the money is used to help refine the product, for example, through working with the Food Development Centre. For others, the prize is used to help an existing product break into a new market, such as a bakery wanting to sell their most popular products in retail grocery stores. This type of funding helps food entrepreneurs take the next steps towards the commercialization of their passion.
Quite a few of the participants are also farmers. They want to further develop a product made with homegrown cream, grains, meat, fruit or vegetables. It’s a great way to help farmers grow their business.
I think the competition does a good job of making sure that the winners have a reasonable chance of success. Anyone can submit their idea but the competitors are pre-screened and only the 10 strongest compete for the grand prizes. The competition is only open to new products, but competitors from previous years can, and have, returned with new products. They spoke positively about the education they gained in previous years.
The event isn’t a sure fire route to success. Some chosen as winners will never succeed in seeing their products commercialized, but they will gain knowledge that can be applied to future ideas. The Food Fight promotes incremental growth over a diverse range of products. While each individual product may succeed or fail, the knowledge gained by all participants, not just the winners, is staying in our province, ready to help us grow.
