The HATCH Venture Builder (“HATCH“) is UBC’s late-stage accelerator for technological and social innovations with strong commercial potential. A collaboration between ICICS and entrepreneurship@UBC, HATCH provides teams with the space, resources, and expertise they need to succeed. Sustainability is an important focus for HATCH. Here, we profile three ventures that are making an impact on sustainability and responsible sourcing in the food industry.
EMKAO Foods
EMKAO Founder and CEO Ayissa Nyemba’s family has been refining the art of growing, harvesting, and fermenting cocoa in Cameroon, Equatorial Africa, for generations. Ayissa has combined her love of chocolate and her marketing background to launch EMKAO Foods. The company emerged from e@UBC’s Social Venture Studio, and produces premium quality, traceable, and sustainable cocoa ingredients. With beans sourced from villages in Cameroon, the venture works with smallholder farmers to harvest the best quality cocoa beans.
Susgrainable
HATCH alumni venture Susgrainable leverages technology and partnerships to create an upcycled barley flour from what was previously considered waste in the beer industry. From this “waste”, they produce baking mixes to make use of the 450,000 tons of beer making by-product discarded in Canada annually. Since the sugars in barley go into making beer, the upcycled barley flour is composed mostly of protein, fibre, and minerals. More balanced, healthier baked goods is the result.
Wize Tea
Coffee leaf tea has been consumed for hundreds of years in Ethiopia and Indonesia, for reasons such as its strong anti-inflammatory properties. The HATCH alumni venture Wize Tea has reinvented the brewing process with modern tea techniques to enhance the taste of coffee leaf tea and unlock its true health potential. Additional health benefits may include prevention and management of type 2 diabetes, improved bone health, and reduced risk of heart disease and cancer, among others.