Can you please tell us about you?
My name is Janice Bartley, and I am the founder and executive director of Foodpreneur Lab, which was created out of frustration in the food ecosystem, where I noticed that while opportunities existed, those opportunities weren’t necessarily trickling down to the BIPOC community.
I was provoked into purpose, and I took charge of that and tried to change the narrative and landscape within that space.
Can you tell us more about the barriers you experienced?
The ethnic food market (which I prefer to refer to as a cultural food market) abounds with opportunities because it’s tied in with our immigration policy. Many people may not recognize that. Food is one of the easiest gateways into employment or the labour market. If you bring the skill sets you already have and don’t have to worry too much about the language barriers per se, you get to dive right in with products and skill sets with which you’re familiar.
When we look at that market, the projected market today is $48 billion. Globally, that market is expected to grow to $98 billion by 2029.
If you look at previous statistics, it will show that Canadians used to eat international cuisine or food three times a week. Well, now that we’re such a mosaic, we have international foods for dinner five or seven days a week or throughout the day. So, there’s a shift in terms of what Canadians want in their food. We want variety, and because we are such a mosaic with different families blending, we also want to have that food experience.
The other important thing is that when immigrants come to Canada, there is the acculturation of adapting to whatever foods are here. We don’t want that. Our foods provide healing, comfort, and education; we bring that with us… We want to incorporate and give that experience to others.
[With] food sovereignty, we want to create spaces so that we can grow these foods and expand in those markets. So there’s clear, there’s also been a significant shift in that.What really keeps you feeling driven and motivated during the harder parts of entrepreneurship?
Maya Angelou has a quote that I live by,
“I come as one, but I stand as ten thousand”.
For every female, male, and Black, Indigenous or person of colour I interact with, I see myself in them. So I fully understand. I’ve been an entrepreneur for three decades.
I know firsthand what the frustrations are: no funding, limited access to loans, and no access to spaces or environments where you can either enhance your skill set or expand your services. These are just the basic things of growing a business, so the frustrating part is that when [there are] infrastructures in place which are unwilling to share those underutilized facilities, we’re no longer community driven. We’re driven by capitalism.
I firmly believe that for us all to benefit from this, it has to be trilateral: public, private and community partnerships because we cannot stand independently in our silos. Especially if we’re now talking about diversity, inclusion and equity, all those three things intertwine. I think we have to step back and ask ourselves are we siloing specific pieces we’d rather have as a quick fix rather than addressing the ecosystem’s needs? Are the issues so archaic we haven’t gone back to look at them to see how they are [working] …are they creating more barriers, as opposed to opening opportunities?
If we can address the barriers, and there are two levels of this – the financial and the educational piece, [and] there’s a secondary [industry-specific] barriers, which is lack of production spaces, access to equipment, warehousing, distribution, and the list goes on and on.
That’s just part of running the business. You’re jumping back and forth to try and smooth out the rough roads to make sure the food entrepreneur we are spending time with can address those issues as they’re building their business.
How did you fund your business?
I, too, am to mirror what exactly my food entrepreneurs are experiencing. When I started Foodpreneur Lab in 2019, I had many conversations with institutions and agencies that were interested, but nothing came to fruition in terms of dollars and cents.
I was extremely frustrated because I knew what I was doing had value. I knew I was meeting a need and filling a gap which is what we say [on a] basic business model canvas, right? But the gap was where the exchange of revenue was not happening. When the Black ecosystem fund launched, we got funding for four years to the tune of $3 million.
That [money] was focused on programming, not building a facility to level up the skill sets for Black food entrepreneurs to understand what the food ecosystem looks like and the challenges that come with it.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give women or non-binary entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurship is not a straight road; it is as crooked as it gets. I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how you get to the destination as long as you get there. Entrepreneurship has many twists and turns. You have to pivot. You go to the bank and get some money, and then you hear no, so you have to pivot. Your pivot could be family or friends. You learn to become extremely creative as an entrepreneur because you hear ‘no’ so many times.
If you’re passionate about what you’re doing and firmly believe in your product or service, ‘no’ is an actual not yet. That’s what you have to remember.
How do you hope to see your business grow?
I have a huge vision. One of the things I am laser focused on right now is industry partnerships.
Last year, I focused on ensuring that the food entrepreneurs in our pathways have the best experience because you are building and creating a level of trust in an area that hasn’t been built before.
My next thing is to build trust and transparency within the industry because we are not your competition but your allies. What we’re doing is capacity building. We’re creating other opportunities that help support GDP. This is just business, not a cultural thing. We see where the demand is, and we’re building the business model around that – creating opportunities for others who otherwise would never have that.
This entails industry partnerships, which include infrastructure investment, connecting and building partnerships with academic institutions – looking at how we can engage youth, particularly underserved youth [with] the opportunities in biotech and agri-tech.
We’re trying to build a communication system looking at possible labeling opportunities where we tell the story. When you ask, “why am I paying $17 for organic salad dressing?”, [the label can show] here is why. There’s transparency and a new appreciation of what that product or brand is trying to do.
What is one particular achievement you’re very proud of?
Seeing the growth of the participants in this space.
I’ve had so many emails thanking me for the opportunity. [Emails that say] “I never knew I could take this idea to market” and “I never found a safe space where I could be myself and my lived experience would be honored.” “I never knew I could get access to people with so much experience, and they see me.” “I never knew my ability to communicate and contribute because now, I found my voice”. And the list goes on.
In every person that comes through our pathway, there’s a little bit of me that I see in each of them from my journey as an entrepreneur and not having the help I wish I’d had back then.
Is there a message you’d like to share with other entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurship really is an investment in yourself. It’s you betting on you. You can have that biweekly paycheck, and so did I at one point, but what made me make the switch? I felt in my gut I had more to offer. I couldn’t tell you what it was, describe it, or point to it. But for every job I went to, it felt I felt unfulfilled. Once I realized, [I knew] it was time for me to pivot and take those skills, the same skill sets that I was offering to other people, and bring them back to my community.
What made you become a member of the Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce?
I like what [the chamber] does because they represent so many areas, and there’s a mandate to bring women’s issues into focus. The network, the services they offer, especially when you’re looking for accounting, services, insurance, that’s one-stop [with CanWCC], which is great.
These spotlights showcase what other women are doing. You don’t feel like you’re doing this journey solo. You also get to hear impactful stories.
I had a conversation with Nancy years ago. It was a taxation discussion about how we fall into the income tax brackets and are taxed differently, but more importantly, the impact of those taxes long term. It impacts us all in different ways. Right from the get-go, that was an ally-ship for me – this organization speaks my language.
In our organization, we also encourage our participants to join such associations once they finish.
Tell us more about your expertise and how women can reach out to you.
We focus on two pathways, the “start” and “scale” nine month pathways. We don’t call them programs because we firmly believe entrepreneurship is not academic; it’s experiential. If you have an idea and you’re not quite sure how to get it to prototype, we provide those skill sets to help guide you through the iterations until you get to that prototype.
The Scale Pathway is geared to those who currently have a product in the market. They could be doing markets on a smaller scale, or they’re looking to level up to, you know, grocery store chains. We let them define success, then meet them where they are. That is important for us – it’s not for us to pull an entrepreneur and tell them where they want to go. We have to respect where they are and the limitations, whether it’s financial, psychological, emotional, or mental health.
In both pathways, [participants] have group sessions and one-on-one’s with expert advisors. They’re working on their business while in the pathway instead of learning the information and having to go back and apply after the fact.
IHow can people reach out to you?
We can be reached at our website,
www. foodpreneurlab.com.
Instagram @Foodpreneurlab and Facebook.
Email: info@Foodpreneurlab.com
Fantastic. Any final words?
Don’t let anybody tell you no.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length
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