Montreal company upcycles food production waste to create cookies and bars
Still Good makes snack products from fruit pulp and spent grains from breweries
How would you like to chomp down on a cookie made with spent grains usually discarded after the brewing process, or flavoured with orange pulp leftover from large-scale juice production?
The ingredients don't immediately sound appetizing, but Jonathan Rodrigue is hoping people will take a bite before passing judgment.
Rodrigue is the co-founder of a Montreal company called Still Good, which aims to reduce food waste by turning production waste into something edible and even tasty.
The company is all about upcycling — a process of transforming byproducts, leftover materials or unwanted products so it doesn't go to waste.
"Thirty to 35 per cent of everything that is produced goes to waste," said Rodrigue. "It's incredible."
He said when it comes to fruit pulp leftover from juicing, there's no need to see all the pulp thrown away.
"It's fresh. It's very healthy. It's just that they don't have the means to do anything with it and it was going to waste," he told CBC's Homerun.
The same goes for spent grains saved from local microbreweries, who would otherwise discard the material after its sugars had been extracted.
Enter Still Good, which collects and pays for these leftover byproducts and finds a creative way to give them a second life.
Starting out, Rodrigue admits the recipes weren't an instant success.
"We had a lot of people testing our products, and in the beginning, it wasn't so great. I will remember that all my life having done that [research and development]."
Luckily, he was able to learn from the not-so-good batches.
"After a few months we came up with the recipes and now they're just great," said Rodrigue.
The cookies and bars come in different flavours, depending on if they are made from carrot or beet pulp and what kinds of grains are being used. There's even a new banana chocolate kind, he added.
After launching a couple of months ago, Still Good has its eyes on expansion and wants to partner with more companies looking to produce less waste.
Their packaging is also 100 per cent compostable as part of their waste reduction mandate.