Burnside produce upcycler Outcast Foods moving to Annapolis Valley, expanding
“We’re building on a model where a facility is strategically placed in partnership with, primarily, farms, but also food brokers and food processors.” Darren Burke Co-founder, Outcast Foods
BURNSIDE, N.S. — Outcast Foods, currently headquartered in Burnside, N.S., will soon move to a space in Kings County that will have 10 to 15 times the production space.
Co-founders Darren Burke and TJ Galiardi are considering three buildings for their new facility, which will also triple employment on the production side.
“This space is about 2,000 square feet of processing space, and we’re looking at moving up to 20 to 30 thousand square feet. We have a few locations spec’d out, an engineering firm that’s already modelled out equipment and size and flow through,” Burke said.
Outcast’s business is based on the fact people won’t eat bruised apples. Or any other imperfect produce.
“Think about the amount of resources that go into growing a fruit or vegetable, not only the people power but also Mother Nature, the nutrients from the soil, sunlight, the water. We grow it, it has to be beautiful in colour and all those things for a grocer to take it and a customer to buy it,” said Burke.
“If it doesn’t get sold, then all that energy and resources simply go back into the ground and decay. Where our process and our company fits in is we stop that at that point.”
Outcast accepts unsold fruits and vegetables that farms would otherwise leave in their fields or pay to send to the landfill. Using a patent-pending process, the produce is washed in a vinegarlike peracetic acid, then dehydrated and milled into a powder. “It has to be like that if you’re going to put it into a supplement or use it in a recipe to make brownies, bread, whatever,” said Burke.
“It depends on the moisture content of the fruit or vegetable, but we get about 10 to 18 per cent so if you start with 100 kilos you end up with up to 18 kilos of the finished powder. It’s an awesome yield; all you’re doing is taking the water out.” The vacuum microwave dehydrator that’s the crux of the whole process uses technology invented for the marijuana industry.
Outcast did $1 million in revenue in 2019 and expects to do $3 to $4 million in 2020. The company completed a $3-million round of fundraising earlier this year, and a U.S. investment bank is considering taking a $10-million stake.
Finished product powders have three years of shelf life and are used by Outcast’s customers in supplements, baked goods, pet foods and snacks, baby food and cosmetics.
“The big thing in cosmetics is to ... put in kale to boost the antioxidants, or spinach or broccoli,” said Burke, a graduate of Sackville High with a Ph. D in exercise physiology.
He started supplement company Rival Us in 2008, sold that in 2013 and signed a five year noncompete clause. At the same time that was ending, Galiardi was winding up his pro hockey career.
“We figured we’d get back in the nutrition space and we knew we had to do something different because it’s such a competitive environment,” Burke said.
“That led us down this path of discovering the issue of food waste and how big an issue it is, and we discovered it’s gigantic and it’s everywhere. There are landfills everywhere where food is getting dumped.”
When the valley plant is finished, Outcast plans to build another one in southern Ontario, and then one in northern California.
“We’re building on a model where a facility is strategically placed in partnership with, primarily, farms, but also food brokers and food processors,” Burke said, using the example of Oxford Frozen Foods and the waste generated by the production of baby carrots.
Burke and Galiardi have been working with the provincial agriculture department for more than a year. Their hope is the province will find a way to financially encourage farms to divert their waste stream material to Outcast as opposed to letting it rot in the fields or go to a landfill.