Outcast Foods raises $3M in financing

Shortly after winning Innovator of the Year, Outcast Foods announced it has closed a $3 million financing round. The seemingly simple idea of upcycling surplus, misfit fruits and vegetables that are edible and turning them into long shelf life powders is attracting high profile investors.

When well-known entrepreneur Darren Burke and former NHL player TJ Galiardi co-founded Outcast Foods (formerly Beyond Food) they didn’t know how bad the food waste problem really was.

“The more layers of the onion we peeled back, from grocers to farms, the more produce we found being tossed into a landfill,” Galiardi said. “We’ve found a way to create a full circle sustainable model out of highly nutritious produce that was needlessly being discarded.”

The pair has been conducting research on this problem for several years and have developed a unique sustainable food technology. Their patent-pending tech uses multiple innovations from machine learning to a novel, high-efficiency drying invention recently commercialized.

The team has been working with a national grocer and several large-scale farms to help mitigate unnecessary food waste for over a year and has plans to move across the country and eventually, the globe.

Outcast Foods is currently selling their upcycled nutrient-dense powders to large scale food companies across the globe, working with socially conscious grocers and farms to reduce food waste, and planning the construction of their first large scale zero waste facility.