Entrepreneurs / Small Business  September 23, 2016

FoodBytes pitch competition to feature several BoCo, NoCo firms

BOULDER — Several food and ag startup companies based in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado will participate in New York-based Rabobank’s FoodBytes Boulder!, a pitch competition and networking event that will be held in Boulder next month.

Ten finalist companies, including The Food Corridor in Fort Collins and Mad Agriculture in Boulder, will give five-minute pitches to a panel of expert judges, followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.

The winning company will be invited to attend Rabobank’s Client Appreciation Events in December 2016 in New York City, which attracts C-suite representation from more than 300 of North America’s leading food, beverage and agribusiness companies. A Foodbytes competition recently was held in San Francisco and another is planned for November in Sydney, Australia.

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Ten more companies, including Boulder-based firms FrostD, Good Spread and Alpine Start Foods, will give 60-second pitches to kick off the program that will be held Oct. 26 at the University of Colorado’s Byron R. White Club.

The Food Corridor, founded by Ashley Colpaart and Dan Moore, is an online marketplace for food businesses to connect with available commercial food assets, allowing them to find and book commercial kitchens, equipment, commissaries, processors, copackers and food-storage spaces.

Mad Agriculture, founded by Phil Taylor, harnesses the nutrient recycling abilities of insects to turn food waste into a protein-rich feed supplement, lessening dependence on unsustainable ingredients like fishmeal and soy.

The other eight presenting companies are:

The Honest Stand, based in Denver, is a gourmet-food company that uses whole foods that are nongenetically modified to produce products that are vegan or paleo and are free of gluten, soy, yeast and cholesterol.

Biotech Services Senegal, based in Africa, produces local, organic fertilizer that allows Senegalese farmers to produce more yield using less space, and at lower costs.

San Francisco-based ReGrained harvests grain from urban craft breweries to produce a healthy and sustainable ingredient.

FreshSurety, based in Winter Park, Fla., is focused on solving the produce industry’s $200 billion waste problem, using technology that measures and reports the real-time shelf life of fresh-food cartons worldwide.

Phenospex, in the Netherlands, aims to provide fully automated and integrated plant phenotyping platforms that deliver data and analysis tools in order to extract knowledge to answer scientific questions.

Provelt, based in Geneva, Ill., is researching and developing food processing and packaging to make the foods of the future. Provelt designs pasteurization systems using magnetic induction to replace steam-generated heat to process food products.

N-Chroma, in the Netherlands, uses biotechnological methods to develop and commercially produce healthy, sustainable and high-quality colors for use in the food, textile and color cosmetic industries.

One Hop Kitchen, based in Canada, manufactures an insect-based Bolognese sauce, a source of protein.

Other companies that will give 60-second pitches include Antigrain Foods, Denver; Vive Organic, Venice, Calif., Algama, France; FarmRaiser, Flint, Mich.; Arizona Organic Urban Veggie, Phoenix, Ariz.; Cowlar by E4 Technologies, Islamabad, Pakistan and North Hollywood, Calif.; and Alfrea, Northfield, N.J.

BOULDER — Several food and ag startup companies based in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado will participate in New York-based Rabobank’s FoodBytes Boulder!, a pitch competition and networking event that will be held in Boulder next month.

Ten finalist companies, including The Food Corridor in Fort Collins and Mad Agriculture in Boulder, will give five-minute pitches to a panel of expert judges, followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.

The winning company will be invited to attend Rabobank’s Client Appreciation Events in December 2016 in New York City, which attracts C-suite representation from more than 300 of North America’s leading…

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