ABOUT THE WORKSHOP 2 of 3
Launch & Grow Your Tech Venture series presented by YSpace, York University & Vaughan Business & Entrepreneurship Centre:
This workshop is ideal for the entrepreneurs who will have a market-ready product in the food & beverage industry, You may be already selling in some stores, markets and/or events and want to gain the industry knowledge to successfully scale and grow your food business.
Description: This interactive and engaging fireside chat will explore an entrepreneur’s journey of how they brought their product to life. Topics will include manufacturing options, considerations go next with your food business idea. Fundamentals including developing an understanding of manufacturing options, considerations and resources in Vaughan and other areas.
About the Speaker:
Charlene Li, CEO & Co-founder, Eatable
Charlene Li is the CEO & Co-founder of Eatable, premium popcorn infused with wine and spirits and crafted with natural ingredients. She is a self-taught marketer with a specialization in e-Commerce who has managed to grow a “bootstrapped” online direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand from $0 to $1MM+ in a little more than 3 years, and now forging new territory towards B2B and mass retail channels.
Since the humble beginnings from their home kitchen to scaled-up manufacturing into their commercial facility, Charlene drove growth through product innovation and sales via e-Commerce channels during the global pandemic, and expanded Eatable’s retail footprint to over 1600+ high end specialty retailers across Canada and USA.
About the Speaker:
Judy Wong, Program Advisor, Co-founder of Food Accelerator @ YSpace
Judy has over 25 years of experience in the food industry leading multiple Fortune 500 teams at Kraft, Mondelez and The Nielsen Company. She is passionate about motivating and coaching startup leaders to accelerate through developing a winning mindset, elevating knowledge, and enhancing a high performing team to lead the change.
She is an intra-preneur and an entrepreneur. She has experience growing startup divisions through aggressive double-digit growth in revenue and fast-growing teams to support. Judy is also the Founder of Pivot Perspectives, a leadership coaching organization for food startups.
Most recently, she co-founded the YSpace Food Accelerator at York University, the first regional Food Accelerator in Ontario, which helps startups in the food industry to build effective business plans, validate with consumers, and connect with industry leaders. She also teaches Entrepreneurship and Leadership at Seneca College of Arts and Technology.
This workshop is brought to you in partnership with YSpace‘s York Region Food Accelerator. YSpace is home to one of the first of its kind in the GTA food accelerator program, and in a partnership with YSpace, The Regional Municipality of York Region and the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative. YSpace Food Accelerator helps promising food and beverage consumer-packaged goods (CPG) ventures build their strategy, grow their network and scale their business.
Vaughan-based entrepreneurs participating in this series have the opportunity to apply for a provincial grant of up to $5,000 through the Vaughan Starter Company Plus program, designed to help implement and execute on the plans created through this training series. Learn more at: https://vaughanbusiness.ca/starter-company-plus/.
Workshop dates for the Launch & Grow Your Food Venture series: