The Food Professor

Tyler has 31 years of experience and sat on PIC’s board before becoming CEO. PIC is one of Canada’s five global innovation clusters, and Sylvain calls it the strongest of the group. The harder question is whether it’s taking enough risk. Sylvain also shares what Saskatchewan mayors and councillors asked him this week: why the CFIA is so hard to deal with, interprovincial trade barriers, how to get...

Murad built AGT on one bet: that Prairie farmers would replace summer fallow with lentils, chickpeas, peas and beans. The company now runs 41 manufacturing facilities on five continents, with Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial as its partner. He makes the case for adding value to even a fraction of Canada’s harvest, for fixing east-west trade infrastructure from Churchill to the Atlantic Gateway, and...

Vin explains why Canada’s heavy reliance on trade with the U.S. and Mexico leaves fresh produce, seafood and imported proteins most at risk. He also looks at why 89% of Canadian organizations report raw-material scarcity, compared with 67% in the U.S., and why the nine-to-12-month stockpiles many companies built to ride out tariffs are reaching a tipping point. He makes the case for counter-season...

WfE stands for Whisky for Everyone. Unlike most young distilleries, it makes no gin or vodka to pay the bills while its own spirit ages. Instead, the team buys aged Canadian whisky in bulk, re-ages and blends it, then finishes it in ice cider casks to create an approachable "onboarding" whisky. They also cover SAQ listings, rising bottle and cask costs, ready-to-serve cocktails, and the liquor-boa...

It's an in-depth conversation with Jason Buechel, CEO of Whole Foods Market and Vice President of Amazon Worldwide Grocery Stores , a pick-up of an interview from my Remarkable Retail podcast with Steve Dennis from last fall.  Jason shares Amazon’s rapidly expanding grocery ambitions. Already surpassing $100 billion in gross sales, Amazon is leaning into grocery as a strategic category driven...

On Season Seven, Episode Five of The Food Professor Podcast, Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois sit down with Annemarie Swijtink, President & CEO of McDonald's Canada, for her very first Canadian podcast interview. Annemarie started as a 15-year-old crew member in the Netherlands, studied economics in Rotterdam, joined McDonald's as a marketing intern and went on to lead the Dutch busi...

Is artificial intelligence about to transform agriculture more than any other industry? On Season Seven, Episode Four of The Food Professor podcast, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and Michael LeBlanc sit down with Aidan Connolly, President of AgriTech Capital and past president of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA), one of the world's leading voices on agtech and the fu...

Everything you thought you knew about ghee is wrong. In this episode of The Food Professor podcast, Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois sit down with Vreshin "Vresh" Nagarajan, Founder and Chief Ghee Officer of Vresh Foods, makers of OG GHEE, recorded live on the show floor at the SIAL Food Innovation Show in Montreal. Vresh makes a compelling and slightly incendiary case: roughly 90% of th...

Season Seven, Episode 2 of The Food Professor podcast lands its first guest interview, and it's a Canadian food business story three decades in the making. Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois are joined by Dave Jones, President and CEO of Bento Sushi, the company that turned a small 1996 takeout counter in downtown Toronto into the largest sushi business in Canada. Dave joined Bento in 2009...

The Food Professor podcast returns for Season Seven with a no-guest, all-catch-up season premiere. Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois are back on the mic after a summer of live interviews from SIAL, and there is a serious backlog of Canadian and international food industry news to work through. Sylvain opens with the summer he actually had: 25 to 30 media interviews a week, including live...

Recorded live on the show floor at SIAL Canada 2026 in Montreal, this Food Professor summer bonus episode features Cloé Helmond, Co-Founder of Les Brutes du Soya, fresh off a first-place win in the Start-up Scale CPG category of SIAL Canada's seventh annual Startup Pitch Competition. Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois catch her still holding the hardware — and still slightly stunned, since...

Recorded live on the show floor at SIAL Canada in Montreal, this Summer Bonus episode of The Food Professor podcast marks a first: an ingredient company winning the show's startup pitch competition. Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois sit down with Asha Wheeldon, Founder and CEO of Kula Foods and a member of the Maia Farms team, and Jason Mackay, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at Maia Fa...

In this special summer bonus episode of The Food Professor podcast, co-hosts Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois sit down live at the SIAL food innovation show in Montreal with Victoire Guglieri, Founder of Nasdrow, fresh off her win at the startup pitch competition. Energetic, candid, and armed with samples, Victoire takes Michael and Sylvain on a guided tasting tour of her premium non-alc...

In this summer bonus episode of The Food Professor podcast, Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois broadcast live from the SIAL Food Innovation Show in Montreal for a conversation with Naïla Bassin, Marketing Leader Canada, and Carlo Stocco, Managing Director, North America, both of Andriani S.p. A., the Italian company behind Felicia, Italy's fastest-growing pasta brand. Felicia means "happy"...

Editorial note: This conversation was recorded live at SIAL Canada in late April — well before the July CUSMA review deadline and the most recent U.S. tariff actions targeting Canada. Some of the optimism expressed here about a smooth CUSMA outcome should be heard in that context. It's become a Food Professor tradition: every year at SIAL Canada, hosts Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois si...

Recorded live on the final day of SIAL Canada, this bonus episode of The Food Professor brings hosts Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois face to face with Jacques Duhaime, owner of Duhaime Gourmet — a Quebec fruit-spread and jam company that Sylvain has wanted on the show for years. The conversation traces four generations of agricultural evolution in Saint-Germain, near Drummondville, Queb...

In the Season 6 regular season finale of The Food Professor Podcast , hosts Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois welcome Pete Hoekstra, United States Ambassador to Canada , for an exclusive and wide-ranging conversation about the future of Canada-U.S. food trade, agriculture, supply chains and North American economic cooperation. While The Food Professor Podcast isn't a political show, few r...

This week on The Food Professor Podcast , Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois sit down with Vincent Breton, President & CEO of duBreton , Canada's leading organic pork producer, for a fascinating live interview recorded at SIAL Canada in Montreal. Vincent shares the remarkable story behind duBreton's evolution from a traditional pork producer into one of the world's fastest-growing organic...

This week on The Food Professor Podcast , Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois welcome Jean-François Archambault, Founder and General Manager of La Tablée des Chefs , for an inspiring conversation about food recovery, food security, and the power of community action. Recorded live at SIAL Montreal, this episode showcases one of Canada's most remarkable social entrepreneurs and the national m...

This week on The Food Professor Podcast, co-hosts Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois welcome two special guests for a wide-ranging, no-holds-barred interview: Axel Schwan, President of Tim Hortons Canada & U.S., and Duncan Fulton, Chief Corporate Officer of Restaurant Brands International (RBI). With Dunkin' Donuts announcing its return to Canada and Canadians passionately debating the fut...

This week on The Food Professor Podcast , Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois sit down with Don Hill, Chairman of Sucro , for a rare inside look at one of the most significant investments in Canada's food manufacturing sector in decades. Sucro has quickly become one of North America's fastest-growing sugar companies, and its newly built Ontario refinery marks the first major new sugar-refin...

This week on The Food Professor Podcast, recorded live at SIAL Canada 2026 in Montreal, Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois welcome back Karen Proud, President & Adjudicator of the Canada Grocery Code, for an important conversation about one of the most closely watched structural reforms in the Canadian grocery industry. Only months after the official launch of the Canada Grocery Code, Prou...

This week on The Food Professor Podcast, our interview is recorded live at SIAL Canada 2026 in Montreal. Michael LeBlanc welcomes one of the most influential executives in global consumer packaged goods: Jessica C. Adelman, Mars Snacking North America. Fresh off Mars’ massive $36 billion acquisition of Kellanova, Adelman offers a rare inside look at the strategic thinking behind one of the largest...

This week on The Food Professor Podcast , recorded live from the West Coast, Syvain in Chilliwack, Michael in L.A., begin with a fast-moving roundup of the biggest food, grocery, and agriculture headlines shaping Canada. First, the hosts unpack Dunkin's return to Canada and debate where the iconic brand could fit in a market dominated by Tim Hortons and McDonald's. They also explore major developm...

On this latest episode of The Food Professor Podcast, recorded live inside the podcast fishbowl at SIAL Canada 2026 in Montreal, Michael LeBlanc and Sylvain Charlebois welcome one of the most exciting entrepreneurs in Canadian food innovation: Santiago Stacey. Fresh off winning SIAL’s prestigious Gold Innovation Award, Santiago shares the remarkable story behind Ku Na Na, creator of Canada’s first...