Live from SIAL Canada in Montreal, Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois meet the winners of the show's startup pitch competition: 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 Farms. The Vancouver company turns oyster mushrooms and Canadian yellow peas into high-protein, clean-label ingredients, and just became the first ingredient supplier to take the prize.
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 Farms, just hours after the Vancouver company added more hardware to its trophy shelf.
Maia Farms makes functional mushroom food ingredients. The company combines oyster mushroom powder with Canadian yellow pea protein and extrudes it into grounds, shreds, chunks and strips that mimic ground beef, pulled meat and chicken. The result is 66 per cent protein per 100 grams, a heavy dose of fibre and iron, a two-year shelf life and no cold storage required. Crucially for manufacturers, the extrudates survive the retort process where soy and pea proteins break down, which is why 100-year-old Pembroke, Ontario soup canner Sprague Foods signed on as a partner.
Asha explains how a two-and-a-half-minute pitch built on storytelling rather than numbers won over the judges, and why trust and partnership are Maia's real proof points, including work with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank that has helped feed hundreds of thousands of families. Jason unpacks the technology behind the ingredient and what comes next: cracking mushroom mycelium at commercial scale through liquid fermentation, moving from 3,000-litre proof-of-concept batches to 20,000 litres, with global ingredient players like ADM and Cargill circling mycelium as a clean-label fat mimic and binder.
The conversation turns to a bigger question Michael and Sylvain saw play out across the show: is Canada on the cusp of an ingredient renaissance? Pitch competitions usually reward consumer-ready products, from popsicles to upcycled coffee grounds. This year, the fundamentals of food won. The panel connects that shift to front-of-pack labelling, the clean-label push, manufacturers hunting for protein, fibre and iron without wrecking taste and texture, and the trust that Brand Canada's food safety reputation carries into export markets.
They also tackle affordability. With beef and chicken prices climbing, Sylvain's "protein orphans" are being left behind, and GLP-1 users are pushing protein demand higher still. A shelf-stable, high-protein ingredient that disappears into a lasagna or pasta sauce when seasoned properly is a genuinely different answer to food insecurity.
Plus: what winning an award actually does for a young company, why Maia was the only mushroom ingredient supplier on the SIAL floor, and the company's plan to bring business home to Canada after building traction in the US, Mexico, Singapore and Japan. A smart, optimistic listen on where Canadian food innovation goes next.