Thirteen years ago, Lourdes Juan found herself cramming 200 pounds of unsold bread into a Honda Civic.

What was supposed to be a simple pick-up from a Calgary bakery turned into a wake-up call about food waste, and it became the beginning of a mission.

“Pretty shocking when you see it in person, and try to stuff it into a Honda Civic,” explained Juan, co-founder and CEO of Knead Technologies, sitting down with Digital Journal at Inventures 2025. “We brought it to the emergency drop-in centre, and they were going to use it by noon the next day.”

That moment set Juan on a path that blends technology, community, and systems thinking to tackle the growing problem of food waste. What began as a simple pick-up and drop-off of unsold loaves from a local bakery has evolved into a B2B software company helping food banks and nonprofits streamline moving surplus food from their stockrooms and warehouses, to the pantries and kitchens of those who need it.

This is not only a story about logistics or software. It is about what happens when social impact grows to meet real scale. Real change, on a practical level, can feel agonizingly slow, especially for something as fundamental as the literal right to food. Juan drove change by balancing capital, growth, and community.

Knead’s approach shows both the tension and the opportunity in building a business in a time when, let’s face it, food waste and insecurity shouldn’t exist.

[Watch the interview in full in the video below]

Tackling food waste at the root, thanks to data

In Canada alone, millions live with food insecurity while billions of dollars worth of edible food is lost.

According to Knead statistics, each year, more than $1 trillion worth of food is wasted. An October 2024 report from food rescue organization Second Harvest found that over 46% of all food in Canada is wasted every year. Recent data from PROOF, an interdisciplinary research program studying food insecurity, found that in 2024, 25.5% of people in the ten provinces (10 million people) lived in a food-insecure household.

In case it wasn’t clear, we have a pretty big problem.

On a practical level, connecting these dots is a logistical issue, but it is also about shifting mindsets and data habits across an entire supply chain.

For Knead, technology is the backbone that turns a good intention (feeding people, reducing landfill) into a system that measures impact and spots inefficiencies before they happen.

Juan explains that their software doesn’t just match donations to recipients, but tracks how, when, and where food is wasted so that partners, from restaurants to grocers, can make their operations leaner. The idea is to handle today’s surplus while also preventing tomorrow’s.

“Can we make the operations of that restaurant, bakery, grocery store more efficient so that we don’t waste things in the first place?” she asks.

“While we’re solving that immediate need of taking what we have excess and what we have left over today, and making sure that’s getting used up, there’s also this conversation of making sure that we’re not wasting at the very beginning.”

Collaboration by design

Knead’s work shows that food rescue cannot be solved in a silo. Juan is quick to point out that their technology is one piece of a larger system that demands multiple players pulling together, including local governments.

Recently, Knead completed a project with the City of Phoenix to roll out food recovery tools to different parts of the community, a signal that municipalities are becoming more active partners in the fight against food waste.

Juan says this kind of unexpected partnership is where real impact happens.

“There’s a lot of intersectionality in this work that we do, and so it doesn’t only help with getting more food to people that need it, but also helps in terms of climate impacts,” says Juan. “And I think the innovation and social impact in the tech sector is really trying to hone in on too. It’s not one solution that’s going to fix food insecurity…or food waste. But how do we look at the problem as a whole and try to collaborate and work together with different sectors to make it happen.”

This approach mirrors a broader trend in Alberta’s innovation ecosystem, where cross-sector collaboration is increasingly seen as essential to scale complex solutions, from climate tech to waste management.

[Watch the interview in full in the video below]

Funding impact without losing the mission

For social entrepreneurs, growth is about balance, proving that impact and profit do not have to live in separate worlds. Knead’s fundraising journey made that clear.

After more than a hundred rejections from traditional investors, the company closed its first venture round with social impact-focused backers, a fit Juan believes aligns better with their long-term goals.

“The doors were closed for me because traditional venture money didn’t want to invest in a mission-driven company,” says Juan. “I’m so glad we got 117 ‘no’s’ from different VCs. And then we landed three really great social impact investors.”

That path was challenging, but it reaffirmed her view that not all capital is created equal, and that patient, relationship-based funding is critical when tackling systemic issues that do not follow fast growth curves.

As Knead looks ahead, the focus is on strengthening the product, expanding partnerships with cities, and continuing to grow the idea that food rescue should be as common as recycling. The ambition is bigger than one company’s bottom line.

Juan hopes the next generation will think differently about what goes to waste and what gets saved.

“I would love to, in like two years, walk into a room and I want everyone to know what food rescue is, and I want everyone to be cognizant of food waste in their own homes, at conferences, like those types of things,” says Juan. “It would be really great to see that as an indicator of social change.”

If Alberta and Canada’s innovation community want to see that change, it will take the same approach Juan is betting on: combining data, trust, and an openness to work across silos.

For Knead Technologies, it may have started with bread. But the bigger story is about what can rise when a community works together to waste less and feed more.

Watch the interview: