The Food Professor

Dave Jones, President and CEO of Bento Sushi, joins Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois to trace Canada's largest sushi company from a 1996 Toronto takeout counter to 700-plus locations. The hosts also unpack Ottawa's 48-hour seafood tariff reversal, honey tariffs hitting Manitoba, Chapman's ingredient swap, Trump's beef gambit and sliding cattle futures, dairy's grip on CUSMA submissions, the Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons loyalty tie-up, Loblaw's capital plan, and grocery retail crime in Vancouver.

Live from the SIAL Canada Food Innovation Show in Montreal, Cloé Helmond, Co-Founder of Les Brutes du Soya, joins Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois minutes after winning the Start-up Scale CPG pitch competition. She unpacks the family soy farm behind Quebec's fast-growing TVP (textured vegetable protein) brand, new bacon bites and soy curls, six-dollar meal math, the health-aisle merchandising debate — plus the now-public Dans l'œil du dragon deal with dragon David Côté of LOOP Mission.

Recorded live at the SIAL Food Innovation show in Montreal, Michael and Sylvain welcome Victoire Guglieri, Founder of Nasdrow and winner of the show's startup pitch competition. The Bordeaux-born entrepreneur pours her premium non-alcoholic ready-to-drink cocktails, including award-winning bestseller Scarlet & Co, while explaining why alcohol-free drinks shouldn't be boring. The trio explores why younger consumers are drinking less, the health and wellness trends driving the category, and the momentum behind Nasdrow's Quebec retail listings.

Recorded live at SIAL Canada in late April, Michael LeBlanc and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois welcome back Martin Lavoie, CEO of Groupe Export Agroalimentaire Québec-Canada, for their annual trade check-in. Lavoie unpacks the fallout from Liberation Day tariffs, the outlook for CUSMA renegotiation, and why Mexico is Quebec's top diversification target. Note: recorded before July's CUSMA deadline and the latest round of U.S. tariff actions against Canada — some ground has since shifted.

On this summer bonus episode of The Food Professor, recorded at SIAL Canada in Monteal, Michael LeBlanc and Sylvain Charlebois sit down with Jacques Duhaime of Duhaime Gourmet. Jacques traces his family's path from a 1945 dairy farm to a fifth-generation Quebec orchard and a nationally distributed low-sugar jam and fruit-spread business — covering the sale of the processing arm, expansion into Japan and the U.S., private-label manufacturing, trade show strategy, and a new 90%-fruit, no-pectin spread line.