When you think of crickets, what comes to mind? Do you think of cricket vanilla-bean ice cream? How about chili con cricket? Or cricket Bolognese? These are just a few of the first things that come to mind for our Engineering design firm because we recently awarded the 2017 MAKO Student Innovation Award to the revolutionary food company C-Fu Foods!
A delicious bowl of C-Fu Food’s Chili Con Cricket.
Co-Founder of C-Fu Foods, Lee Cadesky, and winner of this year’s $10K grant awarded by our engineering design firm, Ryerson University, and the Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The company has created a healthy meat replacement from several insects including crickets and mealworms that can be used for burgers, schnitzel and nuggets, and as an alternative to eggs or butter. The company also makes a water-soluble cricket protein powder that can be whipped into a protein shake. Our engineering design firm certainly appreciates the thinking outside the box required to create these delicious recipes!
The judging panel presenting the MAKO grant to C-Fu Foods
“This panel was made up of people with a wealth of knowledge and experience as entrepreneurs,” says Kevin Mako, our engineering design firm President and Founder. “The growth of the competition has been incredible. This year, we had over thirty applicants, and it is exciting to see the increased level of start-ups with a likelihood of becoming sustainable businesses in the future.”
For his pitch, Cadesky brought along some samples for the judges to taste, including sausage, insect tofu, and pasta Bolognese, citing that like a product prototype, it’s important to let people touch, feel, taste, and smell these new innovative ingredients. At our engineering design firm, the prototype phase is a crucial part of the process and we were happy to test (and retest) these prototypes!
Vanilla-bean ice cream infused with cricket protein.
The award will help C-fu Foods with ongoing research and with marketing at the International Agricultural Expo in Seoul, Korea. “The Mako award will be the difference between making an A impression and a B impression with potential buyers and distributors,” says Cadesky. “The financial support will go a long way in helping us grow the company.”
Article Author: MAKO Design + Invent
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MAKO Design + Invent is a full-service consumer product development firm servicing both high-growth corporate manufacturers and invention startups. With a 25-person team across 3 offices (Austin, England, Toronto), MAKO has complete in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering design and prototyping services. To assist our start-up inventor clients, we also have a subsidiary branch called Mako Invent that, in addition to above, helps start-ups with patenting, strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. For our corporate clients, MAKO Design develops world-class consumer electronics designs through our industrial, mechanical, and electrical design teams.
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