We were fortunate to have most of those components in place early on, thanks to resources, expertise and support from the RRC Polytech applied research and academic community. Prior investments in our research infrastructure also made a huge difference. The NSERC Innovation Enhancement grant really pushed us to another level.

The projects and recipes highlighted in this section served as the building blocks of our culinary research program. They allowed us to highlight our expertise and uncover ways to improve. They also provided an apt method for training students and new employees on our process for project completion, prototype creation, and reporting research results to industry.

These capacity-building projects helped us generate awareness with internal and external partners about our capabilities as research and culinary chefs. We featured our work in countless success stories, social media and website content, and outreach events.

The sheer variety of the work we were doing and the range of projects and ingredients we engaged with expanded our skills, boosted our confidence, and gave us opportunities to tweak our systems and infrastructure.

Each example presented in this chapter highlights the strategic approaches we took to delivering positive impacts for the Western Canadian food and agriculture community:

1. Building partnerships
2. Creating awareness through public relations activities
3. Shaping curriculum by bringing research into the classroom and students into our labs, and by highlighting careers and entrepreneurship opportunities in food product development at information sessions
4. Combining RRC Polytech’s Culinary and Food Manufacturing programs into one integrated, applied research powerhouse
5. Reaching out to community through presentations, RRC Polytech’s Applied Research Day, and more

An additional investment from NSERC opened the door for us to deliver research services as a Technology Access Centre (TAC). Becoming a TAC benefitted our industry partners and students by providing them with access to new resources and partnerships with Canada’s nation-wide TAC family.

This investment in our early capacity-building efforts, combined with all the recipes, formulations, and procedures we developed, yielded tangible results we are proud of to this day: new products, career opportunities, companies, and ideas.

Along the way, we created a lot of great food.