When Joanna Pariseau, founder and CEO of local Calgary food-tech startup Taste of the City, decided to pitch her business at Canada’s most prestigious undergraduate student entrepreneur competition, there wasn’t an expectation to win.

She admitted that her initial pitch was a bit of, as she said, a hot mess.

But after months of working with her UCalgary Haskyane School of Business professors, her message about the social impact that food can have on the world and the unique way her business is building community won judges at the Queen’s Entrepreneurs Competition over on Jan. 12. The win pocketed the local startup a cool $15,000.

“They had over 500 applicants, undergraduate applicants from across Canada. We were selected top 15, then the next day we got to top six, and then we won the whole darn thing as the number one pitch in Canada,” said Pariseau.

“It was really empowering because it was very Ontario-heavy contestants, and we were really glad to be able to represent Calgary innovation, and the tech startup community that we have going on out west.”

No small feat for a Calgary startup competing against companies developing products in health care to cure clubfoot in babies and make unpasteurized milk safe for children in Africa, alongside others developing AI solutions and yet others helping individuals make sound financial decisions.

“When you’re sitting there, you’re a bit intimidated with, ‘well, these are really great things that are helping impact the world.’ But we really focus on that we have a social impact on the world and that a meal is never just food,” Pariseau said.

“We just really had conviction in what we were doing and offering, even though the others’ pitches were stellar and had already won several of their own pitch competitions.”

Having an already working business elevated pitch success over others

Pariseau said that a big factor in her company winning the competition was the stage her business is already at versus her competition.

“We really felt that we were elevated above other groups just because we had an MVP that was already operating successfully in Calgary, and the scalability of the product to be able to go to other cities was just undeniable—and our margins are excellent,” she said.

“So the judges, they did grill us a bit, but mostly it was out of interest for investment in comparison to some of the other pitches were they more just trying to get their head around what the concept is.”

The judges for this year’s competition were Kat Wong, Director of Marketing at Adro; George Rossolatos, CEO of the Canadian Business Growth Fund; Shannon Whitaker, Associate Investor at Arctern Ventures; Yusuf Ahmed, Founder of Zevenue; Mike Cooke, CFO at Playmaker; and Lori Simpson, Founding Partner at Leading Minds Labs.

Although Pariseau didn’t name the judge, she said one of them suggested that Taste of the City was ready to make an appearance on Dragon’s Den.

Former Queen’s finalists HiRide and SparkGig both appeared on that television show, with the latter receiving a $2 million valuation during the program.

As for the judges, she said they were all excited to go and do a tasting themselves.

“We had a lot of great feedback from that, that this is something that they all were hungry for and they all wanted to go on a tasting. So you know it’s a really great idea when they want to go in and buy your product right away.”

Pariseau said that the judges might not have to wait long for a local tasting, as she used the opportunity while in Toronto in between stages of the competition to sign up local restaurants to her platform.

Turning undergrad idea into a graduated success story

The idea of Taste of the City, said Pariseau, was developed while she was working on her undergraduate degree at the University of Calgary.

She launched the company in 2023, and was encouraged by her professors in her business minor classes to consider making a pitch for the Queen’s competition.

“The U of C, they actually provided me with quite a few mentors. I started with our pitch deck and went back and forth [with those professors], we refined it, went back again, refined it again, and did that from mid-December until the competition in January. It really helped show and highlight to the judges that this was an opportunity they didn’t want to miss out on.”

The success, Pariseau said, is directly attributable to attending “Canada’s entrepreneurial university.”

“I attribute all of this success to the help that I’ve received in my business minor.”