An Unusually Good Story

Building sustainable food systems in the Okanagan

Growing up in a small community, our founder noticed there was a lot of food going to waste yet many kids weren’t getting enough to eat. During her time at Enactus OC, she saw this challenge as an opportunity. In our research, we found that 1.2M children in Canada struggle to get enough to eat every day, while 36M tonnes of consumable food is wasted—releasing 57M tonnes of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.

In exploring a solution, we discovered that half a billion apples go to waste each year. This led us to start Fruit Snaps, an organization that worked with Okanagan-based farmers to use unwanted apples and turn them into healthy snacks. Partnering with Gleaners, we were able to create an innovative process for dehydrating apples and turning them into apple chips.

In response to rapidly growing demand, we developed an innovative production process that increased yield by 500%. In our first full year of operation, we were able to produce 35,000 servings of Fruit Snaps for local schools and international aid groups in Guatemala, Ukraine and North Korea.

When COVID-19 closed schools, and Fruit Snaps were no longer available in classrooms, we pivoted the business to supply food banks and start making apple juice. The apple juice was introduced to grocery stores and markets and the popularity exploded. This gave us a chance to make the business sustainable while paying farmers for their, usually, wasted product. 

Today, Fruit Snaps has evolved into Unusually Good. Now, we’re turning our eyes to global sources of food waste so that we can uncover opportunities to make the unusual usual.