Two veterans of the New Brunswick startup scene are gaining traction with a new data-based product they hope one day will reduce global food waste.

David Baxter and Shawn Carver – both known for their work as mentors – have spent more than two years getting Fiddlehead Technology off the ground. The startup has developed Forecast Guardian, which helps food companies forecast the demand for food, helping to ensure they neither carry too much inventory nor run out of stock. 

Fiddlehead is now working with an early adopter and hopes to snare three more this year.  And if they are successful, the principals hope they will help global food producers waste less so there is more food for the world’s growing population.

“One of the benefits of moving the inventory as close to the food demand as possible is you reduce food waste,” said Baxter, President and Co-Founder of Fiddlehead.  “It isn’t something that’s lost on the people we talk to. They see the benefits to society that will come if there is less waste.”

It’s taken a few years of prodding to get Carver and Baxter to speak publicly about Fiddlehead. Carver, an energetic tech enthusiast, was a principal of the mentoring group TheNextPhase until late 2012. Baxter was a Vice President of Innovation at the tech consultancy T4G and a former chair of the PropelICT startup accelerator group.

They teamed up in 2012 to form a company involved in data analytics. They explored several ideas and eventually settled on a product that would help food producers predict demand. The product could help other sectors but they are focusing on food producers as an entry point.

Forecast Guardian works with the food producer’s existing budgeting and operations software, layering over it to analyze factors that the company may have previously overlooked. It analyzes data on such factors as weather patterns, economic conditions and holidays to more accurately predict the demand for specific types of food.

Though the societal benefits of not wasting food are obvious, the product also meets an economic need. It’s known that food producers and retailers both accrue extra costs if they carry too much inventory. What’s less well known is that the producers pay retailers a penalty if store owners order a product and the producer has none to deliver. So precise assessments of demand are critical. Some experts estimate that a 1 percent error in forecasting demand can cost a major food producer $2 million to $5 million annually.

Vice-President Product Carver and Baxter have been working with a major Maritime food producer to develop Forecast Guardian, and that company will begin a major pilot project. Baxter said Fiddlehead hopes to line up three more major companies for pilots this year. It would prefer to work with Atlantic Canadian companies because they’re nearby, but will work with others as well. 

Fiddlehead, which now employs four people, received a financial boost late last year when the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation invested $100,000 in the company. The investment complemented funding the company received from several private investors, including members of Saint John-based East Valley Venture.