CFIN CEO @Dana McCauley shares her takeaways from last week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where she participated in panels and discussions focused on food, health, and consumer-facing technology. The reflections below draw on those conversations and the signals she's tracking for Canadian foodtech.
CES is always a useful temperature check on where technology-and investor attention-is heading. While its focus extends far beyond food, it does offer an early signal of where consumer-facing technology, platform investment, and enabling infrastructure are moving-and those shifts increasingly shape how food is produced, sold, regulated, and experienced.
This year, several themes stood out as particularly relevant for Canadian foodtech companies, spanning robotics, smart homes, regulation, and the future of food retail.
Robots won't replace chefs-they'll work with them
One of the most common (and spirited) conversations was "chef versus robot." While Hollywood loves a dystopian take, many innovators pushed back hard on that narrative. Celebrity chef Tyler Florence summed it up well: food is deeply personal, and chefs aren't going anywhere. Instead, robots will increasingly support the back-of-house-handling accounting, supply chain optimization, and repetitive tasks-freeing humans to focus on creativity and connection. In this future, "human-made" food may actually become a premium luxury, with robot + chef as the dominant model.
The pantry, fridge, and smart home as the next frontier
Thought leaders repeatedly pointed to the pantry and refrigerator as major untapped opportunities. Giving inanimate objects a "voice" could automate meal planning ("What's for dinner?"), reduce food waste, and dramatically improve the user experience. Imagine a system that builds a menu based on your family's preferences, what's already in your fridge, and what's available at stores along your route home-then prompts you to buy only what you need. Home food robots and AI-enabled nutrition tools also show promise in helping people age in place through automation and personalized nutrition.
That said, there's a real downside to consider: the potential loss of cultural and tribal food knowledge. If kids grow up on LLM-generated menus, we risk losing the stories and techniques behind "how grandma made it." That knowledge is rarely written down; it's learned by watching, doing, and being corrected in real time.
This raises an important counter-question for foodtech: how do we use digital tools to preserve that kind of embodied knowledge rather than overwrite it? Some emerging approaches focus on capturing food knowledge visually and spatially-recording techniques, hand movements, timing, and sensory cues in ways text alone can't. CFIN member DeepSight, for example, applies augmented reality (AR) and computer vision to document processes and techniques as they're performed, creating a digital record that can be revisited and learned from. Technologies like AR could help transmit food skills and traditions across generations instead of replacing them.
MAHA and regulatory divergence in the U.S.
Just an hour after new U.S. policy direction framed under the MAHA ("Make America Healthy Again") banner was released, I joined a panel with product developers and celebrity nutritionist Caroline O'Neill to unpack the implications. The emphasis on red meat and full-fat dairy-like butter and cheese-marks a clear divergence from prevailing global dietary guidance, which has increasingly emphasized fibre-rich plant proteins and unsaturated oils.
A key takeaway for Canadian companies: selling into the U.S. may increasingly require reformulation and, in some cases, separate inventories for U.S. and Canadian SKUs.
The rise of the RoboStore
I also moderated a panel, Meet the RoboStore, featuring leaders from 365 Retail Markets, Yo-Kai Express, and ALBERTS. The consensus was that these concepts are hard to build and even harder to make profitable. Success hinges on scalability, low maintenance, and ultra-clear consumer communication that reduces friction and encourages trial. High-volume, 24/7 environments-universities, hospitals, airports-are emerging as early adopters. Behind the scenes, companies like 365 Retail Markets are becoming the invisible backbone, handling data, payments, and digital advertising. Yo-Kai's use of facial scanning to tailor ads and AI-driven customer engagement sparked particularly lively discussion.
CES trends to watch
A few final observations:
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CES skewed heavily B2C; meaningful B2B foodtech showed up mainly at The Spoon conference.
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Ontario's booth-focused largely on B2B-was busy and drew strong interest in Canadian innovation. CFIN is exploring partnership opportunities for next year and would love to hear from members interested in joining.
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Hardware is back. Robotics dominated the floor, from humanoids to lawn-mowing bots.
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Consumer foodtech clustered around smart-home drinks, AI cooking appliances, home growing systems, and food-waste solutions.
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Health, aging, and kids-focused nutrition tech featured prominently.
Bottom line: the future of foodtech is less about replacement and more about partnership-between humans, machines, culture, and data. For Canadian foodtech companies, that means paying close attention to where enabling technologies, consumer platforms, and regulatory signals are moving-often well beyond traditional food channels.