We had an excellent time at our Food & Restaurant Tech Expert Panel and Networking Event at Google SF on 5/29!

The evening was filled with networking, food, and a talk with an expert panel on food tech.

Our expert panel included:

Raf Peeters, Founder and CEO of Qcify; Aaron Aguirre, Product Architect at Copia; and Larissa Russell, CEO and Co Founder of Pod Foods. Throughout the event they answered questions about food tech and went into detail about their companies and what they do. Watch the video!

Raf Peeters is currently Founder and CEO of Qcify Inc, a technology company developing the next generation of quality control solutions to the food processing industry. Qcify’s AI technology helps reduce costs, improve efficiency and take the human subjectivity out of quality control. Their technology is currently used across Australia, Europe and the USA. Raf is also President and CEO of Innova Food Tech, a consulting firm that’s active in the food industry and more specifically on the food equipment and processing side. In the 6 months prior to Innova Food Tech he was Co-founder and VP of Business Development at CottageMeal (now part of GrubMarket), an online marketplace where you can find locally made and grown food items. During this time he helped the company gain traction in the SF Bay Area and help them secure initial funding.

Aaron Aguirre is currently a Product Architect at Copia, a company that uses data to empower food businesses to optimize their production, operations and ordering habits to reduce food waste. While 40% of the food produced in the United States is thrown out, 1-4 Americans are food insecure. Hunger is not a scarcity problem it’s a logistics problem. When excess food is available Copia provides the logistical engine to drive excess food to those in need while automating and providing audit-proof tax receipts along the way to provide businesses access to enhanced tax dedications. Aaron currently holds the record at Copia for most meals recovered through the platform, providing over 250k meals with amazing food that would have been otherwise wasted.

Larissa Russell is the CEO and co-founder of Pod Foods (Pod), a company that brings local and emerging brands into retail stores at a fraction of the time and cost so that high-quality products can be made accessible to consumers, and small businesses can succeed. Prior to founding Pod, Russell had a cookie business called Green Pea Cookie, which made cookies out of peas. She and her co-founder Fiona Lee experienced the challenges of the B2B grocery supply chain first-hand. Russell graduated from Dartmouth College in 2013 and aims to inspire and create pathways for people to live their authentic lives.

Watch our expert panel video here!

Photos from the event: