Startup profile: FoodLogiQ, taking food industry management to the cloud (+ video)

Recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of The 25 Most Innovative Ag-Tech Start-ups, Durham-based FoodLogiQ is taking the food industry’s management to the cloud.

With a growing customer base and an employee headcount reaching 50, FoodLogiQ will be telling its story to investors at the CED Tech Venture Conference on Sept. 19-20 in Raleigh.

Demand for FoodLogiQ’s platform, including a recently added recall feature, reflects the industry’s “transformation at all levels,” says FoodLogiQ CEO Dean Wiltse.

“This new direction is a result of many factors, including the public’s demand for transparency around what goes into their food and where it comes from, increased regulations in light of the Food Safety Modernization Act, and the staggering number of high-profile contaminations and recalls in recent months. This has led to a host of new challenges facing an increasingly complex, global food supply chain.”

What sets FoodLogiQ apart?

“FoodLogiQ help companies achieve end-to-end traceability while supporting safe and high quality food products across the supply chain,” the CEO says.

“FoodLogiQ’s platform is an online supplier community used by food companies to manage quality, safety, audit, regulatory compliance and traceability needs across their supply chains. To meet mounting regulatory requirements and consumer demands for transparency, food companies are leveraging FoodLogiQ to validate supplier compliance with food safety and act with confidence in the event of a food safety or quality issue.”

This profile is the 60th in a series written, edited and published by WRAL TechWire in partnership with the CED.

Profile: FoodLogiQ

Website: http://www.foodlogiq.com/
Email contact: info@foodlogiq.com
Address: 2655 Meridian Parkway Durham NC 27713
CEO: Dean Wiltse
Video link(s): Food Safety Tech Video Interview with FoodLogiQ’s Chief Marketing Officer https://youtu.be/Nh8JuATOeZs
How many employees? 50
Link to CED Tech Venture Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/foodlogiq

The Q&A:

What is the focus of your business?

The food industry, no matter what size or segment, uses FoodLogiQ’s cloud-based platform to combine supplier management, quality management, traceability and transparency in a single, integrated community collaborative application. The end result provides companies the supply chain visibility to make real time decisions based on real time data, leading to time and cost savings.

What is the top pain point/business application you are seeking to address?

The food and beverage industry is undergoing a transformation at all levels. This new direction is a result of many factors, including the public’s demand for transparency around what goes into their food and where it comes from, increased regulations in light of the Food Safety Modernization Act, and the staggering number of high-profile contaminations and recalls in recent months. This has led to a host of new challenges facing an increasingly complex, global food supply chain.

Currently, many food safety and supply chain professionals are still manually managing processes through spreadsheets and emails. It takes a long time to manage suppliers and track their performance, capture quality incidents and even longer to respond to recalls. By leveraging FoodLogiQ’s SaaS technology, food companies are able to automate these manual processes. This allows users to save valuable time and achieve full visibility and end-to-end traceability within their supply chains.

FoodLogiQ customers can monitor and audit sustainability practices of the suppliers in their network all while gaining full visibility into the safety and quality issues in their supply chain. Once companies are able to identify quality issues in their supply chain, companies can report them in real-time and recoup the costs of nonconforming products, providing significant savings and ROI. Our technology stitches together the critical tracking events of our customers’ products and ingredients at the batch-lot level to give real-time visualization of the supply chain so food safety professionals can make confident decisions based on a single source of real-time data.

What makes it unique?

FoodLogiQ was designed specifically to solve the unique challenges food companies face. FoodLogiQ help companies achieve end-to-end traceability while supporting safe and high quality food products across the supply chain. FoodLogiQ’s platform is an online supplier community used by food companies to manage quality, safety, audit, regulatory compliance and traceability needs across their supply chains. To meet mounting regulatory requirements and consumer demands for transparency, food companies are leveraging FoodLogiQ to validate supplier compliance with food safety and act with confidence in the event of a food safety or quality issue.

In the Spring of 2017, FoodLogiQ launched the first-of-its-kind solution, Recall + Response (https://www.foodlogiq.com/solutions/recall-and-response/), the food industry’s first real-time, SaaS solution for recall and stock withdrawal management. Serving as a centralized technology platform for executing stock withdrawals, recalls and mock recalls, Recall + Response empowers food companies both large and small with real-time data to execute faster, more targeted recall management across their supply chain.

The system launches automated communications including phone, email, and text notifications that are developed using pre-built templates in the platform. By preparing and documenting the recall plan in advance within Recall + Response, companies can ensure speed of delivery and consistency of notifications to their supply chain partners when a recall happens. Once the recall or stock withdrawal is launched, companies then monitor the platform’s dashboard to track the responses gathered and actions taken during a recall or stock withdrawal – all in real-time.

Why should investors be interested in your firm?

We are living in the age of the modernization of the food supply chain, and the food traceability market is projected to reach $14 billion by 2019. National brands, like IPC/SUBWAY, Whole Foods, Chipotle, (https://www.foodlogiq.com/customers/) have selected FoodLogiQ to enable them to make food safety and quality decisions with confidence – all while protecting and promoting their brands.

In June 2017, FoodLogiQ was recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of The 25 Most Innovative Ag-Tech Start-ups (https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2017/06/28/the-25-most-innovative-ag-tech-startups/) .