A Vancouver startup is looking to make some noise with its fundraising effort. Coast Protein, which describes itself as “Western Canada’s first cricket protein company,” has announced the launch of their crowdfunding campaign via Kickstarter. The company hopes to raise $20,000 from February 27 to March 31; the funds will be used to streamline production, improve packaging and add cricket protein powders to their product offering.
Coast Protein currently sells small-batch cricket protein bars to various retailers across the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. The company locally produces roughly 1,000 cricket protein bars by hand every week, and they’re ready to take their production to the next level.
“Our hope for this campaign is not only to increase our production capacity and expand our product line, but to educate our community about the health benefits of this sustainable protein source,” marketing director Chris Baird said in a news release. “We’ve found that crickets contain more calcium than milk and more iron than spinach, making them the ideal candidate for protein powder in shakes and smoothies. We’ve seen other healthy food trends like juicing, Kombucha, and farm-to-table take off in Canada, and we believe that cricket protein is next.”
The company’s news release claims crickets are a complete animal protein “(and) provide a nutritional alternative to heavily processed proteins … They have a full amino acid profile, and are environmentally friendly.” Coast Protein notes that compared to cows, crickets require 2,000 times less water, produce 100 times less methane gas, and require a fraction of the land for the same pound of protein.
“We hope that the sustainability factor of cricket protein will be a big driver of adoption,” Baird added. “Canadians are becoming more conscious of the impact that their food has on the environment, and crickets require a fraction of the resources compared to other protein sources.”
Coast Protein’s cricket protein bars and protein powders are now available in a variety of flavours on Kickstarter until March 31st, and at select retailers across the Lower Mainland. If the company reaches their goal, they’ll be partnering with a tree-planting company in British Columbia to personally plant 10,000 trees in June.