Halifax Entrepreneur Receives $25,000 For Her Plant-Based Egg Alternative
HALIFAX – A local young entrepreneur has just received some major recognition for her vegan plant-based egg alternative food product, and she is also receiving $25,000 in grant money that she will use to expand and improve her business.
Hannah Chisholm, the 25-year-old founder of Eggcitables, was one of three recipients of this year’s Plant Projects Grants. These grants are given out by Burnaby company Earth’s Own to promote a shift to plant-based eating to help fight climate change.
Chisholm, who was born and raised in Heatherton, Nova Scotia, was born with allergies to milk, egg, nuts, and shellfish, and for much of her childhood, it was hard to find alternatives for her to eat.
“Growing up in rural Nova Scotia, my mom had to get super creative when trying to find things to feed me, especially when it came to baking,” said Chisholm.
“But as I grew up, the rise in plant-based eating and veganism started to result in all of these wonderful dairy alternative products.”
As she got older, she started to notice a lot of dairy-free products, like soy milk, but no alternatives for eggs. It was while studying entrepreneurship at StFX University that she got inspired to start experimenting.
“During my time in university, I started to think to myself, if all of these dairy-alternative products are becoming so popular because of plant-based eating, why hasn’t someone created an egg alternative?” Recalls Chisholm.
Through her own research, Chisholm found that chickpea flour and water can serve as a substitute for an omelet, which was the launching point for her own food product.
In her third year of university, Chisholm had to come up with a business idea for one of her programs, which is when she decided to take her recipe and, working with food scientists, Eggcitables was born and launched in 2018.
Eggcitables has grown quickly as a business. Chisholm started off selling her product at farmers’ markets in New Brunswick and Halifax. But now, it’s available in 70 different stores and available online at Eggcitables.com.
The egg-alternative is a dry product, which comes in a 300-gram resealable pouch. Customers can cook it like an egg for breakfast and even bake with it like you would with a normal egg.
“I like to tell people it does 90 percent of the things a real egg does,” says Chisholm.
Chisholm isn’t just proud of her product for its dietary benefits. She is also aware of the need for humans to start moving away from animal products due to their impact on the environment.
“Animal agriculture, in general, tends to have more CO2 emissions associated with it because you have to grow and harvest and produce the feed to feed the animals,” says Chisholm. “And of course, there’s also electricity and energy requirements. And there’s the issue with waste as well- what happens with farming runoff.”
Chisholm discovered the Plant Projects grant because she has long been a fan of Earth’s Own Food Company, which has a compatible food philosophy with Eggcitables.
“I’m a huge fan of Earth’s Own; I love their products; I love the organization as another Canadian company that offers plant-based products,” says Chisholm. “They’re certainly an organization I look up to.”
With her $25,00 grant money, Chisholm wants to conduct more marketing, as well as update Eggcitables packaging. Most importantly, she wants to expand the product’s reach in Ontario and Western Canada.
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].
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