Jake Edmiston

6 days ago | thespec.com | Jake Edmiston

It was 5 a.m. on a Thursday in May and Marshall Cohen was furious about the state of his cucumbers. He’d ordered them earlier that morning at a farm stand in the Ontario Food Terminal, the biggest wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Canada. As is the custom, Cohen’s order was delivered to his truck, parked at a loading bay at the far end of the terminal, just off the Queensway in Etobicoke. But when the cucumbers arrived, Cohen’s truck driver noticed yellow spots and bruises.

4 weeks ago | therecord.com | Jake Edmiston

The food delivery service Skip is now using a small fleet of cooler-sized, orange robots to make deliveries, as part of a three-month pilot project in Markham. The four robots have locked, insulated compartments that can hold up to 50 kilogram, with cameras inside that can detect a spill. On the Skip app, customers within a two-kilometre radius in downtown Markham can choose to have a robot make their delivery.

2 months ago | thespec.com | Jake Edmiston

Nobody at the store knew the CEO was coming that morning, but suddenly, there he was, standing in the produce section, admiring a state-of-the-art pineapple-peeling machine. Per Bank, CEO of Canadian grocery giant Loblaw, had arrived for a surprise inspection and wanted to see if the machine was in working order. It was a little booth off to the side, a fruit-torture peep show, with windows so you could watch a set of robotic knives shear and core the pineapple, then deposit it into a container.

2 months ago | thespec.com | Jake Edmiston

Mohamad Fakih has taken back control of his Mississauga-based restaurant chain, Paramount Fine Foods, putting an end to a long and bitter dispute with his biggest shareholder. Fakih and his Kuwait-based partner, Ali Noureddine, have been fighting in Ontario Superior Court for four years — to the point that one judge said the relationship had gotten so bad, it was threatening to destroy the entire business.

Mar 22, 2025 | thespec.com | Jake Edmiston

It was becoming obvious to Peter Neal that something had to be done about his tortilla chips. They were the top seller for his snack brand, Neal Brothers, stocked in stores all across Canada. But they were made in the United States, and that was quickly becoming a problem. So he set out to find a factory in Canada. In ordinary times, this sort of thing would be a dangerous adventure.