Dana McCauley

Dana continues to be a trusted source of food trends info for the news and industry. She was the founding executive director for Food Starter (now called District Kitchen), a food biz incubator and accelerator created by the City of Toronto which is now operated by Arlene Dickinson’s District Ventures. Before leaving Food Starter, Dana led it to win the Premier’s Award for Innovation in the same year that she was awarded the Women’s Executive Network’s Top 100 award.

As if 2019, Dana is the Director New Venture Creation at the University of Guelph where she helps researchers to create start-up companies based on their lab work.

Since 2017, she has been featured in Canadian media 30 times including in the Globe and Mail, National Post and EatNorth as well as dozens of trade magazines and podcasts such as The Feast and What the Farm Podcast and Sirius XM show In 2017 she was recognized as a change agent when she received the WXN Top 100 Most Powerful Women award in the trailblazers and trendsetter category.

At the same time McCauley took a job with Janes Family Foods as their culinary director. She was also cast as an on-air judge on the Food Network Canada original reality series called Recipe to Riches. Her co judges include Laura Calder, Tony Champman and Galen Weston, Jr.. The show was created by Temple Street Productions and airs starting October 2011 on Food Network Canada and Global TV.

Dana sold her consulting company in 2010 to Amy Snider Whitson who renamed it The Test Kitchen Inc.

Dana is often called upon to speak about food trends and opportunities for food manufacturers. She was a featured presenter at Food In Motion and a featured guest speaker at both the Food & Beverage Marketing Conference in Toronto and the Designing and Marketing Food to Boomers Conference hosted by the Guelph Food and Technology Centre. During the late nineties to 2010’s Dana addressed audiences at the Smithsonian Institution as well as at events held in cities from Honolulu to New York City. She has made hundreds of television appearances on shows such as CNN, Fox News, The Today Show, Breakfast Television, Canada AM, and The Leeza Gibbons Show. Print journalists from publications such as The National Post, the Canadian Press wire service, People magazine, Newsweek, and USA Today have interviewed Dana about her business and her books.

Dana McCauley (born July 7, 1966 in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian chef, food writer, food trend tracker, spokesperson, and international corporate food consultant. Dana is the former food editor for Gardening Life, Homemaker’s, and Style at Home magazines. She was President of Dana McCauley & Associates Ltd., a company based in Maple, Ontario that provided services to the food industry including grocery product development, recipe writing and research, food writing and food trend tracking and analysis. it was sold to Amy Snider/Whitson who renamed it as The Test Kitchen Incorporated.