Walk through a Canadian farmers’ market, specialty food shop or independent café and one thing becomes clear: women are helping shape what Canadians eat and drink.
Across coffee, snacks, wellness beverages and specialty foods, women founders are turning personal ideas into serious brands. Many are doing it while navigating financing, scaling and visibility barriers that remain stubbornly real.
That makes their success more than a feel-good story. Women-led food and beverage companies are creating jobs, introducing new products, building local supply chains and changing what consumers expect from the brands they support.
At Urban Calm Coffee, that story feels especially close to home. Founder Tara Duncan built a Calgary coffee company around specialty Colombian coffee, functional mushroom blends and women-led sourcing. Her journey reflects a larger movement happening across Canada, where women entrepreneurs are growing in number and influence while still facing a business landscape that does not always make growth easy.
Women entrepreneurs are a growing force in Canada
Women-owned businesses now represent a meaningful share of Canada’s private-sector economy. According to the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, majority women-owned businesses accounted for 19.5% of private-sector businesses in Canada in the first quarter of 2025. Earlier national estimates also found that women-owned small and medium-sized businesses generated more than $90 billion in annual revenue and supported close to one million jobs.
Nearly one in five private-sector businesses in Canada was majority women-owned in early 2025.
The progress matters, but the headline number does not tell the whole story. Women-owned firms are still more likely to be smaller, newer and more dependent on personal savings or incremental reinvestment. That can make it harder to absorb a bad season, finance a major production run or move quickly when a large retail opportunity appears.
The barriers are real, especially when it is time to scale
Access to capital remains one of the most consistent challenges identified in Canadian research on women entrepreneurship. Federal Women Entrepreneurship Strategy reports also point to gaps in financing, networks, mentorship and scale-up support.
Then there is the time problem. Many women founders are building companies while also carrying a disproportionate share of unpaid care and family responsibilities. Trade shows, networking events, production emergencies and late-night bookkeeping do not happen in a vacuum.
These pressures can be especially visible in food and beverage, where growth often requires money before the revenue arrives. A larger purchase order might mean buying ingredients, packaging and production capacity weeks or months before the retailer pays.
Why food and beverage can be particularly difficult
A great recipe or product idea is only the beginning. Food founders also have to learn food safety, labelling, packaging, production planning, inventory management, distribution and retail margins. As demand grows, they may need new equipment, a commercial kitchen, a co-packer or a larger roasting and packaging operation.
That means a founder can be working on brand strategy in the morning, reviewing label requirements after lunch and solving a production problem before dinner.
Many women-led food companies begin at farmers’ markets, in small local shops or through direct-to-consumer sales. Those channels are valuable because they create an immediate connection with customers. But moving from a local following to broader retail can require an entirely different level of capital, systems and support.
Why women-led food brands often connect so deeply
One reason many women-led food and beverage brands stand out is that they begin with a lived problem, personal experience, family tradition or cultural connection rather than a boardroom category brief.
That often gives the brand a stronger point of view. Ethical sourcing, sustainability, wellness, community impact and ingredient transparency are frequently built into the product from the beginning rather than added later as marketing language.
Across Canada, founders behind brands such as Blume, Remix Snacks, Made With Local, Balzac’s Coffee and many others have shown that there is more than one path from a small launch to national recognition. Some grow through grocery. Others build online first. Many combine local retail, direct-to-consumer sales, marketplaces and wholesale partnerships.
Coffee is an especially interesting category for women founders
Coffee sits somewhere between commodity and ritual. People care about taste, but they also care about where the coffee comes from, how it is roasted, who grew it and how the brand fits into their daily routine.
That creates room for founders to compete on more than price. Sourcing, storytelling, café culture, design and social impact can all become meaningful parts of the brand.
For Urban Calm, the starting point is simple: great mushroom coffee still has to be great coffee.
The Urban Calm Coffee story
Urban Calm Coffee was founded in Calgary by Tara Duncan. The company begins with specialty Colombian Arabica coffee sourced from women-led farms in Huila, Colombia and roasted in Calgary.
Select Urban Calm coffees are then paired with organic fruiting-body mushroom extracts including Lion’s Mane, Reishi, Chaga and Cordyceps. The idea is not to hide ordinary coffee behind wellness language. Urban Calm’s approach is coffee first: real roasted coffee for people who still want their morning cup to taste like coffee.
That distinction has helped shape the brand as mushroom coffee in Canada has moved from a niche wellness product into a much broader category.
From women-led farms in Huila to a women-led company in Calgary
Urban Calm’s sourcing story is connected to women coffee producers in Timaná, Huila through ASPROTIMANA. That connection matters because women are not only part of the Canadian founder story or the customer community. They are present at the agricultural origin of the coffee too.
The result is a women-led value chain that stretches from Colombia to Canada. It also gives Urban Calm a more meaningful sourcing story than simply putting “Colombian coffee” on the front of a bag.
You can read more about that relationship in From Timaná to Calgary: The Women Behind Our Coffee.
What Urban Calm shares with other women food entrepreneurs
Tara’s journey is distinct, but it shares several themes with women founders across Canada’s food and beverage industry.
- A personal starting point. The brand grew from Tara’s own interest in wellness, coffee and functional mushrooms.
- A focused product idea. Urban Calm centres on specialty coffee, women-led sourcing and mushroom coffee rather than trying to serve every beverage category.
- Values built into the product. The sourcing story is part of the supply chain, not simply a campaign attached to it.
- Multiple routes to market. Like many modern consumer brands, Urban Calm combines direct-to-consumer e-commerce with local retail, marketplaces and broader retail ambitions.
- Growth through persistence. Building visibility, financing inventory, managing compliance and doing many jobs at once are familiar realities for small food businesses.
Why support systems matter
Founder grit makes a good story, but grit should not have to replace access to capital, mentorship or infrastructure.
Canada’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy, women-focused financing programs and food and beverage accelerators are intended to help close some of those gaps. For food founders, practical support can include financing suited to inventory and production cycles, retail mentorship, manufacturing advice, stronger networks and better visibility with buyers.
Those supports matter because the payoff extends beyond an individual founder. When more women-led companies are able to scale, Canada gets more innovation, more jobs and a more diverse set of products and business leaders.
Why the Urban Calm story matters
Urban Calm is one company, but it illustrates something larger about women entrepreneurship in Canada’s food and beverage industry.
A founder can build a brand that is commercially ambitious and values-led at the same time. A sourcing story can be part of the product rather than a footnote. Wellness can be discussed without abandoning quality. And a small Canadian company can use e-commerce, content, local retail and national marketplaces to reach well beyond its home city.
For Urban Calm, the thread connecting it all is women: women growing coffee in Huila, a woman building a coffee company in Calgary, and a customer community that has responded to a brand built around taste, routine and purpose.
Women entrepreneurs are not a niche story in Canadian food and beverage. They are part of how the industry is evolving.
Coffee first. Purpose built in.
Explore Urban Calm’s specialty Colombian mushroom coffee, roasted in Calgary and sourced from women-led farms in Huila.
Sources and further reading
This article was developed from Urban Calm Coffee’s research on women food and beverage entrepreneurs in Canada and the company’s own founder and sourcing story. For Canadian entrepreneurship data and program information, see the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub: The State of Women’s Entrepreneurship in Canada 2025, the Government of Canada’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy Progress Report 2024, and the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund.