Aki Kaltenbach is saving the seas, one carrot at a time

Aki Kaltenbach is a little wary of our name. She notes that sometimes people confuse what she does (the founder of plant-based seafood company, Save Da Sea) with foodtech, leading to images in my brain of people in lab coats and safety goggles squishing brioche. So, she’s justifiably curious about the weight of the “tech” in Victoria Tech Journal. I note that while we are tech enthusiasts and are quick to write about blockchains and SaaS, Victoria Tech Journal exists, really, to spotlight innovators and entrepreneurs.

It’s, actually, very much a place for Kaltenbach. “I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” she replies. It’s a feeling honed in the restaurants where she grew up. She cut her teeth at the trio of Whistler-based Japanese spots her family operates and eventually managed the restaurants. Surrounded by familial restaurateurs, the values of entrepreneurship seemed to emanate up to her as if it were the steam coming off of the pots. 

When you combine this business drive with a generous helping of a lifetime’s food knowledge, add a dash of leadership, and finish with veganism, you get Save Da Sea. On the roster of its products, for example, is a carrot-forward smoked salmon, with a dill and caper-adorned counterpart that the company website quips is just missing the bagel and cream cheese. A tuna salad featuring vegan mayo, lemon, and pepper also jumps off the page.

While it’s an initial foray into consumer packaged goods, it’s not her first go at running her own company. Kaltenbach left the restaurant industry for a role with Hootsuite in 2012, launching the Vancouver tech O.G.’s Solution Partner Program, designed for agencies and consultancies looking to demonstrate social leadership and grow their business around social media by introducing customers to Hootsuite. It was here that she started her first company, Fieldtripp Media. 

“I was at Hootsuite surrounded by very entrepreneurial folks: the kind who started things off the side of their desk,” Kaltenbach reflects. “I met with a couple like-minded folks and we built Fieldtripp. It didn't go very far. It was the Airbnb of experiences. We built it and we sold it for, like, no money.” 

Despite the pocket change, Kaltenbach’s biggest takeaway from Fieldtripp was the importance of building connections. “The relationships between us as founders were amazing,” she says. “And I still work with one of them, a graphic designer — I still work with her very closely today. And the others are really close friends.”

This has carried into Save Da Sea. Particularly, its roster of investors. When I ask Kaltenbach about this, she further highlights that relationship piece. There are some “really strong Angel networks” in Vancouver and Victoria, she tells me, and her feeling is that once you connect with one, you get info on the others. Women’s Equity Lab, the Victoria-founded but country-wide team of female investors, was created by a friend of Kaltenbach’s, for example. Women’s Equity Lab was one of the first places she pitched Save Da Sea. It also became one of the first to invest in it.

Through that network, she met with the Vancouver Social Value Fund. While Women’s Equity Lab is on a mission to grow the landscape of female investors, the Vancouver Social Value Fund is also trying to diversify the demographic, this time via students. It is also particularly driven towards impact ventures, with Kaltenbach reflecting that the pair were a great fit. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for her and Save Da Sea, despite the friendships, the networks, and the natural alignment with impact investors.

“Oh gosh, I mean, to date have raised just over $1 million,” Kaltenbach says, “and every single cheque was really, really hard work. My first round, which was $500,000, took me over a year to close and I probably spoke with almost 200 investors — not even exaggerating. The second round definitely was easier and closed faster. But I do think the angel networks in Victoria and Vancouver are a great place to start, because I feel like they're a great jumping off point to meeting other potential investors.”

It’s the second time in quick succession that she has parcelled Vancouver and Victoria together. Why Kaltenbach hops back and forth between the two in conversation, Harbour Air-style, is potentially due to the fact that while Victoria is her homebase, it’s not her birthplace. Yet, it’s the city where she was able to both start a family and start her company. Hootsuite and her families’ restaurants are all clues of her mainland residence. But, after moving to Victoria in 2019, she now speaks highly of what it afforded her.

“I moved here a couple years ago and it was at that time that I was able to focus fully on Save Da Sea,” Kaltenbach points out. “It's been an incredible place to grow a business. Our very first customers were the Very Good Food Company. If you only know one Victoria plant-based company, it's probably going to be them. They were very generous. I had one product in this janky packaging, and they were kind enough to give me a chance. We were making it in a shared kitchen space. At the time, I was nine months pregnant. So, I had to make a bunch. It was our first order and I wanted to make sure they had enough to last until I had the baby and was back on my feet again. I made them what I thought would last them at least a few weeks.” 

A few weeks quickly became a few days. Just two, in fact. Forty-eight hours after she handed over the product, Kaltenbach was going into labor and receiving word that her first order — that one she hoped would be a stockpile while she nursed a newborn — had sold out. Telling this story brought Kaltenchbach back to my original question: What’s it like to build a business in Victoria? For her, It's been amazing. The plant-based community is small, but growing, she tells me. What’s already grown, though, is a very generous and very helpful ecosystem not just of vegan entrepreneurs, but food manufacturing in general. 

“I gave birth to two babies, I like to say, because they kind of came at the same time,” she explains. “I had my son, and then I also… well, first, I had Save Da Sea. Being an entrepreneur, it's obviously a lot of hard work. Lots of people will say that. But, it does give me the flexibility to work when I want to, at the hours that I need to. I’m grateful. The other amazing thing about Victoria is that my partner's family is here. And so I've got tons of support. We have daycare at grandma and grandpa's. I would not be able to do it without that support.”

The current roster of Save Da Sea is a far cry from one product in "janky" packages. Photo: Supplied

So, she is doing it — and doing it well. Kaltenbach and Save Da Sea have celebrated a few milestones recently. Earlier this year, she was announced as a Western Living 2022 Foodie of the Year finalist. More recently, Save Da Sea announced a group of high-profile retail partners in Choices Markets, Sobeys, and Safeway. This country-wide expansion — Kaltenbach quips that you can find Save Da Sea from Penticton to Pictou (I had to Google the latter: Nova Scotia) — accents nicely with the local shops closer to home. Whole Foods, SPUD, Market on Yates, and Lifestyle Market are some of the Victoria spots Save Da Sea can be found. 

These shops are her direct customers, she reminds me, before mentioning that she tries to support them as much as she can. When she’s not shopping local, she’s dining local. While Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles is her ultimate — she refers to owner Matthew Kenney as her hero — there is more than enough love to go around for some local spots. Be Love is her go-to. She also has flowers for the Courtney Room’s vegan offerings, quipping that the dishes go beyond tofu and french fries. 

Restaurants are in her DNA, so they were a natural northstar. But any consumer packaged goods company must, at some point, reckon with metal shelving rather than tables, plates, and cutlery. When she first launched Save Da Sea, she had food service in mind. She acknowledges that this was pre-COVID, which presented a drastically different restaurant landscape. But it was her background, after all, and she thought it would be cheaper with less middlemen. But, once the pandemic hit, Kaltenbach pivoted Save Da Sea to the point where now 95 percent of its business comes from retail.

She’s trying to run that momentum over the border. On the horizon is a U.S. launch to expand upon the 500 Canadian retailers that stock the company’s products. It’s a huge endeavour, she tells me. It required different packing and overhauled marketing. There’s no need for saumon fumé végétarien on packages in Arizona or Wyoming, after all. I can’t help but recall back to those early days of Save Da Sea: a third-trimester Kaltenbach stuffing plant-based seafood into admittedly janky packaging. 

The packaging is again at the forefront of her mind, but both of her children — her son and Save Da Sea — are growing. She has now become a fixture of the Victoria plant-based food scene that welcomed her with open arms in 2019. You can walk into Market on Yates or a Sobeys in Saskatoon to grab some Save Da Sea. “We’re food,” she told me at the onset of our call, as if turning plants into smoked salmon was the most natural thing in the world. It’s definitely starting to look like it is.