A local entrepreneur is poking the Dragons to give up their gold. Troy Biever, creator of the Flavor Fork and owner of Panago Pizza on Bellerose Drive, visited the CBC’s Dragon’s Den last April to ask for investment for his invention.
A local entrepreneur is poking the Dragons to give up their gold.
Troy Biever, creator of the Flavor Fork and owner of Panago Pizza on Bellerose Drive, visited the CBC’s Dragon’s Den last April to ask for investment for his invention. The barbecue utensil helps flavour meat by infusing marinade or sauce into it, rather than spreading it on top.
“It’s a better form of flavouring than marinating. Marinating, the purpose is that your sauce gets into your meat but actually it just stays on the outside,” he said.
By using the Flavor Fork instead, “you don’t dry your meat out. It adds moisture and flavour to whatever you’re cooking,” he said.
Biever said he never liked having cold sauce on his warm meat. That’s how he came up with the idea of simply injecting it while the meat was still cooking. It took a few years to get the fork developed and manufactured, he said. But thanks to help from St. Albert’s Northern Alberta Business Incubator (NABI) and Nova NAIT, Biever launched the product in the summer of 2012.
The fork is now being sold across Canada and locally in select Home Hardware and Canadian Tire stores, as well as at D’Arcy’s Meat Market. It costs between $20 and $25.
While there are also injector needles on the market, they are not everyday items, said Biever. The Flavor Fork has three prongs to maximize the spread of the marinade, he said. But the prongs can also be detached and replaced with a marinating brush. Or you can just use it as a regular barbecuing fork, he said.
“It’s a fully functional fork and there’s a bottle opener on it as well, which is a Canadian necessity,” he said.
The pitch will air on CBC’s Dragons’ Den on March 12. For more information on the utensil go to flavorfork.com
