Andreas Duess

I was born and raised on an isolated farm, where we kept bees and had an amazing kitchen garden where most of our meals came from. This started a lifelong love affair with food.

In my late teens moved to London, UK, to study design and marketing.

During this time, I worked as a line cook in pubs and restaurants to support myself, learning to cook professionally before pivoting back into marketing and working with some of the UK's finest ad agencies as a copywriter and brand strategist.

After moving to Canada, I co-founded Nourish Food Marketing and helped grow it to become Canada's largest marketing agency specializing in working with food and drink clients. I sold my shares in Nourish in the summer of 2022 to be able to focus on my drink startup, Auralis Botanical Brewing.

Auralis achieved national distribution within six months of being launched, and we are currently in discussion with our first US distributors.

A few food brands I have worked with throughout my career

Bento Sushi, consumer marketing

ASR Group, Redpath Sugar - all marketing strategy and execution, outsourced marketing department

Maple Leaf - consumer marketing strategy, execution

McCormick Spices - b2b marketing strategy, execution

Compass Group - marketing strategy and execution, universities and students

Restaurants Canada - RC Show marketing

Non-food brand marketing experience:

Sony, Xerox, Adobe, Air Canada, American Express, Canon

What else should people know about me?

Work

I also own a food marketing consultancy, Audacious Food Marketing, helping mission-driven food and drink manufacturers launch and scale.

I teach branding and marketing at Food Ventures, mentoring newly minted food entrepreneurs.

Personal

I love sailing, which I learned during my time as a Navy Cadet.

I am a lifelong geek and have always been fascinated by stuff that goes "beep".

I enjoy reading, and I always have a huge stack of different books, from non-fiction to trashy crime novels.