Mitsoh beefs up snack-food herd

A company that makes protein-dense snacks based on Indigenous knowledge is expanding its product line from bison to beef after leveraging a sizeable investment into scaleup success.

The road has not been easy, but it has ended up in a good place, Mitsoh co-founder Ian Gladue said at an event at Edmonton Unlimited on June 12, which followed his company's win for Inclusive ScaleUP of the Year at the ScaleUP Awards earlier in the week.

"I'm a guy who has no education — homeless, drugs, alcohol, addictions, jail, grew up on the streets — and now has this tremendous amount of support," Gladue said at the ScaleUP Week event in Edmonton. "I learned my identity and my culture, and investors believe me when I say my word is my word. They believe in me. They believe the story and the purpose, and they've invested because of that."

"Mitsoh" means "eat" in Cree. Gladue, who is from the Bigstone Cree Nation in northern Alberta, came up with the idea to make pemmican and dried-meat snacks in 2015. He wanted to avoid the kinds of additives brought by colonizers — the pemmican is made of bison meat, berries, maple syrup, and smoke, with no fillers.

The bison-based snacks are available in more than a thousand stores across Canada. Now Mitsoh has expanded its product line to include grass-fed beef sticks, too.

"Pemmican was never the end goal. It was just the beginning," Gladue told Taproot at the event. "We're continuing that story: same values, same love in the products, and same tradition."

Mitsoh has sold more than three million units since the brand launched from Gladue's defunct Native Delights restaurant. He was reluctant to close the restaurant at the time, but now sees it is what helped him find success.

"I realized that what was stopping me from closing it was ego," Gladue said of Native Delights. "What are people going to think about me? I closed the restaurant — I failed. I failed, but that story opened up another chapter for me, and it took me a long time to see that."

The pivot proved to be wise. In November of 2025, Raven Indigenous Capital Partners invested several million dollars into Mitsoh, allowing it to expand its manufacturing capacity, enhance distribution, and bring in Mike Fata to chair Mitsoh's board. Fata, based in Winnipeg, helped Manitoba Harvest become a $100-million company.

"I had to sit back when we did our first raise," Gladue said. "I had to sit back and say, 'Do I really have what it takes right now to get us to a $100-million company?'"

Gladue transitioned to president, keeping his custom title of "chief rainmaker," and installed co-founder Brandon Markiw as CEO.

"Mitsoh is entering a scale-up phase that demands both operational excellence and cultural integrity," Markiw wrote in a news release about the November investment. "Raven's investment gives us the firepower to expand production, strengthen national distribution, and accelerate innovation while staying true to our Indigenous roots. This is the moment we take Mitsoh from a fast-growing challenger brand to a category leader."

While scaling up often means exporting, Mitsoh is focusing first on the local market.

"Our goal is to saturate Canada very, very well," Gladue said. "Our capacity is probably 4,000 or 5,000 stores in Canada."

Mitsoh products are now available at major retailers like Safeway, Co-op, and Save-On-Foods. They are also available for purchase online, for wholesale, and by subscription.

As more products become available at more retailers, Gladue posted that his work is far from done.

"Today isn't the finish line," he shared on June 15 as he unveiled new products and packaging. "It's the beginning of the next chapter. Welcome to Mitsoh 2.0."