Manitoban creates app that detects products made in Canada
The app offers lists of food and grocery items identified with a Canadian flag if they were produced in Canada, and information about the product’s origin.
Last week, Hashim Farooq of Brandon introduced CanMade, an app that was one of the top 10 most downloaded apps in the AppStore’s lifestyle section this week in Canada.
If you’re sick and tired of threats of tariffs from Donald Trump and looking to buy more Canadian-made food — there’s an app for that. CanMade advises consumers which grocery items are produced in Canada.
App users can scan SKU codes to find out whether or not they were produced in Canada. Farooq said they are continuing to add more products as the app grows in popularity.
The app offers lists of food and grocery items identified with a Canadian flag if they were produced in Canada, and information about the product’s origin.
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“Just like a lot of Canadians, I was watching the news and heard about the tariffs that could be imposed by the president of the United States,” said Farooq, who graduated from Brandon University in 2024 with a BSc in Computer science. “I wanted to help the best way I know, build software.
“I wanted to build something that would allow users to buy Canadian products in the easiest way possible,” Farooq said. “So that’s what I set out to do.”
He added, “it’s not just about where the products are made, also about who owns these companies, the origins of the products. Are they distilled in Canada? Are they packaged in Canada. Are they grown in Canada?”
“It’s important to know where stuff is coming from,” he said.
According to Farooq, he chose food and groceries as the focal point of the app for now, because he said it’s something that everyone buys.
“Food is something that we all buy almost everyday,” he said. “It’s the one category that will have the biggest economic impact.”
According to Farooq, as of Thursday the app had more than 4,400 product scans over a four-day period, with top searches in the database including coffee, cereals and pet foods. Top scanned items were creamy peanut butter, Heinz Tomato Ketchup and Kirkland products.
The app also features a quiz section where Canadians can test their knowledge about their home country by playing trivia style games focused on Canadian content and knowledge.
Farooq said he plans to expand the app to cover other categories of products over time, such as Canadian made tv shows, movies, music, art, attractions, and more.
“The future is Canadian, and I want to help the best I can,” Farooq said.
The CanMade app can be downloaded for free on the AppStore.
This story was originally published in The Winnipeg Sun. It is republished under a Creative Commons license as part of the Local Journalism Initiative.
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