CELEBRATING SMALL BUSINESSES ON P.E.I.
Small business owners re-invent themselves to meet new challenges
Editor’s Note:
Second life. It can represent a chance to do over. To reset and refocus your life. To shake off the past and give yourself an opportunity to change and grow. In our series, Second Life, we took a look at how those in the small business world, out of necessity or desire, reach beyond their comfort zones to re-create themselves and their world. These stories celebrate those who saw potential in being something else or creating something that wasn’t and were brave enough to take the plunge into the deep, dark waters of entrepreneurship.
The oh-so-welcoming smells of freshly made, raspberry-jamand-coconut macaroon tarts and lemon meringue pies fill the air.
Turkey, vegetable and macaroni soup is simmering.
Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” is pouring out from a local classic rock station through the speakers.
Say hello to the Sweet Side of the Moon Bakery and Café.
On McKeen Street in Glace Bay, N.S., baker Terry MacLeod has once again taken the plunge into entrepreneurship, provided nine people with jobs and transformed an empty building near the local Tim Hortons into a diner.
It has cost him about
$300,000.
“It’s a significant amount of money for me,” said MacLeod in an interview. “The idea was to invest in a small business and, as I near my retirement, it will provide a retirement income. That’s the hope anyways.”
It’s a dream shared by tens of thousands of Atlantic Canadians.
According to Statistics Canada, Nova Scotia had the greatest number of businesses big enough to hire employees in Atlantic Canada at 29,922 by the end of 2015, the most recent for which figures are available. Prince Edward Island had 5,935. New Brunswick had 25,509 of these employer businesses and Newfoundland and Labrador 17,526.
That’s 78,892 businesses that provide jobs in the region.
The lion’s share of these, almost
98 per cent, are small. Across Canada, 54.1 per cent of all employers operate businesses with less than five employees.
Think mom-and-pop shops and service contractors.
Small, yes. But these companies pack a big punch when it comes to job creation with 87.7 per cent of net job growth in the decade ending in 2015 coming from them.
In some cases, the impact of just one entrepreneur can be staggering for a community.
“Sometimes, it just takes that one person to set the spark,” says Mathew Novak, an assistant professor at Saint Mary’s University and an expert on the revitalization of downtown cores.
In St. John’s, N.L., chef and serial entrepreneur Todd Perrin is creating exactly that kind of buzz.
After buying the historic Mallard family home in Quidi Vidi Village in 2011 with his wife, Kim Doyle, and sommelier Stephen Lee, Perrin transformed it into a restaurant that has since acted as a magnet for foodies and heritage buffs alike.
“It’s received international attention,” said City of St. John’s Councillor-at-large Dave Lane in an interview. “It’s one of the go-to restaurants, not only for St. John’s but also in Canada.”
Then, the entrepreneur created The Inn by Mallard Cottage,
an eight-room inn in two buildings that look like historic Newfoundland homes, across the street.
Along with the Quidi Vidi Brewing Company founded by David Rees and David Fong in the mid-90s, these latest developments are now drawing in so many tourists and locals to the Quidi Vidi Village area as to make parking and traffic flow an issue with residents.
“Todd has set a spark,” said Lane.
These type of area developments aren’t only happening in Newfoundland.
Mandy Rennehan left her home of Yarmouth, N.S. at 18 with nothing but a suitcase and a smile. Or so claims the website of the company she founded, Freshco, a maintenance, projects and restauration company that helps retail businesses revamp their digs.
Today, Rennehan, who is affectionately nicknamed “Bear”, is the chief executive officer of the Oakville, Ont.-based company.
That 22-year-old company has 58 full-time employees and a network of 300 contract employees across Canada and the United States. While the privately held company does not divulge its exact revenues, a Freshco spokesperson did say the company does between $20 million to $40 million in sales annually.
And Rennehan is still deeply committed to her hometown.
Three years ago, she bought several buildings in downtown Yarmouth and has since founded another company, RennDuPrat, there and employs eight full-time workers.
Her total investment in revitalizing Yarmouth in the last few years alone is estimated to be about $4 million and the buzz in the community is that a major project is going to be announced in the next few months for the former jailhouse she now owns.
In small towns throughout Atlantic Canada and elsewhere in the country, it’s homespun entrepreneurship like this, fueled by business people filling local needs, that is doing the heavy lifting when it comes to revitalizing downtowns.
“There’s no silver bullet solution (to economic revitalization),” said Novak. “A lot of it has to be rooted in the local community.”
In Glace Bay, it was the call of his hometown in the Maritimes that led MacLeod to plunk all that money into his business.
The 58 year old, who previously owned and operated another bakery in Glace Bay, sold it 14 years ago, went back to school, and became an occupational health and safety officer.
But by the time he graduated, the North American economy was in the throes of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Companies were laying off, not hiring.
“When I was looking at the opportunities, they had dried up,” he said.
He turned to Fort McMurray to pay the bills, undertaking the Maritimers’ all-too-familiar back-and-forth migration to Alberta for work.
It took its toll. “Travelling from one end of the country, going through airports and then taking a few days to get back into things, you wind up with maybe a week at home before you have to go back,” said MacLeod.
He decided there had to be a better way.
“I was born and raised in Glace Bay so I have a soft spot for the town,” he said.
A fan of the rock group Pink Floyd, he named the business the Sweet Side of the Moon Bakery and Café as a wink to the band’s iconic 1973 hit album, “The Dark Side of the Moon.”
The entrepreneur is hoping his bakery could one day be just the start of a much bigger company.
“It could be a franchise opportunity,” he said. “It’s on the table. We have to streamline (the operation) to the point where you can jump in and get a place like this up and running in a short period of time … Every franchise in the world started with just one outlet.”