Workshop series kicks off for Kingston food entrepreneurs

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Kingston Economic Development Corporation has partnered with counterparts in London, Ontario’s London Small Business Enterprise Centre to give local aspiring food entrepreneurs access to a workshop series tailored to starting and expanding food manufacturing and packaging businesses.

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The Foodpreneur Advantage Program is a six-part virtual workshop that is designed with the unique challenges of starting and maintaining a food manufacturing business in mind.

The program continues to be run by London’s Small Business Enterprise Centre with Kingston participants tuning in to sessions that kicked off recently, running each Thursday morning on a weekly basis until mid-February.

While KEDCO already sees how Kingston entrepreneurs can benefit from the information geared towards counterparts in London, business development manager of small and medium enterprises, Rob Tamblyn, said it also provides an opportunity to learn what regionally specific challenges and opportunities are out there through participants.

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He said starting a more accessible, Kingston-based program to learn about consumer packaged goods was considered following consultations during COVID, but ultimately the existing program in London made sense to join on to.

“These basically give people a starting point, but then we hope that we’re encouraging the Kingston businesses that do take part to then come and see us and we can work together with them on creating a business plan,” Tamblyn said.

“I think that there’s a lot more unique and different types of restaurants in Kingston. So each one of them provides their own unique set of challenges so we’re really looking forward to trying to work with some of these businesses to to help them … our hope is that we can take these six sessions and then evolve them into basically phase two.”

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With Kingston believed to have one of the higher numbers of restaurants per capita in Ontario (data is unclear provincially but the city has formerly been touted as the highest in Canada), Tamblyn says it makes sense for there to be a local interest in a less localized revenue stream.

He says while there has long been some local individuals interested in marketing a sauce or some other product, there’s been more recent uptake from restaurants which helps to showcase how many food businesses have had to learn to be creative in generating revenue.

“We’ve seen a bit of an uptake recently from existing restaurants who are looking to to kind of diversify their product offerings,” Tamblyn said.

“It speaks to a few different challenges that the restaurant sectors are facing right now just in terms of you know, costs are going up and whatnot… There’s enough appetite and enough demand in Kingston to be able to provide additional training and supports in food.”

With the first session kicking off Jan. 15, Tamblyn said 17 people or businesses in the Kingston area had registered for the initial workshop.

Subsequent one-hour sessions will continue weekly until Feb. 19, exploring topics including food safety, packaging and labelling, and marketing food products.

Information on specific sessions and how to register can be found on KEDCO’s website.

Owen Fullerton is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with YGK News. The LJI is funded through the federal government.

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