They only just held their grand opening, and Dan and Angie Hoystead have been delighted with the response. “We hit our target for sales on the first day, and we’ve tripled our sales in three days, before we’ve even had our grand opening!,” said Angie.

Cheese, yum!  There are few greater culinary pleasures than a really good artisanal cheese served with a nutty cracker and a glass of wine.  Anywhere I go I look for local cheeses.  So it was with great delight that I sampled and then fell in love with Milkhouse Farm and Diary sheep cheeses, made in Montague.  Not only are these absolutely delightful cheeses to serve with bread, crackers or add to your favourite soup, salad or potatoes, they’re easier to digest.   “A lot of people find it easier to digest; the sugars are different, so it’s not lactose free just easier to digest,” says Caitlyn White, who with her husband Kyle is a cheese maker at Milkhouse Farm and Dairy.

For Pasta Tavola, Victoria and Paula Watts’ pasta manufacturing & fresh food company, location is essential. In Belleville, part of the Bay of Quinte Region, the sisters have been able to affordably purchase their own retail and processing premises; even better, they are situated between—and in close proximity to—Ontario’s largest markets for wholesale food processing: Ottawa and Toronto.

ATHENS - Farmersville Community Abattoir (FCA) couldn't be more central and convenient within Leeds Grenville. Located at 63 Addison Road just minutes from Athens, the newly opened abattoir is doing a lot of business. FCA is a not-for-profit corporation conceived in February 2016 to address an urgent need in Leeds and Grenville for livestock slaughter services to local farmers.

A mouth-watering destination in Lennox and Addington County. Entrepreneurship is all about combining passion with opportunity and demand. Throw in a lot of hard work, persistence and a desire to please your clients and customers and you have the recipe for a successful business enterprise. For Trever and Donna Abrams, ‘recipe’ could not be a more apt term, as the couple recently turned their homespun and hearty baking recipes into the couple’s first business – Abrams Bakery, in the village of Newburgh.

Napanee Beer Company catches the craft beer wave. What started out as a passionate new hobby has turned into an adventurous – some might say intoxicating – new business enterprise for Napanee’s Geordan Saunders. Taking his award-winning brewing knowledge and experience, and combining it with an already successful career as a marketing professional, Saunders opened the Napanee Beer Company over the Victoria Day long weekend to general acclaim.

Nothing says “summer” quite like enjoying a heaping cone of ice cream. With the motto, “We dream in ice cream,” Central Smith Creamery (Central Smith) perfectly encapsulates the sense of delight that both adults and children feel as they have their first taste of summer.

The Gilmours never set out in their inaugural entrepreneurial endeavour for praise, accolades and renown. They simply wanted to make amazing chocolate, in hopes that other folks would enjoy it too. But through tremendous hard work, exceptional skill and dedication, over the past five years Erica and Drew Gilmour have turned their plucky little company – Hummingbird Chocolate Maker – into the talk of the confectionary world, earning a prestigious 2016 Golden Bean Award and other distinctions at the recent London Academy of Chocolate Awards.

Keeping tabs on the latest trends and capitalizing on those trends in a timely and effective way is an essential component behind any successful entrepreneurial endeavour. Proof positive of this adage is Napanee-based Venture Food Trucks

Like any good community-minded entrepreneur, Bruce Davis wanted to develop a business that was challenging, fulfilling, sustainable – and that would contribute in a positive way to the economic growth and diversity of his adopted home of Gananoque.