FAB is back, this time in Frontenac only

Jeff Green | Jun 23, 2021

The Frontenac Business Centre (formerly known as the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation) is bringing back a program that they ran a few years ago, in conjunction with Hastings, Prince Edward and Lennox and Addington Counties.

The Food and Beverage (FAB) region project was designed to attract value added food businesses to the region, with a specific focus on fostering interest in attracting new breweries.

The three other partners in the project all saw some success in this regard, and each of them decided to pull out of FAB, leaving Frontenac County and the Frontenac Business Centre (FBC) as the only ones left.

As Anne Prichard, FBC Executive Director, told members of Frontenac County Council at their June meeting last Wednesday (June 16) the FAB initiative was directly responsible for the establishment of the Seed to Sausage, a cured sausage factory in Frontenac County, instead of elsewhere, and was also cited by the owner of Back Forty Cheese, Jeff Fenwick, as one of the reasons he moved his cheese factory from Lanark to Frontenac County.

“The FAB website still exists, and our Board has devoted $30,000 to re-invigorating the site. We are now rebranding and rebuilding the site to tell the story of food producers in Frontenac and it will strictly be Frontenac. We will be changing the name from Food and Beverage, we haven't quite decided how we are going to put Frontenac in there, but that's what's going to be happening. We will feature local producers and their stories. We'll have videos and pictures. We have contracted with Andreas Duess of Nourish marketing out of Toronto to help us with this. We will be doing 4 videos and 10 other stories, and are in the process of selecting the businesses that we will be working with,” she said.

She said that she anticipates that it will take six months to roll out the project and start telling the stories of the Frontenac food businesses. Prichard said that she is aware of and working with over 20 food businesses in Frontenac.

Later in the meeting, Council considered a motion to allocate $5,000 from the economic development budget to support the soon to be re-named Food and Beverage – Frontenac initiative.

North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins, said “I am not in favour of this. There basically hasn't been anything going on with this for years, and we gave direction to our economic development department to focus on attracting investors, and that is not what this is intended to do.

I think we are talking $5,000. It's not a huge investment” said Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith. “I'd like to support it simply to see if we can spearhead something to get started. You never know when a business will surface out from the rocks out here.

Deputy Warden Dennis Doyle, who was chairing the debate, asked if Richard Allen, the Manager for Economic Development, could comment about what he thought of the proposal and the $5,000 which would come out of his budget.

“We have the funds available this year.” Allen said. “The funds we would normally use for things like merchandise as part of the Frontenac branding, which we are not pursuing this year, are available to support this.

“When we consider that for every dollar of ours the Frontenac Business Centre is providing $6, it is a good investment for Frontenac County. The videos and images they will create will become an asset that we can use when we are recruiting new businesses.”

Allen also said that he would not have supported the project if the three other counties were involved, as they were in the original FAB project, because Frontenac would easily get lost in that crowd, but the Frontenac focus is a selling point for him.

The funding proposal was approved by Council.