Frontenac Business Services Celebrates Diverse Businesses

Jeff Green | Jun 29, 2022

At the Annual Meeting last week, Frontenac Business Services, a federally funded agency offering financing, business and financial advice to Frontenac County entrepreneurs, outlined its activities for the year.

The meeting went over the dollar value of the loans and grants that the agency made available in 2021, details about its own finances, and activities of the board and staff.

Among the activities was the revamping of the FAB Frontenac website, which features a growing number of value added Frontenac County food businesses.

The meeting then pivoted to presentations by two new local business ventures, one of which has become well known, while the other is specialised.

Roland Jensch, who runs Grains and Goods Bakery in Sydenham, described himself as an unlikely entrepreneur.

He moved to his wife's family farm near Sydenham five years ago with the goal of raising children in a healthy environment. When he found that the kind of bread that he grew up eating in Germany was not available, he ended up taking up bread baking, a passion that was passed down through his family. One thing led to another and he now runs Grains and Goods Bakery in Sydenham, where people line up to pay premium prices for hearty sourdough bread made with Red Fife wheat and other grains, which are as locally sourced as possible. He has five employees working out of the bakery, as well as family members helping out.

“I never thought I would be up speaking at an event like this,” he said, “but this is my story.”

Not only was his speech well received, but the cookies he brought were gobbled up by those attending the breakfast meeting.

The other company that was featured, AtlasK9, offers a unique specialised service, bed bug detection using dogs.

Chris Stoness from the Perth Road area, has been running a window cleaning service for ten years.

He has gotten to know of his local community members Jeff Dixon and Paul Doak, who are both police officers, who work with the Canine unit.

It turns out that dogs can be trained to sniff out bed bugs as well as explosives and drugs. When Chris learned about this from Jeff and Paul, and learned that dogs are so good at sniffing out bed bugs that they save time and money, because identifying the exact location of bed bugs makes extermination much easier and quicker. There is a dog based bed bug removal industry in the United States, and Chris decided to partner with Jeff and Paul to bring it to Canada.

They now have two dogs, Sniper and Riley, both Black Labs that were raised and trained in North Carolina, and are busily booking work throughout southern Ontario in the residential, industrial and accommodations sectors.

As part of his presentation, Chris brought in one of the dogs, Sniper, to provide a demonstration using a hidden “faux-bed bug.”

It made for an unusual Annual Meeting, as attendees watched a dog sniffing the corners of the room for bed bugs as they munched on giant soft cookies.

Anne Prichard, the Executive Director of Frontenac Business Services said that the two businesses that she chose to feature this year are examples of the kind of passion that makes her want to go to work each day.

“It is always a thrill to discover new businesses and try to find a way to help them succeed,” she said, “and these are two great examples.”

Prichard also introduced Jason Brown, business advisor, who has been working for the agency since 2020 but mostly virtually due to the pandemic, and Lauren Reid, office administrator and business advisor, who joined the agency early this year. Reid replaced Sue Theriault, who retired last fall after 17 years as office manager.

For information about Frontenac Business Services, go to www.frontenacbusiness.ca