The Dryden District Chamber of Commerce celebrated a number of emerging businesses and first-time winners in its 25th annual Business Excellence Awards over the weekend.
King Street Family Dental was among several new faces at the awards, held at the Best Western Hotel and Conference Centre on Saturday, taking home the prize for Fresh New Image.
“We were happily surprised,” said Dr. Chris Baldwin, the owner and principal dentist for the clinic.
“Excited to have won our first award,” he said, happy that his staff could have a night out to celebrate.
“I don’t know who even nominated us – it could have been one of our patients or one of our friends in the community who just wanted to put our name out there, which was really nice and it was really humbling,” he said.
The award recognized the clinic's work updating its workspace, which allows the clinic to bring on an additional dentist, he said.
“We basically had an existing old medical building that had a lot of history in town,” he said adding it was state of the art when it was built in the 1950’s, “but it got to a state of disrepair. We spent some money to renovate the clinic and move it upstairs to give everything a new fresh image.”
While King Street Family Dental celebrated its 10th anniversary in August, most of the award-winning businesses this year are only a few years old, according to Deanna Parker, manager of the chamber of commerce.
“This is a new group of people who are demonstrating amazing business aptitude here,” she said.
The under-40 crowd was heavily nominated this year said Parker, "which was absolutely great to see, because we always tend to think of businesses as for well-established people within their careers.”
The awards are voted on by members of the Chamber of Commerce, though businesses don’t need to be members to be nominated.
The big awards of the night went to AgriTech North for Business of the Year and Alan Arnold of Rona Dryden for Business Leader of the year.
A full list of winners is included below:
Resilience and Adaptation Excellence- Masala Restaurant
New Business Excellence- Fountain Tire - Dryden
Health and Wellness Excellence- The Community Table
Tourism Excellence- Wabigoon Lake Outfitters (formerly Indian Point Camp)
Business Supporting Youth Development- Dryden Youth-Centre
Rising Star- Sunset Drive-In Theatre
Fresh New Image- King Street Family Dental
Community Spirit Excellence- Dryden Fall Fest
Young Business Leader- Benjamin Feagin Jr. AgriTech North
Customer Service Excellence-Service- Sabrina Desaulniers TD
Customer Service Excellence-Retail- Alan Arnold, RONA Dryden
Business Leader of the Year- Alan Arnold, RONA Dryden
Business of the Year- AgriTech North
