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Ontario Finalist

Thursday, 29 May 2014 at 12:19

Local business owner/cheese maker is picked to represent Ontario for the BDC Young Entrepeneur Award

WOODSTOCK -- Gunn's Hill Artisan Cheese has represented Oxford County and now, is representing Ontario.

Shep Ysselstein, owner and cheese maker at Gunn's Hill Artisan Cheese has been selected as the Ontario finalist for the BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada) Young Entrepreneurs Award.  "Basically we had to submit an application, quite an extensive application process; you had to fill in a bunch of material, answer a whole bunch of questions and then also submit a video, a two minute video about your project and this application went before a committee and this committee chose a finalist for each province and territory."

Shep says the applicants had to propose a project that would take their business to the next level.  For Gunn's Hill Artisan Cheese, they would like to take the $100,000 top prize to expand their business and aging rooms to satisfy the growth in demand for their cheeses.  "I've kind of reached this point where the market is still growing for our cheese and we kind of need to expand to both meet the increase in demands that's continuing to happen and also to be able to offer new cheeses that are aged for a longer period of time.  So obviously if we expand the goal would be to be able to produce more cheese, we'd be able to hire more people and just kind of grow things in general."

Shep says if he wins the grand prize, construction on the 2,000 square foot expansion would start this year.

Voting is open from May 29 to June 12 and can be done every day at www.bdc.ca/yea.

Shep says "Making quality hand crafted cheese is my passion, but representing Ontario is an honour! Ontarians love to eat local, support farmers and small businesses – this is a true recipe for success!"

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