Roughly 100 local business people and over a dozen investors gathered at the Harvest Centre at Westerner Park on Wednesday for the Edge Investment Forum hosted by Central Alberta Access Prosperity during CFR46.

By Sheldon Spackman

Entrepreneurial Spirit

Edge Investment Forum brings business and investors together at CFR

Oct 31, 2019 | 12:58 PM

Investors and local businesses looking to grow their operations and explore new opportunities came together at the Harvest Centre at Westerner Park on Wednesday.

The Edge Investment Forum was hosted by Central Alberta Access Prosperity in conjunction with CFR46.

Pam Steckler, managing director of international engagement for Central Alberta Access Prosperity, says the event is a collision space for entrepreneurs and the investment community.

“There’s a lot of people that are out there in the region that have some money that they want to be able to contribute to make a difference, and actually get some benefits, some return,” says Steckler. “Alone, they can’t do that, but when they work together with other investors, they can make a greater impact for one or more entrepreneurs in their business objectives.”

Steckler says central Alberta has great untapped potential for investors.

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“There are small little pockets of individuals throughout the region that have been working together to actually move certain companies forward,” she explains. “But they don’t have access to the companies that are within their specific objectives. So what this event is designed to do, is open up that door, not necessarily to put investors at the forefront, but to really make sure that they know this event is going to provide that opportunity in the future for them.”

Steckler points- ut Red Deer’s location between Calgary and Edmonton is also ideal.

“This is not just a Red Deer event, this is an Alberta event,” adds Steckler. “We have roughly 100 people involved. We had correspondence from roughly a dozen investors, and as for the businesses, we have 13 local companies pitching.”

One of those local companies ‘pitching’ to the investment community was Joel and Carina Moran – owners of Sweet Capone’s, an Italian bakery with locations in Red Deer and Lacombe.

Carina says their business has now come to a point where they’re ready to grow.

“We’re ready to expand, we’re ready to hit a different market outside of central Alberta,” she explains. “But we also recognize that in order to do that, we really value the help of individuals that have experience in different industries. So coming and being with Catapult Entrepreneurs, they brought us in with their incubation program and just gave us so many tools in order to come here, so that we could make relationships and possibly meet other investors.”

Carina and Joel Moran, owners of Sweet Capone’s Italian bakery in Red Deer and Lacombe. The company made a pitch to investors at the Edge Investment Forum on Wednesday in hopes of securing a path to franchising their business.

With backgrounds in emergency medicine, Joel says the tools they’ve been given by Catapult Entrepreneurs will greatly help their business take that next step.

“With that, we hope to find some investors and move on with our plans of franchising, hopefully across Canada at some point,” he exclaims. “We’ll start in Alberta, go to western Canada and from there, hopefully get our product out there. Get cannoli to the world, that’s the plan.”

After humble, but successful beginnings out of their basement in Lacombe in 2016, Carina says Sweet Capone’s seems to have found a ‘sweet spot’ in the consumer market place.

“I think we actually stumbled on to something that the market is really looking for right now,” adds Carina. “Which is an innovative product, it is locally sourced, handmade, original, and it’s high quality. If you haven’t had a Sweet Capone’s cannoli, they’re pretty darn awesome!”

For Joel and Carina, pitching at the Edge Investment Forum is all about networking and never giving up on your dreams and goals.

“It’s all about who you know and who you meet,” concludes Joel. “So we hope to find a strategic investor to not just inject capital into our business to help us grow, but to help direct us into that direction that we want to move. We employ almost 40 people for our business now, and if we can bring employment to a community, that’s huge for us.”