“I believe that this year will be a tough one, but it will be a great one for learning,” says Nellis. “I’m a former French Olympic karate performer, so I like challenge a lot. And this is a great challenge. The Gaspé is a poor region. The unemployment rate is very high. It’s very tough to find a job here and one of our missions is to create jobs, and fun jobs, so that we like to work here.”
A former tractor dealership, Ribstone Creek Brewery, “put Edgerton back on the map a little bit,” says Aaron Norris.Aaron Norris, Ribstone Creek’s business development manager, grew up in the neighbouring town of Wainwright. Since the brewery opened in 2012, he’s considered it his local spot. “Small-town main streets aren’t as busy as they once were, with people moving more to the bigger centres. So it was really cool to have that draw in downtown Edgerton,” he says.
“Any brewery will tell you that you circle the start of summer as May 1, and you anticipate May through September as your busiest months. So, for this to hit when it did, it was almost a double whammy,” says Norris. “The time when we’re really supposed to be making hay, we got a punch to the gut. But we were able to stay nimble and mitigate some of those losses a little bit . It was really nice to have support from the community.