Teamwork and community were common themes at last night’s Business Excellence Awards in Chatham.
The 135th annual honours were handed out by the Chatham-Kent Chamber of Commerce, including Larry Delaey, who was one of two double award winners of the night, taking home Business Individual and Large Business of the Year. He says it’s not just a win for himself, but for his entire team and the community of Wallaceburg.
“We’ve done a lot of great things over the last 15 years. We had a vision, we showed it to the employees and said let’s do this,” Delaey said. “We spread our wings, we’ve gone global and put AarKel on the map. We’re top five in North America for tool shops and we’re pretty proud of that.”
Drew Farren received both the Young Entrepreneur and Small Business of the Year honours for his company, Tubs and Taps. He says the community support over the last few years has been overwhelming.
“One of the nice things with Chatham-Kent is they really care about supporting local business,” Farren said. “We get to work with lots of great people from the community, whether they’re tradespeople that we see every day or customers coming in that we get to meet for the first time. We’ve been really well received, which has been nice, and it’s been really nice to hear all the positive feedback.”
Other winners last night include Madison Hetherington of Propel Marketing for Young Business Individual, Denny Vervaet of Red Barn Brewing for Entrepreneur of the Year, Schinkel’s Gourmet Meats as the best Medium Business, and the late Lynn McGeachy-Shultz was honoured as Citizen of the Year.