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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1988-04-13, Page 5• n the Street By Jim Beckett Why is it almost every time you try and do something like an ex- pansion or a new location, etc. you always seem to run into unex- pected roadblocks? The most recent example of that is Len Hume's planned expan- sion and relocation of his Image Cleaners business to a new spot at the north end of Exeter. The holdup at the moment ' a difference of opinion between town planner Richard Delinka' position that the business is a service rather than a manufacturing operation and Mr. Hume's contention that he already fits the zoning requirements by providing a value-added service. Any further delay in getting the expansion off the ground only contributes to the image of Exeter being "difficult' when it comes to new building. Let's look at the pluses. The present location of Image Cleaners, which is unquestionably one of the prime chunks of real estate in town, will be developed and upgraded. Combine this with the new Exeter location which will employ local people and contribute to our tax base and you have a couple of good reasons to help Hume get rid of bureaucratic stumbling blocks and get on with his plans. The type of business seems to be one where location docs not seem to be vital. We should feel fortunate Hume selected Exeter in thc first place. ********************************* When Bill Batten assessed the achievements of local events, he was never quick to automatically term every one a tremendous suc- cess. When the Heritage Days committee was active a few years ago and I was one of a long list of locals who were involved in putting it on, I used to mention to Bill that it might be the beginning of a tra- dition in Exeter. Bill, never being the first to jump .on the bandwagon, often re- sponded to my enthusiasm with "we'll see". Pressed for his defini- tion of an event that fit this criteria of an unqualified success, he al- ways came up with the same answer. "Let's see if they have a THIRD ANNUAL," he would say. This was his acid test and, surprisingly, it has eliminated several events from being local classics. You could debate whether "third annual" is a magic milestone or not but there arc few events in town that fall into this category. The latestsuccess story is the Exeter Optimist Club who have just wrapped up another tremendous Home and Garden Show. It was their third and has been described by some at their best although the previous two were excellent as well. - President Tom Bowen and his hard-working club obviously are to be congratulated. The show requires a great deal of hard work, both planning and physical... but the dividends have been great for the Optimists. We'll be looking forward to your fourth annual show next year. ********************************** The Exeter Mohawks have made believers out of a lot of arca hockey. fans with a dramatic win over the highly -rated Lanark Flyers last week in Lucan. By the time you read this they will have been involved in four tough games against the Campbellton, New Brunswick Fly- ers in their quest to become Hardy Cup champions. Dozens of supporters have indicated they would dearly love to be with the Mo- hawks but reality has to take over at some point. At the most it could be a 10 -day campaign which eliminates most of us with fami- lies and budgets. From those of us who can't be there, we send our best wishes with the Iocal boys. Having watched the team all year, I know that wheth- er they win or lose the series they'll do an excellent job of represent- ing Exeter. Meanwhile, the best show around is the Exeter Junior D Hawks who are battling against the Lambeth Lancers for the top spot in Ontario. The next game is Friday at the Rec Center at 8:30 p.m. If you were to say that big league baseball support is split in Exet- er between Blue Jay and Tiger fans you may be overlooking a. small but determined group of New York Yankee loyalists. Local fast food mogul Ken Bergmann, has come out of the closet this year and declared publicly he is a die-hard pinstriper fan. In fact, I is season -opening ad in this week's T -A designates the Derby Dip as New York Yankee fan headquarters. With the other Yankee fanatic, Jim Pfaff, out of the country, the booster club membership could be cut in half. Ken should de- velop a Billy Martin burger this year and see how well it sells. **************************************** Rae Wuerth looks considerably browner than the last time I talked to him, thanks to spending the last several months in Flori- da . Rae and Willa are back in town and working, as usual, in the shoe store. ********************************* Does anybody have a solution for this problem? With banks opening after people get to work and closing before most work days arc finished it's understandable to find long lineups at the tell- ers' cages over the lunch hour. Why is it that when you walk into almost any bank over the noon hour you usually see three or four teller positions marked closed and only one on duty to handle the inevitable noon -hour rush. Shouldn't all tellers work from noon to 1 p.m., taking their lunch either before or after the rush? Talk to any retailers in town and they'll tell you noon hour is one of the busiest times. Many wouldn't dream of not being around to serve their customers.. Advertising your opcn house in the Times -Advocate is a proven way to get a large number of people through your home in a short time. Stoney Ridge Developments Inc. and Oke WoodSmith Building Systems Inc. featured their new homes last weekend in conjunction with the Home and Garden show and over 1,000 toured each home. Not all open^house visitors made it to the right house. Roger and Lois Wallis were entertaining friends in their, recently com- pleted home on John St. when a group of people they had never seen before walked into the living room. What a surprise when they discovered they were not at the open house. FIRST BIG ORDER Michael Burke and Dean Boyle of Beyond the Screen Door in Dashwood have just completed their first order from Co 's Buildall for a display of 15 of their wooden screen doors. Naturally, they hope more sales will follow. Times -Advocate, April 13, 1988 Page 5 Bakery just keeps on expanding By Adrian Harte What began as a small family bakery for Zurich is now a large family bakery for nearly all of Hu- ron County. Doug Oesch bought the Tasty -Nu bakery in 1976 from his father and has seen demand for his products rise so much that he now runs three stores and is a major supplier of baked goods for area supermarkets and restaurants. Oesch started part- time in the bakery at age 14. He is now assisted by his wife Ruth, in bookeeping, and his brother is in- volved in production. Oesch said his bakery had been busy all winter, but he knows that 'summer is always his busiest time of year because of the demand creat- ed by customers in Bayfield and Grand Bend. "We could use another baker too," said Oesch. Its Your Busine • STACKED UP - Doug Oesch looks over a small portion of the Tasty-Nu's dail)i output. Even though he knows his time would be better spent in ad- ministration, Oesch likes to keep an eye on things in production. Unfortunately, summer is also the warmest time of year, making the heat of the bakery a little un- bearable. "Every bakery is the same," said Ocsch, who keeps his thermometer on the wall furthest from the oven for the most comforting readings. • The bakery was founded in 1929 by Everett Haist, who still comes in for a visit every so often. The organization now employs a total of 32 full-time and part-time work- ers in the Zurich bakery and the re- tail outlets in Zurich, Seaforth and Exeter. The Seaforth store was opened in 1978 and Exeter in 1983. Rumors of opening a Stratford store are unfounded, because Oesch's father has his own bakery in Stratford and Tasty -Nu does sup- ply him with some baked goods. Ocsch has Customers as far north as Blyth, Tavistock to the east, Lu - can to the south, and Grand Bend to the west. Among the customers are not only bakeries and supermarkets,- but upermarkets,but also restaurants, hotels and ca- terers. This much demand requires two shifts of workers to keep the oven in use from midnight to about three o'clock in the afternoon. In the summer the oven is run nearly around the clock. The first items in the oven are the variety breads, fol- lowed by regular bread, rolls, doughnuts, and . pastries. More bread and rolls follow as demand warrants. The last items of the day are the cookies. All this baking amounts to more than 10,000 pounds of flour every week. - "We use a natural fermentation," said Oesch of how he prefers to let_ hit bread dough rise.. "It's a better flavor and texture." Most products are made from scratch, again for rea- sons of quality. -Oesch says the in-store supermar- ket bakeries have not hurt his busi- ness all that much. In fact, his products supplement many of those same bakeries. Quality and not quantity is al- ways Oesch's prime concern. He takes pride in his company's goods. "The quality is much higher in the smaller bakery than it is in mass production," he notes. A large product line is continual- ly being expanded. The latest addi- tions to Tasty -Nu shelves are soft kaisers and pizza shells for do-it- yourself pizza fans. One product for which Oesch has noticed a dramatic increase in sales is the roll. "Rolls are really on the rise," he says with a quick pun, adding that this is not something limited to his market but is a trend everywhere. "Everything is selling better," he says, a situation which brought about the addition of 1,000 square feet onto the Zurich building last spring for more room for packaging the finished product. Another addi- tion of 1,200 square feet is in the works and may include a new oven with double the capacity of the present one. The bakery's original coal-fired oven was replaced with an oil - burning model some years later. The present gas oven is only six years old and uses a heat reclaimer on the exhaust to heat water for the whole building. The bake shops in Zurich and Seaforth include tableswhere cus- tomers can sample the fresh prod- ucts with a cup of coffee. The Tasty -Nu stores also sell imported and domestic cheese Ocsch buys di- rectly from factories to remain com- petitive with supermarket prices. Ocsch is also looking at purchas- ing a computer system to keep up with the bookkeeping generated by the expanding business. Even with all the plans Oesch has for the future; he remains cautious. "You can't grow too fast," he said. "You have to maintain quali- ty as you grow." No matter how much Tasty -Nu expands, Oesch knows he will nev er be able to call his workplace spa- cious. - "A flour salesman told me once that he hadn't seen a successful bak- ery yet you didn't have to walk through sideways," he says, laugh- ingly. PACKAGING - Darlene Martin (left), Irene Scliilbe and Shannon Smale package Tasty-Nu's products for shipping in the extenstion added to the building last spring. Another extension will be added in the next few weeks. Students get chance at CHOICES South .Huron and District High School students got the chance to get their hands on thc Canada Em- ployment Centre's new computer- ized job selection system recently. "For the high school students it gave them a touch with reality," said thc centre's Laura Overholt. The portable Compaq computer was in Exeter last week to be used by 20 students and 10 people from the community to•examine the relation- ship between their educational goals and careers available to theft. The computer, named CHOICES, displays information about 850 ca- reers, including working conditions, required skills, and wage expecta- tions. Everything from apprentice- ship programs to professional ca- reers can be found in the memory banks. "it doesn't make decisions. It just gives people ideas," said Overholt. Students contacted SHDHS guid- ance department's Rick Graham. to book time oh the machine. Each student got about an hour and -a half Graders Murray Cardiff, M.P. for Huron- Bnice welcomed the announcement of financing...support of U.S. $3.4 million from the Export Develop.. mcnt Corporation (EDC) for the sale of 50 motor graders by Cham- pion Road Machinery Limitcd of Goderich. Ontario, to Chile. The motor graders will be used by the Chilean Ministry of Public Works to maintain roads and cut ditches, primarily in rural areas. Cardiff said he was extrcrhely . pleased by the sale which is expect- ed to generate 97 person-years of employment in Canada, mostly in to work with the computer and Overholt, and each left with reams of printouts showing their progress through the session, The Canada Employment Centre in London has a CHOICES termi- nal permanently in place and any- one can book time to use it. One drawback Overholt has no- ticed with the system is its lack of coordinating specific work with ge- ographic locations. Some manufac- turing jobs listed on the computer only exist in places like Toronto. Overholt hopes to have CHOIC- ES back in Exeter by this fall and may even be in a position to en- courage its use by public school students who may be unaware where high school may take them. The computer program is very easy to use. • "You don't have to have any kind of background in computers or whatever," she said. It asks for in- formation in a conversational man- ner and responses can be typed with one finger. for Chile Goderich. Cardiff pointed out that Champi- on Road Machinery Limited is in- ternationally recognized as a leading manufacturer of road graders. The firm won the contract over strong competition from both Brazilian and American manufacturers by vir- tue of the quality of their product, a solid commercial proposal, and competitive financing from EDC. "This is a good example of how the private sector and the govern- ment can successfully work togeth- er," fie said, adding that "This is good news for Goderich"., AT THE COUNTER - Grace Martin (left) and Mary Gingerich work in the bakery's Zurich retail outlet. CHOICES - Canada Employment Centres CHOICES portable computer was in Exeter last week for the use of students and job hunters looking for employment alternatives. Laura Overholt (behind) works through the pro- gram with Beatrice Hunter.