Many new entrepreneurs are thriving in the Peterborough region — and the trend is showing no signs of slowing down.
Community Futures Peterborough — an agency in the Venture North building on George Street, downtown — offers business financing. Two years ago, it opened a Business Advisory Centre to offer advice and guidance. The centre was busy from the get-go, says Devon Girard, executive director of Community Futures Peterborough — and two years later, “this momentum isn’t slowing down.”
Girard said she’s noted “unprecedented rates” of people coming in for a consultation on how to start or grow a business.
“The province sets targets for us to deliver 186 consultations a year. We hit that number in Peterborough this year, July 21 — like four months into the fiscal year, right?” Girard said.
In the fiscal year 2025/26, the centre tallied 301 per cent of their provincial target, for consultations. In two years, they’ve done 1,047 consultations.
“More and more people are turning to our centre for advice — and to entrepreneurship as a career option — than ever before,” Girard said.
She chalks it up to industrial jobs vanishing locally. People continue to want to live in Peterborough, she said, so they launch a business — and often see it flourish.
“We’ve always said this: Peterborough has a great team of organizations that support and are committed to small businesses,” Girard said.
Here are four startups that used the services of the Business Advisory Centre.
Each one also received Ontario government grants of $5,000 through the Starter Company Plus program, which is managed by Community Futures Peterborough.
Pies by Zach
Zach Washburn went from selling pizza from his porch to opening Pies By Zach on King Street in Millbrook in November 2025.
Clifford Skarstedt/Metroland
Zach Washburn was a correctional officer for nearly a decade when he needed to switch careers. Diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Washburn says he left his job in Calgary to come home to Peterborough.
He needed a creative project. As a youth he’d worked in a pizza shop, he said, so he started making homemade pizza as therapy.
“Pizza was my purpose, I guess,” he said. “Without getting too cheesy, it really was.”
Washburn started posting to Instagram about pizza, which lead to pizza sales every Tuesday from his porch on Water Street (he regularly sold 50 “Porch Pies.”)
He also started catering. Following one particular catering job, it was suggested by the client that he apply for a grant and grow his business.
With his Starter Company Plus grant, Washburn bought an enclosed trailer for use as a mobile pizza operation. When he parked it outside Lost Cannabis in Cavan, he found himself selling out regularly for weeks.
One sleepless night, Washburn said he was up reading when he spotted an ad for a storefront for rent in Millbrook. He said he wasn’t looking for a storefront, but the notice was enticing. The next morning he viewed the shop in person.
Pies by Zach has operated from that location, at 16 King St. E. in Millbrook, for nearly a year. He opened in November 2025. Now he makes and sells 100 to 120 pizzas daily. And he says Millbrook suits him.
“I love Peterborough, but Millbrook and the community has been honestly such a blessing. It’s just the cutest little town. The locals are all super nice,” Washburn said. “I’m just trying to make a good life for myself, and I’m blessed that I can use pizza to do that.”
Kayla Le Franc Photo
Photographer Kayla Le Franc inside her Studio 5 business in the Commerce Building in Peterborough.
Clifford Skarstedt/Metroland File Photo
Kayla Le Franc was born and raised in Peterborough and lived in Hamilton for about a decade.
“And then COVID hit and I became a mom,” said Le Franc (her son was born in 2020). “So my priorities really changed.”
She and her husband and son then moved to Peterborough to join family in her hometown.
“When I moved here, I started working in my field, which was social work and developmental services,” Le Franc said.
But she also had professional training in photography from Mohawk College in Hamilton, and had done photography work there — wedding photos, for example. When she started doing photography here in Peterborough, in addition to her other job, she found the side hustle had momentum.
“It started picking up so much that I was working more doing my photos than I was working my nine-to-five,” she said. “So that’s when I knew it was time to make the switch.”
With her Starter Company Plus grant — and help from the Business Advisory Centre — Le Franc got a studio space downtown in the Commons Building in spring 2025. She has since moved to another space in the same building, on Hunter Street at Water Street, that she shares with fellow photographer Heather Doughty.
These days, Le Franc has shifted her focus to marketing photography and professional headshots for many downtown entrepreneurs.
“I ran into someone the other day and they go, ‘Oh, well if it isn’t the downtown photographer,’” she said. “I said thank you … If they know me as that, that’s great. Because I want to tell the story of downtown.”
Lark and Lemon
Kristen Offen, left, and Vanessa Wunderlich from Lark and Lemon started a residential cleaning company three years ago using eco-friendly products they had formulated themselves.
Nicole Wunderlich
Kristen Offen and Vanessa Wunderlich say they are best friends who wanted to work together. More than three years ago they started a cleaning company: they did residential cleaning using eco-friendly products they had formulated themselves.
“We wanted something that was plant-based and no harsh chemicals, but we didn’t want to compromise on its cleaning power,” Offen said. “There wasn’t really like a go-to product out there that we found that hit all of those marks — so that’s why we created our own.”
Clients loved the cleaning products, Offen said: “They were asking for us to kind of leave our product behind.”
That’s when they shifted focus: they used their Starter Company Plus grant to buy equipment to scale up production of the cleaning products (their lab occupies half of Wunderlich’s home). Instead of scouring houses, they now sell their popular cleaning products for home use.
The Ennismore-based business is called Lark and Lemon; Wunderlich’s daughter is named Lark, and the logo of their cleaning business had been a lemon.
Their products are available for sale online and in 21 stores, including One Fine Food in Peterborough, for example.
Wunderlich said the staff at the Business Advisory Centre was key to their success.
“I feel that every time we were there we, they’re just such cheerleaders,” she said. “And they are really, really, really very good at motivating you, and keeping you on track, and feeding you ideas … and just keeping the vision really, really clear. So I think that’s what we got the most out of, for sure — their support.”
Smash Courts
Smash Courts, founded as a small family business by Jody and Jeff Allen, has grown into a premier indoor pickleball facility in Peterborough.
Clifford Skarstedt/Metroland file photo
Jody and Jeff Allen opened Smash Courts, an indoor pickleball facility, in April 2024 in the former Better Floorz location at 799 Erskine Ave. It had one half-court plus a full court.
The Allens were new entrepreneurs: Jody was a child welfare worker and Jeff a teacher at Adam Scott intermediate school. At first, they took a self-funded year away from their day jobs to launch the business — and then the business grew in a big way.
In December, Smash Courts moved into a new location at 725 Monaghan Rd., next to Global TV. The facility has 12 courts. It also has a pro shop with pickleball equipment and accessories, and it’s an authorized Lululemon retailer.
Today Jeff still teaches, but Jody said she has switched to running Smash Courts full time.
Jody said in an email the business grew quickly — but she always sensed it would. She knew there was high demand in Peterborough for opportunities for people to play her favourite sport.
“We had been playing pickleball daily for years, and it was becoming increasingly hard for us to find places to play — and we were all travelling to get paddles, court shoes and Lululemon,” she said.
“We were deeply entrenched in the pickleball community and knew what was needed — so for us it wasn’t that the business took off quickly, it was trying to build what was needed as quickly as we could. We had incredible support and hands-on help to make it happen. It is a true community club.”
They received a Starter Company Plus grant, Jody Allen said, and did business training sessions.
“It gave us a chance to meet other brand new entrepreneurs like us,” she said. “The Business Advisory Centre has been a tremendous support, from loans and help troubleshooting and persevering through our major expansion … Our business community — and us especially — are really lucky to be able to access this level of support locally.”