A trade visit to Canada this week has local small business owners considering new opportunities to grow, including opening locations across the border and recruiting Canadian talent.
Members of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia led a delegation of 17 local business owners on a trip to Ottawa this week to grow trade opportunities and build business relationships.
The trip “exceeded my wildest expectations,” said Susan Jacobson, chair of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia. The chamber organized the visit in partnership with the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, where David L. Cohen, the former Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) executive, serves as U.S. ambassador to Canada.
The visit’s mission was to focus on empowering Philadelphia-area businesses having trouble recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, which have largely been minority and women-owned businesses, said Jacobson.
A trade visit comprised of and centered around small minority-owned businesseshas never been done before, according to Jacobson. “We are leading the way for the rest of the country,” she said.
The primary motivation for the delegation was to increase trade capabilities and business relationships between Greater Philadelphia and Canada. Pennsylvania is one of Canada’s top trading partners, a point Jacobson said Canadian officials acknowledged, and their commitment to the state was reflected in their own delegation, which included the minister of trade and minister of tourism.
For Philadelphia business owners, the trip offered inspiration for new avenues of expansion.
Delegation member Sofia Deleon, owner of Central American street food restaurant El Merkury, said the visit provided insight into new places to open shop. El Merkury has two locations in Philadelphia so far, one at 2104 Chestnut St. and the other in Reading Terminal Market. and Deleon has set her sights on international customers for new locations, one of which she now hopes to open in Canada.
Deleon sees diverse Canadian cities like Toronto and Montreal as perfect markets for her offerings. A move to open a restaurant in Canada won’t be immediate, Deleon said, but rather a longer-term goal for the next several years.
The visit also opened doors for networking opportunities between members of the Philadelphia delegation. Deleon’s more immediate next step to reach international eaters is to open a location at Philadelphia International Airport, and connecting with other city business leaders may hasten that, she said. Deleon and the El Merkury team are currently in the process of applying for an RFP for that new space.
For Marc Coleman, president of Philadelphia-based software company The Tactile Group, the relationships built during the trip provide opportunities to innovate with similar companies based in Canada. The visit allowed him to connect directly with Infomedia Systems Group, a fellow minority-owned software company based in Ottowa. “It was an exchange of ideas,” Coleman said.
Beyond finding partners to learn from across the border, Coleman said the trade visit solidified the possibility of expanding his candidate search north. The pandemic led Coleman to consider remote workers across the U.S., but he is now considering looking for talent internationally in Canada.
Though new employees may soon come from places beyond Philadelphia, Coleman is using the city’s chamber of commerce as a resource to ensure he maintains a strong Philadelphia presence and remains locally based, he said.
The visit was an “overwhelming success,” said Jacobson, who is seeking out ways to keep momentum for the groundwork started this week. “You can’t do a deal in a day,” she said, “but it made us stronger.”
