Entrepreneur of the Year

David Burman - Mister HQ Group

After moving to Windsor-Essex President and CEO of the Mister HQ group, David Burman cultivates innovative progress on a multibusiness platform. He offers home staging and interior design through the Mister Style brand, residential and commercial cleaning services with Mister Maid, vacation rental management under HQ Properties, and home health-care services

Jeff Gamble - What’s Poppin Popcorn Factory

Created by Jeff Gamble in 2009, What’s Poppin Popcorn Company began under many names but officially took form in 2019. A full-service gourmet popcorn company, they offer traditional Kettle cooked popcorn in more than 25 flavours along with retail, gift options, fundraising and custom products. Starting from humble beginnings at local festivals with only Kettlecorn, Jeff turned what began a weekend

Marc Romauldi

As President of Mercato

Fresh, Marc Romauldi has been the driving force in bringing full-service European-style markets to our region. With a focus on local, quality products and people, Marc has established practices from hiring a Red-Seal chef to provide a culinary experience to supporting local suppliers from produce to grocery to fresh Lake Erie fisheries. His philosophy is simple: support our community through local

Sponsored by Grant Thornton via Mister Care. As part of all of these ventures, David has made a measurable difference across the region by introducing new industries, creating new career opportunities within the community, and propelling businesses into award-winning local solutions to universal problems. hobby for the family into a wonderful working relationship with community partners like the Children’s Aid Society as they set up annually on the lawn for fireworks night. initiatives and our community supports us.

David has taken great pride in Mister HQ Group’s charitable involvement. Over the years they have made generous donations to Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society, Windsor Goodfellows, Windsor Life Centre, Backpacks for Success, Gourmet Gardens and No Cold Child with a goal to give back on a regular basis to support those in need.

For Jeff, it’s always been about family and the community. From the beginning, he has worked closely with local high schools to offer co-op placements with future employment opportunities as well as assisting in fundraising campaigns for dozens of local charities and schools.

Now with 15 employees and three locations in three years What’s Poppin is really hoppin’ and what makes this story such a success is that they got here with no grants, no bank loans and no financial help from anyone.

Wanting to connect to customers, at every station throughout their stores — from the deli in the back to the checkouts — they’ve provided customer complaint/comment cards with the goal to stay tuned into every customer’s concern or compliment and have the ability to pivot offerings based on local preferences.

Under Marc’s direction, Mercato has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charities such as We Care for Kids, Transition to Betterness, Windsor Outreach for the Homeless ($300,000 in 2021), Hospice, Palliative Care Room upgrades, baseball, hockey, soccer, Brain Tumour Foundation and more.