11-year-old Ruby Despatie turned her sweet tooth for cotton candy into a blossoming business and set up her booth at this year’s Port Hope Art Festival.
“I wanted to start a business to save a up for a trip to Paris,” said Ruby Despatie.
This is the second year Despatie has set up her cotton candy booth at the festival, but the young entrepreneur isn’t just focused on her bottom line.
“She started this two years ago,” said Ruby’s mom, Debbie Beattie. “She started the business at the Cultivate launch party and part of her business model was that she was saving for her big goal, which was to go to Paris, but she also gave a percentage of her sales to certain charitable organizations in the community.”
The art festival celebrates community through art, agriculture, local food and family fun. Despatie is just one of the more than 40 vendors.
“The Port Hope Art Festival has been going on for 15 years in downtown Port Hope, and the event includes art and farm vendors from across the region, live music and an assortment of community partners that put on interactive activities for the public to explore,” said Jeannie Maidens, event coordinator for the Municipality of Port Hope.
Other activities range from creating blanket forts to custom button making.
“We’re here making buttons for the Art Festival,” said Jeff Bray of Cultivate: A Festival of Food and Drink. “Come on down and people are just making anything they like out of cultivate old posters, or Dr. Seuss books, or really anything. We also have a couple different raffles.”
Over the years, the popular festival has grown. Now the festival has 50 community partners.
As far as Despatie’s long-term plan goes, “I think she’s like looking at a few practical options like putting her money aside for her education and she was talking about getting a laptop for middle school and high school,” Beattie said.
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