{"id":98886,"date":"2025-10-02T15:41:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T19:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/?post_type=cu_story&p=98886"},"modified":"2025-10-22T08:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T12:57:10","slug":"purvis-fish-chips-grad-avery-sheppard","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/purvis-fish-chips-grad-avery-sheppard\/","title":{"rendered":"Entrepreneurial Carleton Grad Charts Her Own Course"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Entrepreneurial Carleton Grad Charts Her Own Course\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n


Five years ago, Avery Sheppard\u2019s life changed dramatically during a dinner table conversation at home in the town of Mindemoya on Northern Ontario\u2019s Manitoulin Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her mother had been encouraged by a local businessman to open a restaurant in an iconic lighthouse-shaped building overlooking the water in nearby Gore Bay. Denise Purvis Sheppard told her husband and kids that she wasn\u2019t interested.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cSo I asked my mom if I could do it,\u201d recalls Avery, who was just 18 at the time.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cShe thought I was joking, but I wouldn\u2019t let it go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Avery Sheppard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you can figure it out,\u201d her mom said, \u201cgo ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you think it\u2019s foolhardy for a teenager to jump into a notoriously challenging industry with virtually no experience, you don\u2019t know Avery Sheppard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She grew up helping out in her family\u2019s nearly 150-year-old fishing business, unloading the catch at the docks, working on the line inside the processing plant and running the sales truck at farmers\u2019 markets (before she could even drive the truck). In high school, she also began working for her father\u2019s construction company, learning how to build houses from the ground up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that resume, the prospect of renovating a building that had sat empty for a couple years into a restaurant to feed tourists who flock to the island every summer wasn\u2019t overly daunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open from the beginning of June through August, Purvis Fish & Chips was basically a summer job for Sheppard during her time as a commerce student<\/a> at Carleton University\u2019s Sprott School of Business<\/a> \u2014 a stressful, extremely fast-paced 12-hours-a-day-for-weeks-on-end job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But sales increased every season, 2025\u2019s total was double that of 2021 and now 23, Sheppard is in the Master of Management in Hospitality program at Cornell University in New York, expanding her entrepreneurial horizons and mapping out her next venture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hands-On Learning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sheppard\u2019s connections to fishing on Manitoulin Island goes back to 1882, when Scottish-born lighthouse keeper William Purvis started to fish commercially. Within five years, Purvis and his sons were packing the catch in ice and shipping it to Detroit for sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avery\u2019s maternal grandfather still owns the company, but her mother and uncle run it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cAs a kid, it was natural for me to get involved,\u201d says Sheppard. \u201cWhat else are you going to do in a small town?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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A dish served at Purvis Fish & Chips<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Getting a hands-on education in construction from her father also felt right. She started doing clean-up at job sites and progressed to operating machines like skid-steers to position steel beams and trusses, doing concrete work, hanging doors and installing flooring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That experience paid off when Sheppard jumped into transforming a neglected space into her restaurant. With help from her dad, she ripped out old and installed new flooring, built a bar and front counter, gutted and re-did the kitchen and attached black-and-white photos from her family\u2019s decades of fishing on the walls while teaching herself how to cook and manage the business side of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were hiccups when Purvis Fish & Chips opened, including no lemon on the plates, and retaining staff has been difficult. But by all accounts, the eatery has been a hit, serving up to 300 customers on its busiest days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fish
Fish and chips<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of this success can be attributed to the fact that Sheppard begins every morning at the family\u2019s fish plant, cutting the previous day\u2019s haul of whitefish, pickerel and lake char into pieces for the fryer and grill.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWe probably serve the freshest fish you\u2019ll get at anywhere in Ontario,\u201d she says, \u201cunless you catch it yourself.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Work Ethic, Maturity and Humility<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At Carleton, Sheppard felt at home on the university\u2019s self-contained campus, with a small-town atmosphere that wasn\u2019t jarring for somebody from Manitoulin Island and intramural sports<\/a> that allowed her to continue her love for hockey<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In class, she learned about the financial world \u2014 abouts stocks and bonds and investing \u2014 and picked up practical knowledge about accounting and taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheppard also participated in programs organized by Carleton\u2019s Innovation Hub<\/a>, but considering that she was already an established entrepreneur, she mostly used her experience to support other students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Innovation
The Innovation Hub at Carleton University<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAvery distinguished herself through her work ethic,\u201d says Toye Akinwumi<\/a>, one of her instructors at Sprott. \u201cShe brought maturity and humility into the classroom, inviting dialogue and collaboration while demonstrating leadership by example<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWhat sets her apart is not only that she has achieved this level of success so early, but that she is pursuing personal growth and learning at an Ivy League institution, which demonstrates both humility and foresight. That she is already thinking about expanding into a chain reflects her long-term vision and readiness to scale from a strong foundation.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

That\u2019s right \u2014 expanding her business. Even though Sheppard is just a few weeks into her master\u2019s degree at Cornell, she\u2019s contemplating the possibility of opening more restaurants, perhaps with attached hotels to smooth over the seasonal ebb and flow in tourist regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s also wondering about the future of her family\u2019s fishing business. Along with two siblings and two cousins, she represents the next generation, and while there are challenges in the industry, there\u2019s opportunity as well as a sense of obligation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIf I had a chain of restaurants, I could be my own supplier,\u201d Sheppard says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cBut really, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s next, and that\u2019s kind of exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Four<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five years ago, Avery Sheppard\u2019s life changed dramatically during a dinner table conversation at home in the town of Mindemoya on Northern Ontario\u2019s Manitoulin Island. Her mother had been encouraged by a local businessman to open a restaurant in an iconic lighthouse-shaped building overlooking the water in nearby Gore Bay. Denise Purvis Sheppard told her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":98899,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[17],"cu_story_tag":[1924,1922],"class_list":["post-98886","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-alumni","cu_story_tag-advancement","cu_story_tag-sprott-school-of-business"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/98886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/98886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99156,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/98886\/revisions\/99156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=98886"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=98886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}