This article is part of How I Spent My Summer, a series of articles showcasing opportunities Dal students pursued over the past few months — from work-intergrated learning to mini-courses and more. Scroll to the bottom for more articles.
Sometimes, summer jobs can be sweet, crisp, and very delicious.
This summer, Dal student Lauren Hunter completed a sustainability co-op work term at Spy Cider House and Distillery in The Blue Mountains, Ont., where she helped manage the cidery’s expansion into six new farmers’ markets across the province.
“I loved learning about their business and what they do,” says Lauren. “Both the owners are driven, passionate people, and so I’ve learned that that’s what you need to do to run your own business — you have to be super involved all the time.”
Now entering her fourth year in International Development Studies and Environment, Sustainability & Society (ESS) studies, this was Lauren’s third and final work term in the Sustainability Co-op program.
New responsibilities
Spy Cider was first established in 2019 before being purchased by entrepreneurs Darcy Hagerman and Ian Smith (both Dal alumni) in 2023. The business maintains an organic apple orchard and produces hard ciders and spirits on-site, serving customers at a patio restaurant and providing products to other local bars and businesses.
Working closely with Darcy, Ian, and their head of sales and marketing, Lauren managed Spy Cider’s expansion into farmers’ markets in parts of Ontario such as Rosseau, Orangeville, St. Jacobs, and Gravenhurst. She organized product and inventory, worked with new vendor hires who handled the direct sales, and compiled weekly sales reports and summaries from each market.
While she has completed a range of different work in her previous co-ops, as an intern at Sun Life and a social impact research coordinator at Dalhousie, managing farmers’ market sales for Spy Cider was one of the biggest projects Lauren has taken on, and it came with a whole new level of responsibility.
“They trusted me to really lead this one,” she says, noting that she had to develop personal strategies for effectively managing sales and keeping track of inventory throughout the summer.
The power of local community
Spy Cider produces its ciders with renewable geothermal power infrastructure, which uses steel tanks and a hand-made copper still. The cidery is in the early stages of building up its business and capacity, but Lauren sees its potential to achieve additional sustainable practices in future — as part of her co-op, she researched carbon net-zero distillery programs for Spy Cider to consider going forward.
The cidery has also placed an emphasis on local business and strong community partnerships, and those relationships made an impression on Lauren as she drew more connections between her work and her sustainability studies at Dal.
“There’s such a focus on community engagement and community impact in SUST 2000, a second-year ESS course, and I got that it was important — but I didn’t understand how important until I met the owners of Spy Cider and learned more about this company,” she says. “It really is important to engage with community and understand your local business partners and how you can benefit from one another, and it does go a really long way, to build up those relationships.”
That importance was clear in June, when Lauren and her colleagues organized a community event at the cidery.
“We did a Cider Fest where around thirteen different cideries came for the day and set up, and people could try different samples,” says Lauren. “It was a really great way for Spy to get their name out there, but also for the other cideries to market themselves. Even though we’re competitors, we’re also supporting one another, and I loved seeing that.”
Lauren enjoyed her experience at Spy Cider, and may return there for work again next summer. She’s done research into farmers’ markets in Toronto and thinks the cidery will be ready to head to the big city in the near future.