Gary Beutler's Classification

Ron said Gary has been a long time resident of Midland  Though he moved to Toronto for a while in the 80's he came back in 1988 and has been in business here since.

Gary wanted to clear something up right away - it's Boy tler, aka The Water Guy.  He is married to Sheryl and they have a daughter living in Toronto.  His parents were German but born in Poland and his father served in WWII, was wounded twice and was a POW of the Russians.  Four of his brothers were killed.  The large farm they grew up on was seized by the Russians and when Gary's father returned home he found his parents living in a small apartment so he fled to Germany and finally came to Canada.  Gary's mother's father fought in two wars and 3 countries and he led his family to flee the Russians and they also lost everything.  Both parents ended up in Windsor, where they both had relatives and where they met.

They were assigned to jobs, his dad as a baker and his mom in a factory but they worked hard and in 1954 they leased their own bakery and in 1959 they moved to Midland to buy their own.  We saw some pictures and it is clear that the hair gene is strong on the paternal side of the family.  Gary and his two brothers wearing suits, sometime in the 70's maybe? looked like something from a heavy metal band.  They all worked nights in the bakery and summers they put in 60 hours a week but they also played sports - Gary in tennis shorts and big hair.

Gary became a journeyman baker at Dominion and went to school at Georgian and then became Bakery Manager in Orillia for two years before becoming supervisor of 70 bakeries in Miracle Food Marts across Ontario.  This was before he turned 29, at which age he became director of Bakeries for the new Superstores Loblaws was building so he planned and supervised construction and staffing in these 125,000 sq. ft. facilities.  He called that his dream job.  His next move was to the opposite - a job from hell - VP for Dimpflmeier which was an out of date operation that was resistant to change so in 1989 he started Eurobuns in Midland.  It's primary customers were retail outlets and restaurants and summer camps and it did very well, expanding to 20 employees but it became harder to get trained staff and through 2006 - 2009 he was working 24/7/365 and he finally closed the store.

He had a fall back though.  In 2003 he had started the water store as a franchise but, unfortunately, the franchiser was a crook and went bankrupt so Gary and some other franchisees went independent, changed the name of their outlets and formed a Water Group Co-op that did group purchases, had a joint website, which Gary maintains, and produced educational videos. 

Gary thinks water treatment is important, especially in cottage country.  He is a Certified Water Specialist, one of only 70 in Canada, and a member of the Water Quality Association.  He constantly updates his training.  He can further purify tap water, either by supplying at the store in jugs to about 2,000 customers or by installing purification systems.  He will test the water, examine the plumbing, advise, prescribe and train on equipment he installs.  While taste is the prime driver for systems, saving can be realized on soap and appliance wear with purifiers.  Our local water is hard and it does cause efficiency problems in applicances and he can also reduce the taste of chlorine.  If you're on a well you also get hard water and can also have iron or the sulfur smell.  They also work with commercial operations which need good water for coffee or dishwashers, etc.

As an independent he can deal with suppliers he approves of and he mostly deals with Waterite.  He is also moving into air filtration products from Heaven Fresh.  He feels the future is good as people become more aware of the advantages of filtration.  He says, 'Buy a filter or be a filter, your choice.'

Gary is also a car nut and still has his uncle's 1965 chevy in all it's original splendor - which means he's too cheap to fix it up.  In 1980 he went to racing school for open wheel cars but stopped racing because of work.  In 2002 he came back to sports cars and no races a Boxter S.  His wife is active in the car club as well.

Ron suggested Gary was either a serial entrepreneur or he can't keep a job and he thanked him for his talk and presented him with the certificate of donation to Polio Plus.