A fast food tycoon and three high-tech pioneers are among the new members of the Waterloo Region Entrepreneur Hall of Fame.
The late Barney Strassburger Sr, who built a chain of chicken, pizza and taco outlets stretching from Windsor to Parry Sound, will be inducted into the hall of fame at a gala dinner Nov. 15 at Bingemans in Kitchener.
Joining him in the hall this year will be computer distributor and venture capitalist Jim Estill; Gerry Remers, president and chief operating officer of Christie Digital; and Mate Prgin, a wireless video innovator.
The dinner is hosted by Communitech, the association representing more than 800 high-tech companies in the region.
Strassburger Sr., who died in 2002 at the age of 83, launched his first restaurant in the area in 1947. But it was a fateful meeting in 1960 with Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain, that catapulted Strassburger to business greatness.
Strassburger agreed to start selling Kentucky Fried Chicken in his restaurant, then parlayed that into a chain of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants stretching across southern Ontario. Now called TwinCorp, the company employs about 1,200 people at those restaurants and at Keybrand Foods, a manufacturing and distribution business in Kitchener.
Strassburger is receiving the hall’s Legacy Award, as is Estill, who launched EMJ Data, a computer distribution business, while he was a student at University of Waterloo in 1979.
He built EMJ into a $350-million business before it was purchased by Synnex in 2004. Estill continued to run Synnex Canada in Guelph until 2009 when he left to move to New York. He now serves as a partner in CanRock Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund.
Estill also served on the board of directors of Research In Motion for 13 years and has invested in many local tech businesses.
Remers, who will receive the Luminary Award, negotiated the sale of Electrohome Projection Systems to Christie in 1999, then grew Christie into one of the world’s top producers of visual display solutions, including digital cinema projectors and projection systems. Under his management, annual sales have grown from $100 million to $800 million.
Prgin, who is getting the Intrepid Award, is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Avvasi Inc. The four-year-old Waterloo company helps wireless service providers analyze, manage and monetize video traffic from sources such as Netflix and YouTube. Prior to launching Avvasi, Prgin co-founded a semiconductor company that developed a groundbreaking computer chip to compress and deliver HDTV signals.
