Business owner adds new venture to portfolio

Jules Thomas has turned his life around.

Thomas, a Cree from the Sturgeon Lake First Nation, had a troubled past, which included a pair of incarcerations. But the 30-year-old, who lives in Edmonton, now has a pair of thriving businesses.

For the past two years he’s owned Distrikt Media, a print and design company in Edmonton, which he began after working for another print and design company. He plans on expanding to open a second office in Calgary soon.

Plus, last year he started a second company, Bannock Burger, which not only provides catering needs but is also a mobile restaurant which has been a huge hit at pow wows. Bannock Burger was also successful when Thomas parked his business on a downtown Edmonton street this past summer.

He’s now finalizing a deal where Bannock Burger will have a permanent location, as he takes over an Edmonton canteen, in all likelihood in early November.

“Next year I’ll have a retail location in the city,” Thomas said. “And I want to develop Bannock Burger as a franchise. I want to go across Canada for sure.”

Thomas has managed to become a successful businessman despite a less-than-stellar past. He started drinking alcohol and doing drugs at age 11. A couple of years after that he started selling drugs.

And he was arrested twice, once when he was a young offender for trafficking drugs and then again at age 20 for possession of a prohibited firearm. Thomas was caught with a machine gun in his car though he insists he was never in a gang.

Thomas said he has been sober and hasn’t used drugs for 15 years now. But he does admit he continued to sell drugs, off and on, up until about four years ago.

“My print and design career and having my son were major factors in me changing my life,” said Thomas, a single father who has joint custody of his son, who is almost three.

With his two booming businesses now, Thomas is viewed as an Aboriginal role model and has recently been featured in a handful of publications. He doesn’t mind that people are talking about him, even if they mention his past.

“For me it’s a blessing,” he said. “They’re putting me in the forefront. I’m just trying to create awareness for Aboriginal people and to show we can have our own thing and we can be successful. For me though I don’t look at is as being an Aboriginal in business. I’m just a person in business.”

Thomas has become successful despite the fact he left his art and design studies at the University of Alberta after six months.
“The stuff I was doing I was already good at doing,” he said. “I was doing that stuff in junior high.”

Thomas’ design career took off shortly after that when he landed a job with a design company. And with Distrikt Media now, he has more than his share of work.

Thomas estimates only about 20 per cent of his clients are Aboriginal.

“Some of my Aboriginal clients are pretty big ones, from things like government agencies,” he said. “And some are Aboriginal owners themselves.”