Community Spotlight: Confluence Dental
Welcome to the Community Spotlight blog series! We have customers in over 400 communities, for which we are incredibly grateful, so we know how special your neighborhoods are. We thought it might be a good idea to introduce you to the place we call home; the historic community of Inglewood in Calgary, Alberta. With the recent hardships small businesses have had to face, our goal is to highlight some other local businesses in Inglewood with whom we are proud to share the community.
Even though Inglewood is Calgary’s oldest neighbourhood, there are always new and exciting businesses popping up. One such business is Confluence Dental, a brand new dental clinic that opened on 9th Ave and 12th street earlier this summer.
Confluence is the brainchild of Dr. Mackenzie Naylor. Having always had dreams of opening her own practice, COVID slowed life to a halt in March of 2020, and the wheels started spinning. With dental offices being shuttered for nearly three months in Alberta, that gave Dr. Naylor ample time to start envisioning what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it. Flash forward a year and a half later and those dreams have turned into a reality.
The concept behind Confluence Dental is refreshingly honest. Dr. Naylor knows that most people don’t look forward to going to the dentist, so re-imagining what the process looks like was the basis for the business. With a wide variety of services offered including hygiene, aesthetic restorations, Invisalign®, Botox®, smile designs and more, the key for Confluence is comfort. At Confluence, patients can enjoy refreshments, Netflix with noise-cancelling headphones, cold and hot towels, free WiFi and sedation options. They even go the extra mile and make sure you have no problem setting up and getting to your appointment with online booking, free parking and direct billing.
When Dr. Naylor was dreaming of opening her practice there was one thing that was never in doubt; it had to be in Inglewood. Not only does Dr. Naylor work in Inglewood, but she and her husband are proud to call the neighbourhood home as well. Feeling that it was important to be a part of the community that she would be practicing in, Dr. Naylor isn’t shy about her love for Inglewood highlighting the proximity to the river and being close to a ton of restaurants, breweries and shops as high on a very long list of her favourite things the neighbourhood has to offer.
As you might imagine, starting a business during a global pandemic presented its challenges. While Dr. Naylor admits, if she hadn’t had the time off work in the spring of 2020, Confluence Dental might not exist, there were still a lot of obstacles and uncertainties to overcome. Supply chain issues with construction materials, dental equipment and supplies were persistent. Starting a business from scratch is stressful enough, to do so with a looming possibility of another mandated closure as well as keeping in mind how comfortable patients might be with coming into a dental office adds an entirely different layer of complexity to the endeavour.
Dr. Naylor and her team stayed the course and now that Confluence Dental’s doors are open they are looking forward to continuing getting to know their neighbours in the community. They’ve been trying to spotlight any local restaurants and shops that they go to in the area, and have enjoyed sharing nearby businesses with their patients. The team at Confluence Dental has loved having patients walk in and introduce themselves, and are always accepting new patients so pop in to say ‘hi’ or schedule a meet and greet at their office!
Confluence Dental is located at 1224 9 Ave SE. Their website is https://confluencedental.com/ and you can find them on Facebook and Instagram.