Grieving just became a little easier at a funeral home in Chatham-Kent.
McKinlay Funeral Homes now has a liquor licence and can serve food and alcohol during visitations and receptions, allowing families and guests to bypass other venues like legions or golf courses to have a drink while mourning or celebrating the deceased.
Funeral Director Nathan McKinlay says the bar will be shutdown during the funeral service.
McKinlay says more people want a celebration of life instead of a funeral and adds it's the next stage for funeral homes.
"Not only do we do funeral arrangements, we have been doing a number of pre-arrangements and we've been pre-arranging with a lot of baby boomers. A lot of them don't want their parents funeral, they don't want the traditional church service and a lot of them just want to be cremated and don't know what else they want," says McKinlay.
McKinlay says people will stay for dinner between visitations.
The funeral home has been licensed for about a month and is only one of a few in Ontario to serve booze.
McKinlay says hot food can be served because there's more space at the reception centre.
"We just did a major renovation to the reception centre, we added another thousand square feet," he says. "We now have the option for families to have hot food options as well as a glass of wine or beer at our venue and this venue is supposed to emulate golf courses or other venues as such."
McKinlay says the funeral home has partnered with Bayside Brewery in Erieau and Pelee Island Winery and serves a couple of domestic beers.
"We don't really have spirits per say unless it's at request. For instance, a little while ago we had a family and the person who passed away, he was a Scotch man. Everyone had a toast in his name with some Scotch and we had ginger ale for the kids and it was pretty nice," McKinlay says.