New rules from The Beer Store to make store shelves more accessible to all Ontario beer makers is welcome news to local breweries.
With these changes, small brewers would pay no listing fee for two products at the five nearest Beer Store locations to the brewery.
President and owner of the Walkerville Brewery Mike Brkovich says once the details are ironed out, this could be a huge boost for business."Our sales would increase, production would go up, our distribution network would increase," says Brkovich. "The consumer would have more access to our products. It would be, I think, really good news for us."
Nancy Cowan, co-owner of Bayside Breweing Company in Erieau, says her company plans to take full advantage of being on Beer Store shelves. "We receive calls daily of people asking us. People come from Sarnia, Windsor and here to buy our beer on a regular basis," says Cowan. "I really have been pushing for a long time to see it either on The Beer Store shelves or at the LCBO."
Currently Brkovich says the problem is The Beer Store is controlled by monopoly of foreign brewers with strict guidelines. "Even if you were to get into The Beer Store, I think the biggest objection from micro brewers is that they decided where to put us on the shelf," he says. "They would promote their own brands and products and obviously because we weren't owned by them, they ultimately determined where our shelf space was."
The Beer Store is also offering up ownership stake to small breweries. Over the next few months Brkovich says he will comb over the fine print to determine the next steps in possibly bringing the Walkerville Brewery into The Beer Store. "I think we need to learn a lot more about what The Beer Store is proposing and how they plan to implement it," says Brkovich. "I'm curious, myself, to see how accessible they are going to make it for us."