The honeymoon is over for the B.C. craft beer industry, but this could be great news for B.C. craft beer lovers
It should come as a shock to absolutely no one at this point that B.C.’s craft beer industry is struggling. So far this year we’ve seen brewery closures all across the province: Callister and Andina in Vancouver, Riot Brewing in Chemainus, Studio Brewing in Burnaby, Port Coquitlam’s Boardwalk, New Tradition in Comox…After more than a decade of unprecedented growth things have gotten real for many B.C. craft breweries. Real bad.The answer, it turns out, is many things.
Then bad luck started to plague the brewery. In December 2018, a freak windstorm knocked out power for almost four days during what would have been some of the busiest days of the year for the brewery, with thousands of dollars of product being lost due to the lack of refrigeration. Skyrocketing commercial lease rates and production costs have resulted in tighter margins for craft breweries, as have labour costs as employers struggle to provide anything close to a living wage for employees.
As noted earlier, there is also increased competition amongst craft breweries. COVID saw B.C. craft breweries pivoting to retail sales and investing in packaged product. But with close to 250 craft breweries across the province, and only so much shelf space to go around, the market is now saturated. For breweries, they offered the ability to sell their beer on their own terms, to control the experience consumers have when drinking their beer, and to sell their beer at the highest margin possible with the lowest overheads.
Many also stopped innovating. Brewing beer for retail means larger batches, lower margins, and way more work. As a result, craft breweries have far less freedom to get weird and creative and experimental with their beer when the bottom line is so tight. So, they play it safe.For craft beer to survive, craft beer needs to rediscover its creative streak. And the place for that to happen, is the tasting room.
“People want everything all the time, so if you go against that, you can run the risk of alienating people,” says Tomlinson. “It’s not the Cactus Club experience, it’s a bit of a dungeon, but we’re leaning into our total vision for Jackknife. And that’s reflected in the beer and the merch and the food and the events we put on. We want to elicit emotion when you come into this place. And we try to do that by being deliberate and trying to keep it true to what we’re doing.
Ultimately, craft breweries are going to have to work harder to weather the current storm they are facing. Unlike 10 years ago, their simple existence is no longer a guarantee of success. And where they put in that work is just as critical, says Beattie.
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