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In today’s Toronto Star, Josh Rubin has written an article about the latest Ontario Craft Brewers’ Discovery Pack. This pack, the second one to be released, is a special six-pack with different beers from a number of Ontario craft breweries. Sold exclusively at the LCBO, the first one was a success and it’s hoped that the second one will be too.
What’s interesting is the comments made in the article by Lisa Dunbar, marketing director at the Ontario Craft Brewers. According to the article, she says that The Beer Store “just doesn’t do as good a job selling craft beer” and that “it can be prohibitively expensive for small breweries to list their products there”. She goes on to say that the LCBO “is just a stronger partner for us”.
It is great to see someone like Ms. Dunbar come out and discuss some of the challenges that small breweries have with The Beer Store. It is a shame that in Ontario a mix-pack of locally-produced beers would not be successful in our largest beer retailer. It is important that Ontarians understand that The Beer Store is set up to meet the interests of large, mass-produced beers, not small, local craft brews.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Chris // Dec 9, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I was impressed at how long The Toronto Star left the series of beer store articles up as a feature article on their Ontario section of the website. Hopefully that meant that they were getting lots of readers.
2 David // Jan 4, 2010 at 3:17 am
Funny- all those craft beers (from that package) are sold at The Beer Store! Maybe if craft beer fans like an individual beer from that package, they’d buy it at The Beer Store as a case, saving themselves $8 to $12 over buying it as four sixes that the LCBO would ring you up at!Something else Ontario beer consumers might not know…Challenging indeed.