Overlooking the Salish Sea, up the hill from the pulp and paper mill, Townsite Brewing played no small part in revitalizing my hometown of Powell River, B.C. Two ferry rides from Vancouver at the northernmost end of the Sunshine Coast, it feels like a brewery at the edge of the world. Housed in a historic brick building, serving beers evoking cultural idiosyncrasies and local landmarks, it’s more than a watering hole — it’s a source of pride.
When owners Chloe Smith and Cédric Dauchot set out to choose a location for their microbrewery almost a decade ago, a strong sense of community was at the top of their list of criteria. Since they opened Townsite in 2012, their product has become enmeshed with the place it’s brewed. From the artwork on their bottles to the names of their house beers, it embodies this unique coastal town.
There’s Zunga, a golden blonde ale named after what would be known as a rope swing in any other part of the country. YOGN 82, a Belgian triple and homage to one of The Hulks — a breakwater of concrete ships that were built for the two world wars — that now sits on the ocean floor settling into its new role as an artificial reef. And Tin Hat, a nod in IPA form to a mountain-top hut offering a stunning 360-degree view of the surrounding Tla’amin Nation: lakes, sea, peaks and valleys.
Townsite has attracted tourists and spurred growth in Powell River. But it’s also made an indelible mark on local culture. As with the rest of the country’s 1,100 craft breweries, it is more than a maker of beer. It’s a cultivator of community, and during the pandemic — which has brought significant challenges to the craft beer industry — that community has given back.
“If you do what you do well, this town will support you like crazy,” says Smith. “It’s been so incredible to be here and to have everyone’s support. People jumped right on our home-delivery offerings and were purchasing out of wanting to support us. And people were coming in and buying themselves $50 gift certificates for when we reopen. This town is incredible. We thank ourselves every day for making the move and coming here.”
Smith was preparing to reopen Townsite’s tasting room when we spoke, and had brought back 11 of 16 employees (during lockdown, staff had been reduced to six). A lively spot pre-pandemic, she anticipates that it will have a very different feel at half capacity. “It will not be this loud, boisterous community-centred room where kids are running around,” says Smith. “Sometimes when you walk in … you know everybody in the room, so you stop at every table to have a little chin wag with people. I’m hoping it’s not going to be too stiff and unneighbourly.”
Like Townsite, more than 90 per cent of Canada’s craft breweries have opened in the last decade, says Rick Dalmazzi, executive director of the Canadian Craft Brewers Association (CCBA). Many have breathed new life into their villages, towns and neighbourhoods, both in terms of economic development and spirit.
“It’s kind of a rural renaissance that we’ve helped to create because of the investment in small communities,” says Dalmazzi. “But a lot of those communities are also tourism locations, so we’re really susceptible to this phenomenon that’s been going on.”
Having taken out a loan last year to buy Pit Caribou — a Gaspésian microbrewery in the fishing village of L’Anse-à-Beaufils, Quebec — co-owner Jean-François Nellis says he welcomes the challenge of seeing his business through the pandemic. With product in 1,700 stores throughout Quebec but their two pubs closed, and suspended keg sales due to restaurant and bar closures, their revenue has decreased by more than 30 per cent in the past two months. He’s hoping to expand sales to other provinces in the near future — including Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia — and is prepared to see fewer tourists than the 800,000-plus who typically travel to the Gaspé Peninsula each year.
“I believe that this year will be a tough one, but it will be a great one for learning,” says Nellis. “I’m a former French Olympic karate performer, so I like challenge a lot. And this is a great challenge. The Gaspé is a poor region. The unemployment rate is very high. It’s very tough to find a job here and one of our missions is to create jobs, and fun jobs, so that we like to work here.”
Sixty per cent of Canada’s craft breweries, like Pit Caribou and Townsite, distribute packaged beer in bottles, cans and kegs, as well as have a taproom and store. Thirty per cent rely on taproom sales, says Dalmazzi, and 10 per cent are brewpubs — restaurants that brew their own beer to serve onsite. In a CCBA survey focusing on the impact of COVID-19 closures, more than 40 per cent of respondents reported a drop in revenue by 50 per cent or more in March. The organization recently polled its members for a second time since the pandemic began, and the results were the same or worse for April, with many expecting the downward trend to continue.
The agility of craft breweries, though, has proven to be an asset. Ribstone Creek Brewery , located in the east-central Albertan village of Edgerton — population 400 — quickly made the transition to e-commerce once the pandemic started. A former tractor dealership where farmers once gathered over coffee while they waited for repairs or parts, the brewery has likewise been a community hub.
Aaron Norris, Ribstone Creek’s business development manager, grew up in the neighbouring town of Wainwright. Since the brewery opened in 2012, he’s considered it his local spot. “Small-town main streets aren’t as busy as they once were, with people moving more to the bigger centres. So it was really cool to have that draw in downtown Edgerton,” he says. “Over the past couple years, we’ve grown that sense of community back and we’ve got people driving from Edmonton just to visit the brewery … It’s been really cool to see the brewery be able to put Edgerton back on the map a little bit.”
With five full-time staff members, they were able to maintain operations without layoffs. And although their beers are available at liquor stores province-wide, with their restaurant and taproom closed, they lost 50 per cent of their sales. This hit especially hard as they’re heading into what would usually be their busiest time of year.
“Any brewery will tell you that you circle the start of summer as May 1, and you anticipate May through September as your busiest months. So, for this to hit when it did, it was almost a double whammy,” says Norris. “The time when we’re really supposed to be making hay, we got a punch to the gut. But we were able to stay nimble and mitigate some of those losses a little bit (with online sales). It was really nice to have support from the community.”
Craft beer is a fresh, often unpasteurized product, which presents both an advantage in terms of its appeal and a detriment when it comes to withstanding unexpected circumstances. According to the results of the second CCBA survey, COVID-19 bar and restaurant shutdowns have resulted in 10.7 million litres of spoiled beer at a cost of nearly $55 million for craft breweries.
“As much as this has been tough, I’ve heard of very few breweries that have actually closed permanently,” says Dalmazzi. “A number of them have closed temporarily, but because these breweries don’t have outside investment dollars — they’re owner-operators, and friends and family money — they’re going to do whatever they can to make sure this thing doesn’t go under.”
When the government eased restrictions in Alberta in mid-May, Calgary brewpub Prairie Dog Brewing decided to remain closed for dine-in service for the foreseeable future (they have continued offering takeout and delivery). In an article on their website that has been viewed nearly 100,000 times, they laid out the challenges to reopening — from “what to do about dishes” to the six-pronged “revenue problem.”
Laura Coles, founder and director of marketing and public relations, credits the transparency of that article for its high viewership. “It’s a very rare case that you have a business that lays out their financials in the way that we did,” she says.
A “hyperlocal” operation, where the majority of sales were in-house, the brewpub opened less than two years ago. Prairie Dog’s five founders — who work roughly 300 hours per week — had yet to pay themselves prior to the pandemic. Now, with the dine-in closure, Coles says, the brewpub has become a labour of love in the truest sense.
“Failure isn’t an option with this company because the owners have put everything into it. If the company fails, it puts the owners into bankruptcy and into a deeper poverty that would be harder to recover from,” says Coles, adding that in spite of the substantial challenges, local support has made a difference.
“I’ve had so many days in the last several weeks where I’ve come in (and thought), ‘How are we going to survive this?’ Then one customer comes in, fills three growlers, and says they love the beer and that they’re talking to their friends about it. And that’s enough to be like, ‘OK. That’s how we’re going to do it, is with our community.’”
Prairie Dog had planned on launching a special-edition canned Canada Day beer, but canning wasn’t otherwise part of their business model. When they closed their doors to dine-in, one of their earliest decisions was to start canning so they could move as much beer as possible out of their tanks and into cans for more efficient delivery and takeout.
Halifax’s Good Robot Brewing Co. made a bold choice when it came to reckoning with the challenges of the pandemic, taking out a loan to buy a $130,000 canning machine. Having built their brewery on camaraderie — and based 80 to 90 per cent of their business on a bar, restaurant and beer garden — their first plan of attack was to focus on how to translate that experience online.
“If you can’t physically bring people together, it kind of brings into question your whole company’s ethos,” says Joshua Counsil, co-founder of Good Robot. “That has been challenging. Forget dollars. Forget HR, staff and whatnot, all of which are extremely important. But philosophically, it was completely different than everything we’ve invested in for five years.”
Central to their pre-pandemic community spirit, one of their primary objectives when they took the brewery online was to reinstate their charitable program, Goodwill Bot. The attitude of their website and e-commerce, and investing in quirky artwork for their cans, has been central to their approach as they figure out ways to reopen physically. Prior to mandatory closures, staff voted almost unanimously to close public spaces but keep the store open. Counsil had recently hosted a video chat with 42 of Good Robot’s regulars when we spoke, and the brewery has been regularly polling its customers in order to help them plan for reopening.
“They are genuinely afraid, depressed, anxious, but also lonely and excited to get back out. So they’re feeling a little bit of everything,” says Counsil. “We got into this with the vote of confidence of our staff. We’re not going to crawl out of this without that confidence. And in addition to that, the confidence of our guests.”
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
