The Beer Store is giving four stores a boutique makeover
The Ontario beer chain owned by Labatt, Molson and Sleeman’s is completely revamping four GTA locations—College and Bathurst, Parliament and Winchester, Danforth and Greenwood and Hopedale Mall in Oakville—as part of a pilot program to test a new, more modern appeal. The makeover includes a new logo and colour scheme, more refrigeration space for featured seasonal suds and tablets to take orders rather than outdated beer walls. There’s also pictures of juicy burgers plastered on the walls. The move is likely a response to the recent explosion in the popularity of craft beer and increased competition from new retail shops attached to restaurants and pubs, like the Bellwoods Brewery beer store. If the pilot works, The Beer Store plans to change its entire outfit. While a cosmetic upgrade is definitely overdue, we hope some things stay the same: we’d miss the quaint clickity-clack of a case of beer slowly rolling along those old-timey conveyor belts.
Lest we forget that The Beer Store’s owned by international megaconglomerates. They don’t care about Ontario craft beer or the little guys and they focus on pushing their own crappy product, like Molson Canadian and Wildcat.
They can put lipstick on this pig as many times as they want but, in the end, it is still a self-absorbent pig that smells like the mud it rolls around in.
Don’t support the Beer Store: buy directly from Amsterdam, Bellwoods or Great Lakes.
They care about making money and if selling craft beer is going to do that then they’re going to do it.
Why would Molson, Sleeman and Labatt (as the article incorrectly names, since Molson is now a conglomerate with Coors and Sleemans is owned by Sapporo) push to profit off of beer that they don’t own? You can “double” your profit if you push your own product to consumers and limit/narrow their craft choices.
It’s like saying that McDonalds would profit more by selling Burgers Priest burgers.
They won’t do it for a few reasons. The fees for a craft brewery to list and distribute through TBS are too high for most. TBS makes money on fees – they don’t care what beer they sell. Now their owners do. That’s why we have lame walls of labels and block piles of the big brewery beers so that people “don’t get any ideas”. Until their business model changes and they start to solicit beers to list with TBS you won’t see a massive growth of craft no matter what the demand is.
It’s not a “boutique” its an foreign owned monopoly. I never go the Beer Store anymore, NEVER. I shop at LCBO or right from the LOCAL craft brewer. There are lots of local brewers in the GTA, from Steam Whistle to The Junction Brewery and everywhere in between, and their beer tastes better too. Do a google search, find them, support the. Don’t be fooled by a wolf in “boutique” clothing.
Because you sell what your customers want. If a customer wants craft beer, they’re not going to settle for Coors Light. They’re going to go find that craft beer. The Beer Store still makes money off of selling that craft beer, and they can still sell their lower quality product to consumers who couldn’t care less about craft. The Beer Store is owned by those big 3, but that doesn’t mean they should be looking to exclusively sell those 3 products because they would shut down from lack of sales instantly. Customers arent going to buy from just 3 companies the rest of their lives when there are millions of other companies producing better products. The only way the Beer Store is going to stay in business is if they conform to consumer trends and sell craft beer.