Craft brewing booming in Waterloo Region

As the craft beer trend continues it’s cult like following, Waterloo Region is leading the way in Ontario.

“It’s very much in lockstep with the local food movement too. I think people right around the world want to have a real connection with the food that they’re buying, the drinks they’re having,” says Steve Beauchesne with Ontario Craft Brewers. “It really speaks well to the quality of craft beer as well. We’re using traditional ingredients, we’re using traditional brewing methods and we’re making very good beer.”

Plenty of us are taking advantage of that beer too at one of the many craft breweries or brew pubs all over our region.

We have things like the Beer Wars on May 5th, between brew masters at – Abe Erb, Block Three Brewing, and Innocente Brewing Company.

This week, Imbibe, began a crowdfunding project to keep the pub open – it has that big of a following, and customer base.

This is nothing new though, we have a deep history, with Wellington Brewery being one of the first to open up in the province.

“Guelph, Kitchener, Waterloo area has always been one of the leaders for craft beer in this province. It’s both inspiring for breweries that are from other parts of the province, and it’s also sort of a good test-case for anyone else that is looking to open up a restaurant. When they can see when it’s done right, they can see how exciting it is for the customers, and a they can see it’s a much better business model,” says Beauchesne.

The industry is only going to continue to climb. But when it comes to how high, and how fast, it may depend if they can get rules changed to allow more of them into The Beer Store, or to allow them to open their own stores.

“We’re about a 3.8 per cent market share right now, which is growing quite well, but nowhere near the levels [British Columbia] has gotten.”

“The biggest issue for Ontario is access to the customer,” Beauchesne. “With 80 per cent of beer in Ontario being sold in The Beer Store, [it’s] a very restricted market for us to play in. If you look at our sales in the LCBO, as a group, we’ve been growing by 30-to-40 per cent a year, but the LCBO as a percentage of overall beer sales is quite low.”

Block Three Brewing Company, Grand River Brewing, StoneHammer Brewing and Wellington Brewery are all in our region, and all under the OCB banner.