BCGEU strike leaves craft breweries scrambling to sell and deliver product

Many craft breweries are struggling to get their beer to private stores and restaurants during the BCGEU strike.

On a typical day, Parkside Brewery in Port Moody packages 240 flats of canned beer. But with B.C. government liquor stores behind picket lines, it’s now only packaging a third of that.

“’I’d say we’re short about 60 per cent of our retail sales right now,” said Parkside owner Sam Payne.

Not only can the craft brewery not sell its beer in government liquor stores during the BCGEU (BC General Employees’ Union) strike, it can’t access its product at the liquor distribution branch.

“We have eight core products that are all in the government warehouse, and right now all that beer is frozen,” said Payne. “So having that much inventory committed to somewhere where it can’t move has created quite a few mathematical challenges for us.”

The brewery is also missing out on significant revenue from government liquor store sales.

“Those are the busiest stores in the province, often. So that’s a challenge,” said Payne.

Ken Beattie with the B.C. Craft Brewers Guild says it’s also a challenge for many craft breweries to get product to private liquor stores and restaurants where it can be sold.

“Because they rely on the government liquor stores to do the deliveries for them, they don’t have extra trucks and extra manpower to start delivering. So they are all scrambling to get that system in place,” said Beattie.

Payne is having to deliver some of Parkside’s product himself.

“Whatever we have to do to keep the machine rolling,” he said.

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The strike comes at a difficult time for the craft brewing industry, which was already struggling with increased costs and a customer base with less money to spend.

“This is worse for us than COVID, because during COVID we were an essential service and we stayed open,” said Beattie. “Now we are open, but we have no ability to get the product and get it to the customers.”

As the strike enters its sixth week, brewers are pleading with the province and the BCGEU to return to bargaining.

“We just hope a fair deal can be found pretty quickly here,” said Payne.

“They really need to get back to the table, because this is having an incredibly adverse effect,” added Beattie. “The longer strike goes, the more intense it gets.”