INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE: PIVOTING DURING A PANDEMIC

PIVOTING DURING A PANDEMIC: BREWERIES COMPARE NOTES IN OUR VIRTUAL INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE

Patio at BNA Brewing in Kelowna

In case you hadn't heard, 2020 has been a year like no other. So we've reached out to the BC craft beer industry for their thoughts on COVID'S impact, and assembled these abridged responses in group chat format.

Our panel includes Andrés Amaya of Yeast Van's Andina Brewing, Jill Jarrett of Kelowna's BNA Brewing, Arnold Tobler of Langley's Farm Country, Susi Foerg of Rustic Reel in Kelowna's North End, Megan Durno of Mighty Peace in Fort St. John, Sam Payne of The Parkside Brewery on Port Moody's #BrewersRow, Chris Bunnage of Freddy's Brewpub in Kelowna, Chloe Smith of Townsite Brewing in Powell River, and the two Kents: Donaldson of Golden's Whitetooth Brewing and Orton of Wheelhouse Brewing in Prince Rupert. Keep your eyes on our website for many of their full-length individual interviews.

WHEN THE SHUTDOWN HIT IN MARCH, HOW BADLY WERE YOU AFFECTED?

Susi Foerg: Oh gosh. It has been haaaaaaard.

Kent Donaldson: Does anybody anticipate a pandemic? You quickly adopt a siege mentality because your very existence as a going concern is at stake.

Arnold Tobler: Shutting our doors after only 3 months was a real blow!

Megan Durno: We went from about 15 staff members to 4. Andrés Amaya: We had to lay off 95% of our staff.

Jill Jarrett: Having just completed a large tasting room expansion, we were frankly just lost. Almost everything we had invested into this business was aimed at having people in our space. It definitely felt like we had the rug pulled out from us. Chloe Smith: The chaos was incredibly difficult to navigate. I used our barrel room as a refuge for tears when I got overwhelmed.

WHAT WAS DEMAND LIKE FOR YOU DURING THE LOCKDOWN? HOW MUCH DID YOU SHIFT TO RETAIL, PACKAGING AND ONLINE?

I hadn’t planned to focus much on distribution, so when we shut down there was no other revenue stream coming in.

We lost 100% of our draft accounts, including our own tasting room.

Sam Payne: We went to 100% retail and off-sales. Zero tasting room sales.

Luckily, our customers were extremely supportive and demand was steady [for retail sales].

We saw many of the same faces coming through the doors every week.

An unexpected positive of our taproom closing was that our wholesale program really took off. We were fortunate to have a new canning line running in January. So when March lockdown started, we were able to quickly pivot to selling more packaged beer .

Kent Orton: Closing our lounge meant a big reduction in revenue and took some soul-searching. Thankfully, we were able to quickly get our online store open.

Like most others, we scrambled to get an online shop up & running. We’re definitely keeping it going, as there are many who don’t feel safe to venture out yet and they still need good beer!

Chris Bunnage: This year, Freddy’s is undergoing a major renovation. Originally we were going to keep the brewpub side open during renovations, but with COVID capacity limitations that changed [the brewpub stayed closed, while the bowling and dining areas stayed open].

Andrés Amaya

Susi Foerg Megan Durno + Scott Spence

Sam Payne

Kent Donaldson

Arnold Tobler Chris Bunnage Chloe Smith

Jill Jarrett

HOW MUCH OF YOUR STAFFING HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO RETAIN?

In the week of March 16th we laid off 75% of our staff. We were able to bring back half of those, and have added a couple of tasting room positions as well. WE’VE HAD We consider ourselves extremely lucky; we did not lose any of our MANY staff as they all returned to work with us. CUSTOMERS ASK FOR We have been able to bring back STAFF TO everyone who wanted to come back REMOVE and actually had to hire a few more part time staff. THEIR MASKS - JILL J. We have been able to keep almost all our staff, but with half capacity we do not have the same number of hours to give.

We were very lucky to have positions for everyone to come back in some way once the doors were allowed to open again.

We ended up hiring five new staff to be able to re-open!

HOW HAVE THINGS GONE WITH REOPENING? WHAT WAS THE MOST INCONVENIENT ASPECT?

Oof, it's been tough. The changing landscape of health orders has been hard to muddle through. HUGE shout-out to Ken Beattie and Monica Frost for communicating that info. Closing the first time, then the aftermath of the Canada Day outbreaks in Kelowna damn near broke my spirit. It has been absolutely exhausting, heartbreaking, and scary as hell.

Things have been a bit rocky. We’re trying to balance what guests want vs. what’s best for them while keeping our staff safe. For instance, we’ve had many customers ask for staff to remove their masks.

It has been difficult with only 50% of occupancy in our lounge. Having to ask customers to follow the protocols has certainly been a challenge. Unfortunately, some people simply do not follow the rules.

The most inconvenient thing is the increased cleaning and constant monitoring of seats in the tasting room. This requires additional staff but we can only have half the [customers], which equals less revenue.

The only inconvenience we experience is spacing. We have a cozy taproom, and cannot fit as many tables as we once had. Transitioning to a table service room instead of the usual counter service has been a challenge but has gone really well of late. Inside, we are down from 100 seats to approximately 24. Outside, the inconvenient part specifically has been the rain.

Social distancing on the Whitetooth patio. Photo: Kim Lawton

On one of our best sales days, it drizzled for 6 hours but customers were just stoic about it; they planted themselves at a table and persevered. Must have been some cabin fever being vented there.

The lockdown definitely did delay our construction timeline on a few occasions, but we have an incredible team that is working hard to meet our re-opening date at the end of September in the brewpub area (see feature on Freddy's in this issue).

The community has been so supportive over the past months. They have really shown up for all of us on #BrewersRow.

Our lounge currently sees about 50% of the normal traffic pre-COVID 19.

Things have been extremely erratic since opening back up.

It has been really hard to find a steady flow; one weekend we are very busy, and the next extremely slow.

Normally we'd have a lot of international visitors visiting the national parks by now, so that has entirely disappeared, but we've noticed Alberta traffic picking up for us. In the weeks since reopening, business had been increasing until Kelowna’s outbreak at the beginning of July. We are now organizing ourselves to start getting into distribution this Fall, because I need to be prepared if another wave shuts us down for some time.

We’re grateful for the tourism, however I think the people coming in are keeping a lot of locals at home. Of course there are responsible tourists, but there are also many that think since they are on holiday, so is coronavirus, and obviously that’s not the case.

Andina Brewing: ready to serve

WHAT'S YOUR POLICY AROUND GROWLERS AND REFILLS?

We have suspended all growler fills, even for new growlers, mainly due to logistics. Growler filling is labour intensive, and to have one more staff on shift just isn't feasible, so something had to give.

We are providing growlers fills, but we advise customers that we are sanitizing them pre and post filling, making this a whole new process.

Instead of just rinsing the inside of the bottle, we do spray a bit of sanitizer in there before we rinse.

Our filling system has a distinct advantage over many others due to the fact that our hoses are detached and sanitized between every fill.

ARE YOU WAITING ON ANY LEGISLATION? WHAT DO YOU THINK GOVERNMENTS SHOULD BE DOING NEXT?

We need a major 'support local' campaign. The BC LDB needs to step up and put BC craft beer front and centre on its shelves.

The BC government stepped up big time with the school tax reduction for property taxes.

The Federal and Provincial governments have been great about making money available for those who need it. Taking advantage of programs, particularly the Canada Small Business Financing Program through our bank, has helped.

What people might not realize is that as a brand new startup, new breweries like ours don’t qualify for the COVID wage subsidy.

Right now we are dealing with some issues for our temporary patio application with Langley City, but we hope to have that resolved soon so we can add 20-30 seats.

Here’s hoping they leave the new patios all over BC, as I think it's been a relief.

The patio/lounge extension allowance should be extended beyond October 31st, for at least one year or permanently. We've been trying for years to convince our municipal government to reduce the light industrial property tax rate, perhaps to harmonize with a much lower local business tax rate, but so far no traction.

Frankly, we have fallen through almost every crack there is to fall through, and are digging ourselves out of a hole we didn’t create. Relying on the government is not a fun position to be in as a business.

ANY OTHER THOUGHTS?

COVID-19 is here to stay and is not going anywhere until a proper vaccine is found.

We all need to learn to live with this virus. With re-opening, it’s inevitable that we’re going to see more cases. We have to continue to make the smart decisions that allowed us to re-open in the first place.