LCBO / The Beer Store

[W. K. Lis]

The price of beer, wine, and liquour is too heavily regulated by the province. There is a minimum price the stores can only sell them at. No lower. No lost leaders. Even if truly independent stores were set up, they could only sell them at a price the province says so.

That has to change.

[waterloowarrior]

How then do they justify having sales and specials?

Everytime I see a "sale" at the LCBO it's usually something like saving $2 off a bottle of wine or $0.25 on a bottle of beer.

[W. K. Lis]

Why can't we get real sales like this:

[gmania]

^ I could go for a sixer of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA for $9.99! It's $14.10 at the LCBO.

[hbl33]

Sam Adams! Heineken! Oh wait, no Moosehead?

[Tacoma]

The price of beer, wine, and liquour is too heavily regulated by the province. There is a minimum price the stores can only sell them at. No lower. No lost leaders. Even if truly independent stores were set up, they could only sell them at a price the province says so.

That has to change.

But it won't change as publc opinion support the status quo. The "social responsibility" angle is a cover for the real reason: increased revenue for the government.

[Jonny5]

Is that SKY Vodka advertised with a $5 mail in rebate? LOL.

[hbl33]

Back in Korea (6 years ago), I had much more convenience, comfort and friendly feel about purchasing beer and alcohol in convenience stores, supermarkets and even in department stores! - as much as Quebecois are doing now in their general stores. Ditto for US and konbinis in Japan, as do much of Europe (AFAIK).

IS IT JUST ME, or Ontario is really communistic, at best?

[JayBee]

LOL, looking at those prices nearly gave me a headache.

This is why anytime I'm ouside of the country I stock up on alcohol. I remeber gettign a magnum size of Bacardi spice rum for I think $30 at a gas station in Vermont. Up here it would have cost me much...much more

[Frankie1984]

Sam Adams! Heineken! Oh wait, no Moosehead?

Duty free! If I remember correctly, you can pick up 24 cans of Moosehead for $18 American.

Looking at those prices, I hate that we have to be "socially responsible"... I want my cheap booze dammit lol Makes me itch for a road trip across the border.

[gabe]

TORONTO - The Calgary-based brother-and-sister team behind Minhas Craft Brewery has given up on building a new brewery in Hamilton and are blaming their decision on what they call the “legalized retail monopoly” controlling Ontario’s beer market.

Ravinder and Manjit Minhas, who began selling their low-priced Boxer lager in the province just over a year ago, wanted to double or triple their brewing capacity and have been looking to do it at a Canadian facility.

The pair, who bought the company in 1999 as 18- and 19-year-old university students and began selling their beer in 2006, have a brewing facility in Monroe, Wis. They offered initially to buy the assets of the Lakeport Brewery in Hamilton from Labatt Brewing Co. after the brewer announced in March that it was shutting the facility down. But Labatt refused to sell to them, a move the big brewer made, the Minhases believe, to thwart the upstart competitor.

“Building a new brewery is just so much more expensive than [buying an existing one] that is in place,” Ravinder Minhas said Thursday. His company sells 15 brands of beer in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and 35 U.S. states and has $100-million in annual revenue.

The big brewers have an unfair advantage in the province that exists nowhere else in North America, he argued, in owning the retail network that sells 85% of the beer sold in Ontario. The Beer Store is 95% owned by the conglomerates that bought Labatt and Molson in Canada: South African Breweries, which brews Miller, Coors and Molson; and Anheuser Bush/ImBev/Labatt; 5% is owned by Sapporo of Japan, which owns the Sleeman Brewery in Canada.

“They have a stranglehold on the beer industry in Ontario,” Mr. Minhas said in an interview. “We have to pay [The Beer Store] listing fees. They get to approve our marketing. This astonishes us. In other jurisdictions in North America, no brewer is allowed to have anything to do with a retail store. I do not want to tell my competition what my next marketing program is going to be.”

The remainder of beer in the province, about 15% of the total market, is sold by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), a provincial Crown corporation, through its provincially owned liquor stores, which carry mostly higher-end brands and can only sell six-packs, not cases of 12 and 24 cans and bottles.

Mr. Minhas claims The Beer Store has been slow to allow him to market Boxer inside the stores.

But Jeff Newton, a Beer Store spokesman, said Mr. Minhas’s claims are not supported by facts or statistics.

“We would categorically reject the notion that The Beer Store has done anything that would inhibit their company’s ability to access the market and grow.”

Before it was purchased by Labatt, Lakeport built up a 10% market share in the province when The Beer Store had the same ownership structure, he said.

Meanwhile, Sleeman, before it was bought by Sapporo, had become the third-largest brewer in the country. “They grew and became successful working inside this system,” Mr. Newton said.

While they are growing sales off of a smaller base, Mr. Newton noted the brewers who are not owners of The Beer Store have increased business at a much faster rate than the total market average in the past five years, vastly outperforming the brands of the brewers who own the retail chain.

Sales by the owner-brewers have declined in volume over the period, “while all the others have been growing,” he said. Sales by Brick Brewing Co. and all out-of-province brewers have risen 31% over the past five years. Sales by small brewers are up 71% in that period.

Mr. Minhas has complained about The Beer Store to the Speaker of the House in Ontario and an MPP. He wants the Ontario government to prohibit brewers from owning retail stores in Ontario and wants the beer selection expanded at the LCBO to include all brands and sizes.

He and his sister are looking for opportunities to open a brewing facility elsewhere in Canada.


Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Ca...#ixzz17SsJGiGj

[Jonny5]

They are both right. The beer store system is rigged against small brewers, but small brewers can and do succeed.
Boxer's marketing strategy was very poor. They did nothing to differentiate themselves from other "lowest legal price" beers, except those vague claims about how "beer in bottles is gross!"
Maybe they were trying to be the anti-elitist beer. But then don't elitist latte sipping hipsters drink PBR? So confusing.

[ShonTron]

The Boxer Beer ads on TV were embarrassingly bad. They never explained why I would want to try it, and the "support the little guy...and gal" isn't enough. To say that they would like to sell for less, but can't makes you wonder if the beer is worth the McGuinty-mandated minimum price.

That said, I want the Beer Store monopoly destroyed with a passion. Yet I support the LCBO - at least LCBO stores provide a decent, welcoming environment with staff that seem to care. Beer Stores are dives, auto-centric (even downtown) and controlled by 2 foreign companies and one half-foreign company.

I also decided to, if at all possible, to boycott Labatt/AB InBev. The screwjob they did to Hamilton (buying Lakeport with a promise of keeping it there, then closing it with a scortched earth policy of selling the property to someone else only if Labatt removed all the brewing equipment to prevent a competitor (like Minhas) from using the site as a brewery. Then "the pride of Nova Scotia" moved out of Halifax, with cutting jobs there, is another "f you" to good faith.

[spider]

I don't think the LCBO should be closed or sold, simply allow competition and let the market decide. The government brags about being the world's largest purchaser/distributor, I doubt if any efficiencies filter down to the taxpayers benefit, close them down, let the private sector generate all that profit and pay the same taxes that the current model supposedly pays.

I am not sure closing "The Beer Store" monopoly and allowing Beer sales in Mom'nPop stores would help the small brewers much as they would be faced with huge delivery problems, instead of a hundred POS locations there would be thousands. Imagine your local store offering 18 brands of milk.

[gabe]

Mom'nPop Shops may not help the small brewers out much but grocery stores and independently owned Beer Depot's sure will. In Buffalo the major grocery stores have all kinds of micro breweries from all over the NY state as well as a nice selection of imports that you can't find in Ontario.