Waterloo: birthplace of Ontario craft beer

When Sean Dennis, director of marketing at Brick Brewing Company, looks out of the brewery's third storey window at King and Allen streets in Waterloo, he can scan the entire Ontario beer landscape. Founded in 1984, Brick is the oldest and largest micro-brewery in Ontario, and its birth marked a renaissance in craft brewing.

Brick has grown with Waterloo Region. From a company with just 10 employees shipping 35,000 cases, it has become the fifth largest brewery in Canada behind Labatt, MolsonCoors, Sleeman's, and Moosehead. Moosehead and Brick, it should be duly noted, are the only two on that list that are still Canadian-owned.

By our count at OpenFile, Ontario has more than 60 brewers, from small and far-flung to giant of global beer commerce, AB InBev. Waterloo Region itself has four breweries, three of which sell to The Beer Store (TBS), or the LCBO.

Grand River Brewing's various products can be found on tap at the Golden Kiwi in Cambridge and at the LCBO. Waterloo's Gold Crown Brewery has products available only at their brewing facility on King Street in UpTown and at their sister enterprise Huether Hotel – though, their custom brewing service opens up their business to beer-quaffers looking to outsource their home-brewing operation.

Brick, however, sells at TBS, LCBO and their brewery retail store. Despite their moderate reach, they find themselves embroiled in competition and legal disputes with suds giants like MolsonCoors, Labatt, Anheuser-Busch and TBS over the last few years.

Regardless, they have also managed to maintain a significant presence in the Canadian beer industry and have expanded their brands into parts of Canada beyond Ontario. Red Baron, a modestly priced lager, for instance, is performing well in Atlantic Canada; Dennis attributes its success to its ability to stand out as the only clear bottle with a twist-off cap. Having a good product doesn't hurt either: Red Baron won the Canadian Brewing Award's 2010 Gold Medal for North American Style Lager.

From his third-storey vantage point, Dennis' perspective on beer culture in Canada hasn't changed much over the last few years, he says. The major mainstream beers are the same and retail is still a stronger market for Brick than licensing to bars and restaurants. The important exception, he adds, is that “craft beers have started to take a larger part of the market.”

In fact, Brick's “Waterloo”-dubbed brands, Waterloo Dark and their twice-yearly seasonal recipes like Waterloo Radlermass, speak to the craft beer drinker's taste for unique experiences. Though things are fairly stable for domestic beer sales in Ontario, statistics from the Brewers Association of Canada indicate imported beers are enjoying a slow but steady increase in sales.

The seasonal brews that make up part of Brick's craft brand are currently sold in individual 473mL “tall boy” cans through the LCBO and at the brewery. The LCBO, Dennis says, “provides a very friendly shopping experience,” that reduces the risk of trying something unfamiliar. "And with craft [beer], trial is everything," he says. Dennis calls the tall boys part of their "LOL" approach – though in this case the acronym, familiar to social media aficionados, stands for "liquid on lips."

“Single serving cans [are] the biggest growth category for beer at the LCBO to date,” says Dennis. They are also one way to reach their other key customers through their value brands, such as the inexpensively priced Laker Lager, by including a free can in a case.

Famous for introducing “buck a beer” pricing, Brick was a pioneer in value-branding beer after acquiring the Laker brand from Molson in 1997 and repositioning it at a lower price than mainstream beers. “The Ontario beer landscape is fairly flat, so you need to differentiate,” says Dennis.

Marketing beer, he adds, used to be “white-collar versus blue-collar.” No matter the colour of your collar, though, the price of a case of beer is a very real difference especially now as food and fuel costs for everyone start to climb.

Brick Brewing, much like the Region it calls home, is in a unique position. It is not quite a major player and Agriculture Canada still includes them as part of the micro-breweries that, combined, account for five percent of the domestic market compared to the top three companies which together control about 90 percent. But it is also by no means small with three facilities capable of producing 5.5 million cases of beer annually.

Bottle, pint or 24, that makes Brick a substantial company in Waterloo Region and an integral part of Ontario's beer landscape as it adjusts to new economic pressures and reacts to the movements of the multinational companies that dominate the industry.