Canadian Retail Thread

[niwell]

Speaking of alcohol, convenience stores in Ontario can sell beer and wine as of yesterday with about 4,200 licenses issued Provincewide. There's a mandate for beer/cider/ready-to-go cocktail stock to be at least 20% small Ontario producers, with 10% of wine. Interestingly there's only about 300 licensees in Toronto, probably because of proximity to existing LCBOs and lack of shelf space. I know only a few of the many convenience stores near me bothered, which I'm ok with since the ones I frequent have good produce and other specialty goods that take up a lot of shelf space.

I'm currently at our place in Napanee where pretty much every convenience store / gas station opted in. Will actually be much more useful here as previously the only options were LCBO, Beer Store and a pretty amazing cafe/bottle shop that unfortunately has limited hours.

Interested to see what craft options get stocked, but outside of some specialty stores I'm not expecting much. The system was rushed in so smaller producers lack access but it will probably be good for bigger ones like Collective Arts and Great Lakes Brewery. So far markups on product are lower than most expected, with something that sells in the LCBO for $3 seeming to go for around $3.75 in convenience stores. Like exist in Quebec I'm expecting some places to focus on higher end product, but it may take time for that to materialize.

Don't get me started on the boondoggle of doing this now vs in a year's time when the Master Framework with large brewers would have been up for renegotiation. But hey, at least we can get more access to booze to forget about it!