Niagara distiller finding a new market
Limited Distilling takes advantage of rule change allowing distilleries to sell at farmers markets
When Danny Keyes was looking for a new place to market his distillery products, he found it — in a market.
For the second time this month, he was at the St. Catharines farmers market on Saturday morning, selling vodka and cocktail kits beside a cheese vendor on one side and a tamale seller on the other.
“It was really good actually,” said Keyes, who owns Limited Distilling in Niagara-on-the- Lake with his wife, Jennifer Miles.
“We plan to do a couple more (markets in addition to St. Catharines). We’re only a threeperson business right now, so it’s hard to produce product and be at a market, but the plan is to do as many locally as we can.”
As of Jan. 1, they’ve been allowed to, as one of the changes the provincial government introduced to help businesses recover during the COVID-19 pandemic. The changes allow “additional” Ontario wines, and now distilleries with Ontario content, to sell in the markets.
Producers of 100 per cent Ontario wines, and of spirits where at least half the product in the container is produced in Ontario, can apply for authorization
for “an occasional extension of its store,” in the government’s words.
Under the government’s emergency orders, only essential items are sold at markets now. Alcohol, like food, has been designated as essential.
It comes at a good time for Keyes.
He and Miles opened the Henegan Road distillery in November 2019. Within a few months, COVID-19 arrived “and then from March until late July we made hand sanitizer literally night and day” using alcohol stored on site.
They offer a wide variety of distilled products, including peach or apple pie moonshine,
gin and pumpkin spice rum.
“To be honest, we were expecting a really poor summer, but it was actually way, way better than we expected,” he said.
Then COVID’S second wave hit “and after Christmas we’re back to — this.”
“A new business needs to keep going, it can’t just start and stop,” he said.
For years, the two of them have sold vinyl records, shipping LPS across Canada and into the U.S. They moved to Niagara Falls in 2009 and for a time owned a record shop on Main Street.
“We grew that business exponentially, and we said if we ever made some money we want to
open a distillery,” he said.
In 2016, they acted on the plan: “It took us almost four years to open this place. And we open it, and then COVID.”
These days, operating a combined distillery and record shop with about 5,000 LPS in stock can be complicated.
“We’re actually the only distiller-record store in the world to date,” he said. “Literally, you come into the building and it looks like an old warehouse that’s full of records and spirits.”
Customers shopping for alcohol are allowed inside, in limited numbers and with social distancing and masks, because alcohol is an essential product.
Record shoppers are limited
to curbside pickup only, though. Anyone hoping to buy vodka and a record can pick up their alcohol inside but the record must be brought to them outside.
As owner of a fairly new business, he is still working to get his product onto more local restaurant menus.
On the plus side, Keyes said, he recently learned Limited Distilling’s vodka and gin products will soon be available at some LCBO stores.
“For a small craft distillery, it’s huge,” he said.