Beer in grocery stores by Christmas, Wynne says

Licence auction should raise $10 million for the province, former TD Bank CEO says

Premier Kathleen Wynne is playing Santa by promising that beer will be on grocery store shelves before the holidays.

“It is an exciting day for people who love beer in Ontario,” the premier said Wednesday at the Mill Street Brew Pub in the Distillery District.

“By December, the first 60 grocery stores will receive their authorization to sell beer in Ontario,” said Wynne.

“Beer in grocery stores could be seen as a holiday present that many people in Ontario have been waiting for a long time,” she said, adding the government did not want to “blow up” the existing distribution network because it is efficient both in terms of prices and recycling.

As first disclosed by the Star, the changes stem from a 190-page agreement between Queen’s Park and the Beer Store, the private company that had enjoyed a de facto monopoly on suds sales since Prohibition ended in 1927.

“It is a complex thing in Ontario to sell beer, apparently,” said Wynne, flanked by her privatization czar Ed Clark, the former TD Bank CEO in charge of monetizing provincial assets to fund infrastructure.

Clark, who will deliver his blueprint on expanding wine sales later this year, said the auction of licences among grocers should bring in about $10 million to provincial coffers.

By May 2017, there will be 150 supermarkets selling beer, eventually rising to 450 of Ontario’s 1,500 grocery stores.

In the first wave of 60 stores, 48 licences will be auctioned off to large grocers, such as Loblaws, and 12 will be reserved for small independent supermarkets. Of those 60 stores, 25 will be in the Greater Toronto Area, 16 will be in southwestern Ontario, 13 in eastern Ontario, and six in the north.

Small breweries will now have 20 per cent of beer shelving in grocery stores and Liquor Control Board of Ontario outlets as well as the Beer Store.

“We have committed to more space in every single Beer Store in Ontario being dedicated to small brewers,” said Ted Moroz, president of the Beer Store, which is owned by the foreign parent companies of Labatt, Molson and Sleeman.

John Hay, president of Ontario Craft Brewers, hailed the news.

“This will double or triple the number of jobs in large and small communities across Ontario,” said Hay, touting “this added competition and freedom” for brewers and consumers alike.