Toast the new year with grocery store beer
Up to 60 stores, including independent grocers, may have suds by December’s end
It’s brews you can use.
Loblaws, Walmart, Sobeys, Metro and a slew of independent grocers will be the first supermarkets allowed to sell beer in Ontario.
Finance Minister Charles Sousa announced Wednesday that up to 60 grocery store locations could be authorized to sell beer by the end of next month.
“We are moving quickly to ensure that beer will be sold in grocery stores in a socially responsible manner,” said Sousa.
“Using the existing low-cost distribution system keeps Ontario’s beer prices below the Canadian average while offering greater ability to fund key government services and programs that people rely on,” he said.
Winning bidders in the licence auction also include: Farm Boy, Galleria Supermarket, Hanahreum Mart, La Mantia’s Country Market, Longo’s, Michael-Angelo’s Market Place, Pino’s Get Fresh and Starsky Fine Foods.
A visibly pleased Sousa said it was “very surprising (that) we had many small independents that bid.
“It’s broadly held and it’s across the province,” he said of the reforms, which followed a series of Star stories on the monopolistic nature of beer retailing in the province.
Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said his party backs the liberalization of beer sales in Ontario.
“I support greater market access. I’m supporting the government on this at this point,” said Brown. But NDP Leader Andrea Horwath expressed concern that unionized workers at the 650 governmentowned Liquor Control Board of Ontario outlets and 448 Beer Stores could be affected.
“We want to make sure that we don’t simply bring more precarious work into Ontario, so Walmart jobs are not a good replacement for wellpaying decent jobs in that sector right now,” said Horwath.
The retailers still have some bureaucratic hurdles before they can begin selling six-packs on shelves — they have to make applications to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) for licences.
None of the firms are allowed to discuss the auction process until the end of the year “to ensure fairness,” the government said in a statement.
By May 2017, there will be150 Ontario supermarkets selling beer, eventually rising to a maximum 450 of the province’s 1,500 grocery stores.
In the first wave of 60 stores, 48 licences were auctioned off to large grocers, while a dozen were reserved for small independent markets.
Of those 60, 25 are in the Greater Toronto Area, 16 in southwestern Ontario,13 in eastern Ontario and six in the north.
Precise locations will not be known until the AGCO licensing process is completed in the next few weeks.
The changes are a huge victory for Ontario’s craft brewers, which will gain more access to shelves in all stores that sell ales and lagers, including the Beer Store, which is owned by the foreign parent companies of Labatt, Molson and Sleeman and has enjoyed a virtual monopoly since Prohibition ended in 1927.
Ed Clark, the premier’s privatization czar who ushered in the reforms to allow supermarket beer sales, is currently working on also getting wine on supermarket shelves.
But that is even more complicated because the existing privately owned kiosks operating inside many supermarkets have grandfathered licences exempt from trade agreements.