Cheers!

Service with protection – in style

AS OUR NATION SLOWLY reopens and you return to your favourite watering hole or restaurant, you might notice your server sporting a distinctive piece of Canadiana across their face – denim or lumberjackcheck mask, anyone?

Thanks to Labatt Breweries of Canada and fashion brand Pink Tartan, 135,000 locally made masks have been distributed to restaurants and bars across our nation to help employees stay safe at work. The nonmedical masks are part of a reopening kit that includes hand sanitizers and physical distancing signage to help establishments get ready to welcome back customers. (The masks were donated to those hospitality businesses that stock products from the 173-year-old legacy Canadian brewery and were also given to Food Banks Canada.)

The masks look chic and covetable – something workers in the hospitality industry deserve – and they are just for them and not for sale to the general public. “This wasn’t about branding. This is all about supporting our communities and partners across Canada,” said Charlie Angelakos, Labatt’s VP of legal and corporate affairs. Throughout the pandemic, the company also donated 100,000 bottles of hand sanitizer, manufactured in their facilities.

The cotton masks feature three styles – red-and-black lumberjack check, blue denim with a red poppy design and an abstract floral pattern familiar to Pink Tartan fans. This ode to Canadiana was an obvious choice since the masks were forged from a partnership between two of the country’s best-known brands.

“We are two companies from two very different industries,” says designer Kimberley Newport-Mimran of Pink Tartan, “but it proves how we can all work together during these times, and we both believed in the idea that good gets good.” — Derick Chetty