{"id":32756,"date":"2015-09-18T02:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T06:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32756"},"modified":"2015-09-15T21:25:43","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T01:25:43","slug":"beer-in-ontario-grocery-stores-its-more-likely-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/09\/18\/beer-in-ontario-grocery-stores-its-more-likely-than-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Beer? In Ontario grocery stores? It&#8217;s more likely than you think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bensbeerblog.com\/2015\/09\/08\/ontarios-independent-grocers-want-to-support-craft-beer\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Ben&#8217;s Beer Blog<\/em><\/a> scores an exclusive interview with Tom Barlow, President and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers on the topic of liberalizing Ontario&#8217;s Prohibition-era market access rules for beer:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some details about beer in grocery stores<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We will likely see beer on grocery store shelves in the next 18 months<\/li>\n<li>The province still hasn\u2019t decided how to auction off licenses to sell beer in a way that is fair to small grocers<\/li>\n<li>At least one grocery store chain has stated they\u2019d like to sell \u201c100% craft beer.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>If you have fears that bigger brewers are going to be able to buy shelf space, continue to be scared of that very real possibility<\/li>\n<li>Brewers will be allowed to do direct-to-store delivery<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>A transcript of my chat with Tom Barlow, President and CEO of CFIG, edited slightly for length<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben Johnson<\/strong>: Thanks for chatting with me Tom. It\u2019s been pretty quiet in terms of the announcement about exactly how we\u2019re going to get beer in grocery stores. So can you tell me a little about the process for becoming eligible to sell beer in your stores? Speculation has been pretty rampant that we\u2019d only see bigger chains getting the privilege, so it\u2019s interesting to hear that independent grocers are at the table. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Tom Barlow<\/strong>: Yeah, I\u2019ll share what I can. The regs will be coming out soon, and the people that have been in discussions are under a non-disclosure but what I can tell you is that the original conversation was that it would be just large chains, then the government through consultations with [CFIG] and regions decided that it should be open to \u201cgrocery\u201d under the North American definition of what grocery is, namely that they carry fresh produce, fresh meat, and that kind of thing. I don\u2019t know if they\u2019ve settled on a size \u2014 there was some discussion that there would be a minimum size \u2014 but for all intents and purposes it would be \u201cgrocery\u201d and it would be wide open. The discussion we\u2019ve had so far is that there would be so many licenses to start and they\u2019d step it out, then get comfortable, then release some more, and then release some more. The number that was floated was around 450 licenses. That is, 450 retailers are going to have the opportunity to sell beer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BJ<\/strong>: I\u2019m assuming it\u2019s a bidding process for getting the license and that\u2019s the part you can\u2019t talk about?<\/p>\n<p><strong>TB<\/strong>: They\u2019re still working through the mechanism, but are looking at a biding process. I think we made our point that privately held \u2014 vs. publicly held \u2014 the access to cash is different, so there needs to be a plan made so all the licenses don\u2019t all get swallowed up by \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>BJ<\/strong>: Galen Weston?<\/p>\n<p><strong>TB<\/strong>: \u2014 Yeah, exactly. We were a little frustrated at first but after numerous conversations they\u2019ve heard our position, and I think it\u2019s the same with the corporate chains, is that they should have just opened it up to \u201cgrocery\u201d from the start. If you\u2019re going to go grocery, go grocery. This contest for picking winners and losers is a slippery slope to be going down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben&#8217;s Beer Blog scores an exclusive interview with Tom Barlow, President and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers on the topic of liberalizing Ontario&#8217;s Prohibition-era market access rules for beer: Some details about beer in grocery stores We will likely see beer on grocery store shelves in the next 18 months The province [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[831,6,84],"tags":[210,660,87],"class_list":["post-32756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cancon","category-government","tag-beer","tag-deregulation","tag-ontario"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8wk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32757,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32756\/revisions\/32757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}