Guelph’s brewers combine forces to attract beer tourists in bid to rebound from pandemic

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Every month or so, three city buses circle Guelph, Ont., on a special, free route. Their destination: beer.

The daylong charter is a special project of Guelph.Beer, an industry collaboration between five breweries in the small southwestern Ontario city.

The partnership hopes to turn Guelph into a tourist destination for those who like to imbibe, and to help the breweries find solid footing after the pandemic threw their business models into turmoil.

Guelph.Beer brings together rivals of starkly different size: there’s Sleeman Breweries Ltd., the country’s third-largest brewer, which produces 1.2 million hectolitres of beer a year; Wellington Brewery, one of Canada’s oldest craft breweries, which produces about 28,000 hectolitres a year; and three smaller brewers that each produce 2,000 hectolitres or less a year, mainly for the local market: Royal City Brewing Co., Fixed Gear Brewing Co. and Brothers Brewing Co. (Each hectolitre can fill about a dozen two-fours of short cans, or nine cases of tall boys.)

Because of their varied sizes and revenue streams, the pandemic hit the brewers in different ways.

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For example, before the pandemic, mid-sized brewer Wellington was focused largely on selling its goods in retail locations, such as Ontario’s LCBO stores, and on tap at restaurants and bars. Lockdowns hit the hospitality sector hard, and Wellington saw its more-than-350 restaurant clients dwindle to zero. That number has slowly grown back up to about 200. “They’re growing again, but it’s not where it was,” Wellington marketing manager Brad McInerney said.

Like Wellington, Royal City lost its hospitality clients, but decided to focus on becoming its own venue. A neighbouring retail store closed during the pandemic and Royal City, which is located in a small strip mall in the city’s east end, took over the space. They built out a beer hall that opened in 2022 so they could seat and serve far more customers in person than before.

“The thing that became very apparent through the pandemic is that, when there’s no hospitality industry, where does our beer go?” asked Royal City owner Cameron Fryer. “What do we do? Who are our customers? It kind of made us shift our business model very quickly, to be direct to consumer.”

In the early months of the pandemic, it meant a shift to eCommerce and delivery. The reach of each brewer varies, too: Sleeman delivers locally as their product is available in retail stores nationally, Royal City regionally, Wellington and Fixed Gear ship throughout the province and Brothers to a few other provinces, too.

The beer bus, though, is a way to bring the customers to them. The five brewers split the cost of chartering three city buses for the day, which go from one end of Guelph to the other to stop at each of the five taprooms. The buses are free for passengers. While some cities have paid beer tours, the brewers say they are the only free, industry-run tour of its kind in Canada.

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“We’re pretty sure there are going to be some copycats shortly, just from the number of calls we’re getting from other breweries,” Mr. Fryer said.

The buses see a total of up to 1,200 boardings a day and have attracted visitors from around southern Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area. The group of brewers experimented with a bus program in 2019 but had to stop it because of COVID. They tested the bus tours again in 2022 and are putting it on a more regular schedule this year.

The vibe on the bus, they say, is about family and friends getting together. “It’s not just a chugging beer kind of thing,” Mr. McInerney said. “It’s a bit more of a community project.”

The industry continues to face some headwinds: according to Statistics Canada, sales of beer fell 2.8 per cent in the year ending March 31, 2022, reaching a per-capita all-time low since the agency began tracking alcohol sales in 1949. Much of the decline in beer sales was offset by customers buying more ciders and coolers.

Jordan St. John, an industry consultant and co-author of the Ontario Craft Beer Guide, said that as restaurants recovered from the pandemic, large brewers took more market share with their less expensive brews. “It’s not just that some of the pubs closed, it’s that the taplines that exist have largely been co-opted,” he said.

He said he is seeing the craft beer industry trying to keep customers engaged by creating better experiences. “The fact that you can get on a thing like the Guelph beer bus and you can go around to different breweries over the course of an afternoon is probably more appealing than just going to a taproom in an industrial strip mall somewhere, sitting on an uncomfortable stool,” he said.

But the partnership is also about strengthening ties between each other. The brewers say they are eager to lend a jockey box or some hops to a fellow brewer who’s in a pinch. And they will get further by uplifting each other, and their city’s industry.

“We’re all in it together, we’re all nerds, we all sit down and talk about, wouldn’t it be cool to make a such-and-such some day,” said Damien Smith, retail store and taproom supervisor at Sleeman.

Mr. McInerney said their ultimate goal is to turn the city into a major destination for beer lovers. “You hear Guelph, you think beer,” he said.