Nestled in a well-used building in downtown Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada sits Red Collar Brewery. It may seem to be yet another brewery in the bustling BC craft brewery and distillery scene but make no mistake the business might be just over 4 years old however, the hands that make the brews within those four walls have been producing delicious malt beverages for decades. In fact, over the last twenty years, David Beardsell has been a mainstay of the BC brewing community. As the Red Collar website explains (in Goldilocks fashion), David’s first brewery was sold when it got too big; his subsequent brewpub was a little too small! With Red Collar, David believes he has learned from past experience and now has a brewery that is sized “just right.” The 1,800 litre brewhouse and the large conditioning room allow him full creative control over the brewing process. He can now brew the beers he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Red Collar is a small family-run brewery in the heart of Kamloops, designed with a lifetime of experience to bring the best of old world brewing to the heart of BC. Spotlight on Business spoke with David and his daughter Lara Beardsell last January about the craft beer scene in BC, operating a family business and brewing beer in the small-town Kamloops, and the future craft beer in Canada’s west.
By John Allaire I t was just us,” Lara explains. “Me, my dad and my mother Annamarie…” (David interjects that Lara’s sister also helped out, but she was in Nicaragua at the time, NOT suffering through another Canadian winter… so she’s been jokingly and jealously placed in the dog-house for the con- versation!). Lara continues, “It was the four of us. We had lots of help but there were a lot of 16- and 17-hour days of us laying tile and putting up walls. It was and continues to be a lot of work.” It was just us,” Lara explains. “Me, my dad and my mother Annamarie… Nevertheless, David points out that they were not starting from square-one. “We had owned two other breweries in Kamloops. So actually, we started building the first one in 1993… we ended up selling that one to Big Rock, which is a large brewery in Calgary.” As part of the condition of sale, David had to sign a ‘non-compete agreement’
restricting his ability to open up another brewery for five years. He promptly picked up stakes and moved to Mexico and Guatemala for a couple of years, leaving those Canadian winters behind. As the non-compete agreement was drawing to a close, David opened a small brew pub. Called “The Noble Pig,” he operated the pub for almost five years. However, it wasn’t filling the bill for someone who was more interested in brewing beer than he was in slinging chicken wings and potato skins. “It wasn’t ‘beer-directed’ enough for me,” Davis explains. “It was becoming more like a roadhouse chain. It was not what I wanted. So, I decided that I was going to open up a very basic brewery with a little tap room. No TVs, no fancy food, nothing. Not even cushions on the seats! We wanted the focus to be the beer.” Clearly, David did not want to lead Red Collar into the pub/bar world. But we know what they say about best laid plans… right! The government will regulate them until you no longer recognize them as your plans. David laments, “The munic-
ipality came to us and said no, you have to have 51%
“What we do, quite frankly, is support the underdogs.”
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APRIL 2019 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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