of the square footage of your building dedicated to retail. So, our tap-room ended up being much larger than we wanted it to be. Including our patio in nice weather, we are at 140 seats.” Lara adds, “In hindsight, it wasn’t bad a thing. We’re full a lot of the time. We still do very minimal food — we still have to do some food, but only beer comes out of our taps. We have a cider option for people who like that, and we have some wine in boxes. But it’s about the beer. We run 10 or 11 taps of our own beer at any given time.” Being a veteran of the craft beer industry, and having formal industry training from Germany, David has seen it all with trends and buy-outs. Big companies have absorbed a few of the companies he has either been employed by or owned. So, having a good grip on trends and having seen the industry ebb and flow in the past, have we reached the breaking point? A large part of Red Collar’s success revolves around keeping business as local as possible. “We’ve been through two waves of the craft beer movement. First one in the 90s and another one at the turn of the century. That was the big one. That was the one where everyone was selling out. I figure we are now into the third iteration of the beer bubble in Canada. And just from what I’ve seen, I think this is going to be the big bubble. This is where people are going to lose a lot of money.” David and Lara point to beer Meccas like Ashe- ville, North Carolina and Portland, Oregon, who are currently closing craft and microbreweries faster that they are opening them. Trends tend to draw in money from investors that aren’t neces- sarily familiar with the industry’s history. David’s experience and insight hints at a plateau being surpassed in many cities. “There are going to be some tears,” he opines. A large part of RedCollar’s success revolves around keeping business as local as possible. David and Lara characterize Kamloops as a city not afraid to drive pick-up trucks and sport cowboy boots and a Stetson. Lara says there is a change happening
in the area, but change may come at a slower pace than say Vancouver. “The change is happening and we’re seeing it. Even over the last five years. There are 90,000 people in Kamloops and for the longest time, we were the only family brewing beer here. Now we have four breweries…” There’s a bit of laughter as I realize the Beardsells started up three of them. Nonetheless, their preference remains to remain the proverbial big fish in a small pond. Lara, who currently lives in and spends much of her time in Vancouver, points out that trendy businesses, and breweries in particular, can get lost in the big city, by virtue of the sheer volume of competition. “There’s so much cool stuff going on in Vancou- ver all the time. It can be overwhelming. We kind of like being in our own little area doing our own little thing. And we get to try new beers on people who haven’t ever had a craft beer before.” Indeed, satisfying moments come to Red Collar when they convert a ‘big-brand’ beer drinker to one of their craft flavours. But like all change where public education and behaviour modification is concerned, patience is a virtue. David explains that merely getting consumers in Kamloops to sample their beer was a long and tedious process. “Back in the 90s with the oldbrewery, I thinkwe sold only two or three percent to people in Kamloops. It was all sold elsewhere. It was a helluva slog. And slowly it has come around. And social media has made all the difference in the world.” Lara adds that affording a house and living in Van- couver has, in recent years, become more and more economically out-of-reach for many people. The result is, people are heading for the hills (lit- erally, in many cases), and settling in smaller cities and towns. What they bring with them is a big-city lifestyle and a certain expectation of what should be available to them. “We are getting these people who abandoned their big city mortgages and they would tell us ‘we were so happy to get here and find you guys! This is something that I loved about living in Vancouver and now I can get it in Kamloops’.” So, you’ve moved to Kamloops to get away from unreasonable rents and mortgages in Vancouver.
66
SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • APRIL 2019
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online