EDITOR Lee Atwater
RESEARCH TEAM Ashley Saint Ashley Tanner EDITORIAL TEAM David MacDonald
DIRECTOR OF CREATIVE & GRAPHIC DESIGN Carmen Fitzpatrick
MANAGING DIRECTOR Stewart Gregg
SOCIAL MEDIA LEAD Calli Gregg
CONTENT AND OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Rod Gregg RESEARCH & SPECIAL PROJECT MANAGER James Oxley
John Allaire Jamie Barrie
CONTENT SERVICES LEAD Cameron Gregg ADMINISTRATOR LEADS Erica Atwater Alia Morash
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Katie Davis Janice Buckler Denise Alison Jody Euloth Ceiledh Monk Dan Monk
PUBLISHER AIDACA Media
T he XXIII Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea have come to an end and I must say that it was an exciting 16 days of competition, comrad- ery and celebration as athletes from all around put themselves to the test of achieving Olympic Gold. Mt. Begbie Brewing Company knows a thing or two about winning on the world stage. In May of 2017 they took home two gold medals for their High Country Kölsch and Begbie Cream Ale at the Canadian Brewing Awards and won Brewery of the Year in the same competition. It might not have been Olympic gold, but the company’s High Country Kölsch was named the world’s best at the 2017 World Beer Awards in London, England. We had the opportunity to speak with Tracey Larson, co-owner of the Mt. Begbie Brewing Company. Tracey Larson along with Darryn Shewchuk, the Director of Sales and Marketing had a lot to say about success of the brewery and Bart Larson, a man of science with “an artistic, if somewhat bohemian, flair for beer making.” Central Alberta, in Canada’s west, is known for agriculture and oil. But more and more, it’s becoming the newest hot spot for the craft brewing explosion. Leading the charge is Blindman Brewing, a craft brewery located in the small city of Lacombe, just a hop-and- a-skip north of Red Deer. With the local food movement going strong and a large local-business support infrastructure, Lacombe seemed to be the perfect place to set up shop and brew beer. We sit down with Blindman’s Hans Doef and Shane Groendahl to chat about the craft beer scene in Central Alberta, the incredible local support they have received, and their rapid growth in two short years. When Spotlight on Business reached out to Dean and Louise Perry, the husband and wife co- owners of After Dark Distillery in Sicamous, British Columbia, we knew that we were in for a good story. When asked to tell how the distillery came to be, Louise couldn’t have been more modest: “We were looking for something else to do, another adventure.” That adventure has crafted quite a reputation for After Dark Distillery amongst BC distillers and connoisseurs of artisan spirits in The Pacific Province. We then head south of the border to chat with Josh Van Riper and Brian LeFevre, owners of Twin Monkeys Beverage Canning Systems in Aurora, Colorado and learn
that no one is better qualified to establish the evolutionary fitness of their business than engineers and Josh Van Riper and Brian LeFevre are proof. Learn how Twin Monkeys are providing solutions to inde- pendent small and big batch brewers everywhere. Good first impressions aren’t about handshakes or eye contact or a certain look; they’re about tone. It’s all about good vibrations (think The Beach Boys or Marky Mark featuring the Funky Bunch). When Matt Leslie and his business partner Kevin Pederson launched West Coast Canning back in 2014 they were Canada’s first mobile canning endeav- our. Learn how they were about to take the business coast-to- coast with a merge with Canada’s second mobile canning company, Sessions Craft Canning out of Toronto, to become the nation’s foremost full service mobile packaging solution for craft breweries, cideries, distilleries, and wineries. We hope that your business will set a personal best or even Olympic gold status in 2018 and we would like to thank all those involved with this issue and our readers as we look forward to telling more stories about successful businesses and the people making it happen.
Lee Ann Atwater Editor
279 Gary St, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3C 1H9 | PO Box 350007 Halifax, Nova Scotia B3M 0G3 P: 204 272 6228 E: info@spotlightonbusinessmagazine.com spotlightonbusinessmagazine.com
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FEBRUARY 2018 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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