I'm humbled, amazed and awed to say that I've just been informed that our project with Operation Come Home has been allowed to start back up!!!!
Thank you Premier McGuinty, MPP's Grant Crack, and Lisa McLeod. Look!!! BiPartisan support! Thank you to everyone in the media, the worlds of FaceBook, Twitter, blogosphere and everywhere else for making our issue known.
I've maintained throughout this situation that I felt that we were being held back by a technical oversight in the language of a regulation and that I was confident that my government would be able to fix this. But, wow, I never thought it would happen so quickly.
The online website www.bybo.ca will start taking orders at 5:15pm. Deliveries up and running by Monday. We got the good news from our MPP just as we were finishing our staff meeting, which was great, because I was able to put him on speaker phone so that the whole company could scream their excitement. What an emotional end to a rollercoaster of a week.
Now, reader, how about you go buy some beer and put some folks back to work!
Today has been a good day.
Friday, December 02, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
The Grinch Who Stole Your Christmas Beer...
Today we launched Buy Your Beau’s Online, our project with Operation Come Home to deliver beer to people’s homes in Ottawa, and promptly had the service effectively shut down by the AGCO.
That’s right, after less than a day of operation, BYBO has been closed, after another brewery (we weren’t told which one) complained. The complaint has nothing to do with the service or the fact that at-risk youth were involved, but over a technicality involving what I believe to be a typo in the regulations around home beer delivery services.
Our retail store operates as an authorized beer store by the LCBO, but the regulation around home delivery uses the wording ‘operated' instead of ‘authorized’, which is how it is worded to allow us to sell to special occasion permit holders, and retail customers. It is interesting to note that the Beer Store, which is not operated by the LCBO or government is somehow allowed to sell to home delivery services.
So...
No specialty beer delivered to our Ottawa customers.
No employment for homeless youth, to get them off the street.
No additional revenue for Operation Come Home.
What’s really got me irked about this situation is the complete arbitrariness of the regulation that is being used to kill a social enterprise designed to do good for the community and the malicious behaviour by another brewery in this province.
The Beer Store is a retail outlet owned by three breweries. Why would they be allowed to sell to a home delivery service and Beau’s (or any other brewery) not be? It doesn’t make any sense, it’s anti-competitive and it restricts choice to the residents of this province.
I know that there are a lot of cut-throat competitive tactics used by some of the less honourable members of the brewing community, but taking a job from a homeless youth to thwart us is beyond reprehensible.
I’m disappointed that the AGCO has decided to act this way, using the letter and not the spirit of the law to guide their decision-making, but ultimately I understand that they may not have had a choice once the complaint was lodged. I would have rathered more consultation from them or that they refused the delivery license application when they were informed how the service would work. If that had happened, at least Corey and Kyle, the two youths who had been hired to start this service, wouldn’t have had their hopes lifted and then let down in such a dramatic way.
I’m simply aghast, though that another brewery instigated this.
I’m really disappointed that this service is unfortunately going to be shut down.
I’m sorry to the youth who have been dealt yet another misfortune, to our customers who were looking forward to gaining better access to our beer and to other breweries who probably would have been able to use similar models to compete better in this Province.
Don't worry, though. We will find another way to get beer to our customers and we won't stop trying to help our community. Vive la Beau's!
That’s right, after less than a day of operation, BYBO has been closed, after another brewery (we weren’t told which one) complained. The complaint has nothing to do with the service or the fact that at-risk youth were involved, but over a technicality involving what I believe to be a typo in the regulations around home beer delivery services.
Our retail store operates as an authorized beer store by the LCBO, but the regulation around home delivery uses the wording ‘operated' instead of ‘authorized’, which is how it is worded to allow us to sell to special occasion permit holders, and retail customers. It is interesting to note that the Beer Store, which is not operated by the LCBO or government is somehow allowed to sell to home delivery services.
So...
No specialty beer delivered to our Ottawa customers.
No employment for homeless youth, to get them off the street.
No additional revenue for Operation Come Home.
What’s really got me irked about this situation is the complete arbitrariness of the regulation that is being used to kill a social enterprise designed to do good for the community and the malicious behaviour by another brewery in this province.
The Beer Store is a retail outlet owned by three breweries. Why would they be allowed to sell to a home delivery service and Beau’s (or any other brewery) not be? It doesn’t make any sense, it’s anti-competitive and it restricts choice to the residents of this province.
I know that there are a lot of cut-throat competitive tactics used by some of the less honourable members of the brewing community, but taking a job from a homeless youth to thwart us is beyond reprehensible.
I’m disappointed that the AGCO has decided to act this way, using the letter and not the spirit of the law to guide their decision-making, but ultimately I understand that they may not have had a choice once the complaint was lodged. I would have rathered more consultation from them or that they refused the delivery license application when they were informed how the service would work. If that had happened, at least Corey and Kyle, the two youths who had been hired to start this service, wouldn’t have had their hopes lifted and then let down in such a dramatic way.
I’m simply aghast, though that another brewery instigated this.
I’m really disappointed that this service is unfortunately going to be shut down.
I’m sorry to the youth who have been dealt yet another misfortune, to our customers who were looking forward to gaining better access to our beer and to other breweries who probably would have been able to use similar models to compete better in this Province.
Don't worry, though. We will find another way to get beer to our customers and we won't stop trying to help our community. Vive la Beau's!
Sunday, August 21, 2011
My Date With Jordan
We needed to do a poster run in Ottawa for Oktoberfest, and I hadn't gone postering since my punk rock days, so it seemed like a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. For anyone not in the know, postering is where you tape or staple signs to lamp posts in the city. Ottawa is great for this because they have actual poster collars on specific lampposts so you can poster without feeling bad about where you put the poster.
Talking to Jordan, our creative director, we decided to make a whole day of it, and I put it into my calendar as Steve and Jordan Go On A Date. In the notes I put 'Lots of hand holding' and HR manager, Karen added 'awkward'.
Our date started early, getting picked up by Jordan and his girlfriend Tina (I'm a progressive guy; I'm cool with that). We got into Ottawa and met up with fellow posterers Sean, Matt, Erin (and her dog Zona) and we divided into 3 teams, Jordan and I taking the market area.
Warm sun, slow strolls, and tape guns make for a great combination and we had a fun time. By 1pm we'd finished up and met the rest of the crew for lunch at Lieutenants Pump. We were joined by Jamie, his very pregnant wife Jenn, our Sales Manager and brewer Chris.
After lunch we piles into the car and visited the St. Albert Curd Festival. Threat of storm that never came had a lot of vendors closed down, but our booth stayed strong and we had a few samples and watched a couple rounds of the intertown challenge, which was pretty funny. We were joined by friends Chris and Meaghan and the gang got bigger.
Next, we picked up some steak and lettuce to go with the, corn, sausage and Caesar salad ingredients Jordan and Tina already had for a quiet dinner at home.
Then off to the Vankleek Hill fair...Beau's never really sells a lot say the Fair, it seems like the one event we do that never really does well for us, but we were sponsoring a car in the demolition derby (Lisa did great!) and lots of people are in town, so it made for a fun outing all the same.
Our evening together ended with a night cap at the Windsor tavern. We packed a whole lot of fun into yesterday. I hope Jordan asks me out again!
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