From Keynote Speaker to Indie Opener

Saturday was an interesting day. I started off bright and early for Cornwall in a pretty nasty snowstorm, to give the keynote speach at the Ecofarm Days conference. I was rather impressed by how many people made the trek through the inclement weather to make it.

The topic I was asked to speak about was Beau's experience in using company culture to turn employees into teammates and customers into fans. I know, very sporty analogies, but I had a lot of fun and Jordan made lots of funny slides to show along side. The translator was way more animated than I was, and I think that was the highlight was watching him say in French what I had just said in English, but with the most expressive and animated gestures imagineable. It reminded me of the Simpsons episode where the English soccer broadcaster very calmy tells the audience that the player is holding the ball and the Spanish announcer is going nuts over the same thing.

Rather than describe it in too much detail, here is an article on the talk: http://www.standard-freeholder.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3483672

After that I went back home, changed out of the suit and into jeans and a workshirt, and started loading up gear to play the first gig in my new band, Audio. I've been writing and playing with two of our brewers, Kevin James (who used to play bass in Trigger Happy and Bender) and Andrew Bartle (from the Natural Shocks and a bunch 0f other bands). We were playing at one of our accounts, The Dominion Tavern and opening for K-Man and the 45's, fronted by my good friend Kristen McNulty.

The turn out was great, we played pretty good considering it was our first show (I broke a string and made a few mistakes, but no showstoppers) and got a pretty favourable reaction. It was a really fun event and was really cool to be belting out tunes again. Also fun was being on two different stages for two very different reasons (also funny was I was drinking beer on stage while playing music and was not drinking beer while on stage talking about beer).

I'd add the link of the newspaper article on how awesome our show was, but for some reason, I can't find any ;)

Cheers!

WE'RE BACK, BABY!!!!

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.

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!