Not being a Canuck, I wasn’t too familiar with the Ontario-based Lakeport Brewing, whose full name is the scary-sounding Lakeport Brewing Income Fund. Based on what I’ve read today and from looking at their website, they appear to be a regional brewery that makes primarily industrial light lagers, in other words not a craft brewery. But what I found interesting is that they added canned beer to their portfolio this spring and, according to several stories today in the Canadian press, apparently it’s exceeding their wildest expectations. There are articles in today’s Toronto Star and the Hamilton Spectator. Three of their styles were made available in 355 ml cans — Pilsner, Honey Lager and Lakeport Light.
Living in Ontario, I’m quite familar Lakeport. As you guessed, they are definately not a craft brewer by any stretch of the imagination – they brew bland, non-offensive lagers aimed directly at the mainstream beer drinker, and they’ve done very well at it. They basically created the discount market for beer in Ontario – goverment regs up here set a minimum retail price of $1 per beer when sold by the case, and they were the first brewery to not only sell most of thier beers at that price point, but to also market them using the “buck-a-beer” slogan. As a result, they’ve taken a big chunk of the cheap beer market from Molson & Labatt, who have been scrambling to match them with discount brands of their own (most of which have been relative failures), and they’ve also inspired a few other regional/local breweries to enter the discount market as well. I’m not a fan of any of these “buck-a-beers” personally, but I can’t help but be a little happy to see them slowly eating away at the big boys’ market share on the low end, while the real craft brewers are doing the same thing on the high end.
Interesting information here, both in the original post and in Greg’s comment. I just wanted to say that I always enjoy a good story about a smaller company coming out and challenging the big boys. I wouldn’t go for the buck-a-beer brews either, but there’s obviously a huge market there. It’ll be interesting to see if Lakeport can keep it going…