After a successful first year of business, celebrated with their New Business of the Year Award, New Ontario Brewing is preparing to drastically increase its reach across the Province with products being introduced into the LCBO later this year.
“We’ll get out to 100 LCBOs immediately, it takes us across the Province,” co-owner Mike Harrison said, excited to expand the brand this year. “We’re hoping to get into the LCBO around the Christmas timeline and will be looking at introducing new products there in the future.”
His business partner, Ron Clancy said the move will make a huge difference, especially when attending craft beer festivals.
“It also means when we go to beer festivals—which are part of the culture and fun of craft beer—down in Toronto and people think the beer is fantastic and ask where they can get it, right now the answer is ‘North Bay,’ but soon we’ll be able to say at any LCBO and that’d be a huge jump for us.”
Currently, New Ontario Brewing’s products are available in 55 to 60 local businesses, from North Bay, to Sturgeon Falls, to Sudbury with their four flagships brews and 13 specialty brews after opening Fall, 2015.
And although they’ll be starting in only 100 LCBO locations in Northern Ontario and South-Western Ontario, Clancy and Harrison said they expect that number would grow over time as their production capabilities grow in the coming years.
“We will need to increase our production capacity into the years two and three,” Harrison said.” We’ll be looking at working with the city in moving into a larger production facility.”
Right now, they operate from their 1,200 square-foot location on Cassells Street, but are looking at possibly expanding in their second year.
Clancy added that the past year of success has meant they could move onto their second list of investments, from their ‘need to have’ list to their ‘nice to have’ list. An example of this is a date labeling machine—which carries a hefty price tag—which used to be a 'nice' to 'have' investment, but has become a 'need to have' investment if they want their product to be carried in LCBOs.
Clancy and Harrison both felt this rapid ascension to success would have been impossible without the support from the city of North Bay, the businesses as well as the remainder of the community and felt determined to live up to the expectations people had of them going into their second year of business.
“We had a lot of bars and restaurants take a chance on us to put us on tap and it also helped get the word out. They were all big supporters of what we were doing,” Clancy said. “And we want to prove that it’s not a concession to go with us and we’re as good as any other place.”
“There were obstacles, but we had help from the city and once we opened we had the unbelievable support of the people of North Bay that has really made this past year possible,” Harrison added. “We took an approach very early on that if we did something we’d include other local businesses and that’s kind of the ethos here at our company. We want to be very community oriented and we want to support other local businesses in town. We’re the North Bay brand of beer and they want to support us.”
And although North Bay has received criticism recently as being one of the worst places to do business, both Clancy and Harrison question the reality of the report based on their experiences.
“We know that report came out and all reports have a certain bias to them,” Harrison said. “And I’d find that report to be false since we’ve had great success in investing in Northern Ontario and specifically, the city of North Bay. It’s been that community encouragement has driven us to strive to be more successful and to be a better business.”
