As of April 14, BC’s alcohol industry has united in an initiative to mitigate the economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 crisis. The Time to Buy BC campaign encourages consumers to prioritize smaller manufacturers from within the province when purchasing beer, wine, and spirits.
BC Craft Brewers Guild executive director Ken Beattie says that the small-scale alcohol beverage sector has been significantly impacted by the closing of public spaces.
“We need to really make sure that people know that on one day in the brewing industry, we closed 197 tasting rooms,” says Beattie. “We were hit first, we were hit the hardest through social-distancing rules—rightly so—and the tourism industry, of which we are a part of, will probably be the slowest to pull back out.”
Beattie says there is a concern that people will think the liquor industry is doing better than it actually is.
“We need a program to support BC, because what people are seeing is that the liquor industry—the government liquor stores and the private retailing stores—they’re doing quite well,” he says. “In the first kind of three weeks or so, there was this massive panic-buying that was occurring, so people were going and buying the biggest pack sizes they could; they were buying big-box stuff that local producers don’t do, so there was a bit of that concern that people would be thinking that the industry is doing really well, but, no, it’s only a very small segment of the industry that is doing really well.”
Beattie says that buyers should support their local economies first and foremost as a community working together to stay afloat in these difficult times.
“We talked about how BC invented the 100-mile diet, well, what about the 10-mile diet or the 5-mile diet? You go to your local alcohol beverage supplier/manufacturer, and you purchase products that you know are made in your community first, because those businesses are not going to survive if we don’t get the support from local,” he says. “If you’re buying BC and that company is BC-based, BC-owned, with BC workers, you know that that money all stays in the province. That’s the motivation; your incentive is to make sure that your neighbour’s business stays open.”
Although the program is still in its early stages, Beattie hopes that it will continue beyond the COVID-19 crisis.
“The goal is that it will be around and be part of the culture as we move forward, and fit into the government’s program of Buy BC—it would be another element to it,” he says, adding that he would like to see the initiative expanded to other BC-based industries.
Ultimately, Beattie feels that the crisis has provided an unexpected impetus for people to come together as a community.
“I think the pandemic has really intensified the thought of looking after each other, looking after your neighbour,” he says. “We’re optimistic that at the end of this, this will be a positive legacy that comes out of the pandemic.”