For the last 30 years, the Victoria Beer Society (VBS) has been hosting the Great Canadian Beer Festival (GCBF) annually; it has also been overseeing Victoria Beer Week for 10 years, and recently produced a Langford beer festival. But, on Thursday, May 1, it announced that everything is cancelled, indefinitely.
VBS beer director Joe Wiebe says that economic challenges and low buy-in are to blame.
“Over the last several years, we’ve seen a continual decline in ticket sales and brewery involvement, and an increase in overall costs,” he says. “Everything is more expensive than it used to be, and we can’t necessarily raise ticket prices to accommodate for that, given that we’re already facing a reduction in people buying tickets.”
In 2018, the VBS had to turn away dozens of brewery applicants to the GCBF; however, last year, less than three-quarters of the available spaces were filled. Wiebe says that the loss in revenue from brewery fees is significant, but it also points to larger problems in the local industry.
“If we’re seeing fewer and fewer breweries participating, that’s a sign that these events aren’t necessarily viable from their perspective, either,” says Wiebe. “A lot of the breweries are struggling right now; they’re just barely keeping their doors open, and they can’t necessarily afford to [participate].”
Wiebe says there’s no available government funding, and without alternative support, the festivals aren’t viable. Although he hopes the fests will resume in the future, it will be impossible without financial backing.
“If we can find some other source of support from the city, or tourism, or a sponsor of some sort, to bridge the gap between what it costs to put on the event and the revenues, that would make a big difference, and give us the chance to move forward,” he says. “As a non-profit group, we don’t have the ability to take a huge financial risk because there isn’t really the capital support behind us to do that.”
With regard to their secondary events, Wiebe says that while Fridays at the Station is still being discussed, Victoria Beer Week is not likely to see a resurgence.
“Beer Week is probably done, unless the breweries want to take it on themselves. We kind of handed it to them last year, in a way,” he says. “That went fairly well, but there wasn’t even much of a desire for that [this year], and I’m not saying that the breweries don’t want to do it, but they’re facing challenges themselves.”
Local craft breweries have been on thin ice, financially, says Wiebe, and the rising costs of production have raised store prices to an extent that people are buying less craft beer, which creates a negative feedback loop.
“Since this current economic downturn began, when people started voting with their dollars at the liquor stores, breweries have seen a huge shift in sales, from premium craft beer brands to budget brands, or big multinational beers,” he says. “A lot of people may not realize how precarious the craft-brewing industry is right now; a lot of small breweries are teetering on the edge of going under, and there have been several closes in the last year.”
Wiebe says that right now, more than ever, local craft breweries need support from the community to avoid disappearing altogether, and that the future of beer events in Victoria is directly related to their survival.
“The better that breweries are doing in their own businesses, their taprooms and sales in liquor stores and so on, the more likely that they’re able to be involved,” he says. “The more breweries that tell us they want to do this, the more incentive and confidence we have to do it.”