Canada’s Big Rock Brewery has closed a micro-brewery and taproom in Vancouver.
The taproom and restaurant were first opened in 2015 but never reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Vancouver site also housed a micro-brewery. However, Big Rock Brewery said the leased space was larger than what it required to maintain production.
Big Rock Brewery has also sold its warehousing facility in Edmonton. The brewer said it will continue to distribute to each of its customers through a partnership with the Edmonton trucking company Hy-Line Express.
CEO David Kinder said that following the group’s recent strategic review, “it became evident that these changes were necessary to allow us to focus on our core business”.
The brewer is moving production to its Calgary location, which the company says has been upgraded with a QuikFlex, a high-speed multi-format packaging system.
“In Edmonton, we saw the opportunity to streamline our operating costs and consolidate both our inventory and logistics staging operations with our Calgary location. Our customers will continue to be able to order directly, have product readily available and be serviced on a seamless basis with our existing network of last-kilometer logistic partners who will continue to deliver our product directly,” Kinder said.
Big Rock Brewery was founded in 1984 and is the largest brewer in the city of Calgary.
The brewer has had recent financial difficulties and in 2022 warned it did not have the cash flow to meet its forecast costs for 2023. It also announced it had already breached a debt agreement with its bank, ATB Financial, over an outstanding $11.4m which it was seeking to restructure.
Following that breach, Big Rock changed its CEO and secured a $4.3m cash injection from one of its shareholders.
In December, Big Rock Brewery named Kinder as its CEO and president following an interim CEO period of 14 months. Kinder had been vice president of Anheuser-Busch InBev subsidiary Mill Street Brewing Company since 2018.
Last year, Big Rock Brewery undertook a strategic review of the business in March, considering a “potential sale of all or part of the corporation’s assets”.
In its first quarter results ended 31 March, Big Rock Brewery posted a revenue of C$8.5m ($6.2m) down year on year from C$10.4m. It had a gross profit of C$1.7m, again down from C$2.9m. The brewer reported a net loss of C$3m for the three-month period.
In its full year results ended 30 December 2023, Big Rock Brewery had sales of C$58.5m, down from C$63.9m the previous year. It made a net loss of C$2.9m, an improvement on 2022’s C$7.1m.
