The Circle K will replace your local brewery OR how convenience store beer sales will kill puppies

It’s tough to say if Doug Ford’s efforts to accelerate getting beer into Ontario convenience stores will help or hurt his chances in the pointless, expensive election he has just called.

On the one hand, anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex can see that Doug Ford’s frothy, folksy enthusiasm for bringing beer to the people is a self-serving, ham-fisted populism aimed at currying favour from the profoundly stupid and ignorant. 

On the other hand, the world has given us ample evidence as of late to show the majority of the electorate is in fact profoundly stupid and ignorant.

Get ‘er done, Dougie.

Of course, if you’re truly fiscally conservative, you ought to be appalled at Doug Ford’s clumsy solutions to our beverage alcohol woes. The fight against the Beer Store’s monopoly on retail beer has been long and Mr. Ford, throwing fistfuls of cash at the problem has entered the fray with all the subtlety and tact of the Kool-Aid Man crashing through the kitchen wall to surprise some thirsty tweens. “Ohhh yeah, folks!”

According to figures released by the Financial Accountability Office on Jan 27^th, in addition to the $225 million in public dollars Douggie paid to the owners or The Beer Store, accelerating liberalized beer sales in the province will result in $172 million in lower net income to the LCBO, an $812 million decline in LCBO retail revenue, a $192 million cost to give wholesale discounts to new retailers, $150 million in service rebates to brewers, $105 million in higher operating expenses, and $22 million in higher recycling fees. Also, presumably, will lead to human sacrifice, and dogs and cats living together.

If a Liberal government had had the gall to “solve” the Beer Store monopoly the way Doug Ford did, the Toronto Sun would need to bring in cases of Gatorade and Astroglide to sustain the likes of Brian Lilley, Joe Wormington, et. al. as they shat out column after factually-dubious column screeching for blood.

Electoral success and financial ruin notwithstanding, there is one element of this “progress” that has become abundantly clear, at least to me, and it’s that convenience store beer will almost certainly hasten the already impending death of many Ontario craft breweries.

Because in a market where the biggest, baddest breweries have had an unprecedented monopoly for roughly 100 years, the solution to the issue of restricted alcohol sales should never have been to “create new opportunities for everyone.” Our system was, of course, begging for someone to create new opportunities for the local guys to catch up. This ain’t it.

Beer in Ontario is a crowded market. Most would agree we had a long and healthy boom. But it’s hard to deny, as breweries buy each other up, fold, and go on fucking Dragon’s Den with half-baked schemes to swindle suckers into buying into a losing business, that the boom is definitely over. Rents are going up, people are drinking less, the cost of every god damn thing on the planet is rising and so people aren’t dining out as much – and Doug Ford’s solution to helping this struggling industry is to license 4,187 new stores to sell competitive products all around the province.

Craft breweries – many of whom enjoyed status as “the place to get beer in this neighbourhood” – are flailing and throwing trivia nights, live music, food truck collaborations and any marketing trick in the book to get butts into seats and sell some cans of beer. And then overnight they find themselves competing with literally every gas station and convenience store in the province. How many millennials/Gen Zers (pick the generation you want to blame for all the bad things) do you know that are going to put on hard pants and make an appearance at their local taproom for a pint and six pack to go when they can now stay in sweatpants and for less money than an Uber, schlepp off to the Circle K for some shitty macro beer, a vape pen refill, and a taquito?

And for those of you screaming that convenience stores off new opportunities for craft brewers too, allow me to explain via Convoluted Metaphor why this isn’t really helpful:

Imagine a dog kennel with three huge, mean dogs and a handful of little dogs all in the same yard.

For the sake of argument, let’s say one of the big dogs is a Belgian Malinois with Brazilian upbringing. Another one is an Akita Inu, an aggressive large breed from Japan, and the other dog is Molson-Coors. The sad little dogs in the yard wear flannel and they make kettle sours and they suck at digital marketing. These little fuckers are starving. That’s because the big dogs get to eat first and when there is some food available to all, the big dogs tend to muscle their way into eating all or most of that. In fact, the big dogs even have a special food dish that only they are allowed to eat from.

Everyone can see this shitty kennel is unfair to the little dogs. They can’t last much longer. Their beards are getting stringy. Their little dog Blundstones have holes in the soles. Now along comes Kennel Worker Doug. He has a solution: He throws a bunch more kibble over the fence into the yard and then hosts a press conference to say, “All the dogs in the kennel now have an equal opportunity for more food!” The other kennel workers applaud his efforts and the Malinois starts humping his leg.

This is what beer in convenience stores is doing: We’re just giving more to the big dogs. Sure, some of the medium-sized dogs will get a few bites, but for the most part, the little dogs are going to stay hungry — and some of them are going to die.

So remember this, not just the next time you go out to buy beer, but also as you watch Mr. Ford make a big show of pulling Kentucky Bourbon and California wines from LCBO shelves in a boisterous, blond bully dick measuring contest: His last big policy announcement really just gave more shelf space to the big, foreign-owned breweries actively working to stifle the growth of Ontario companies.

This article originally appeared in the February 2025 edition of Spent Grains, “a little zine about beer and stuff in Toronto.”