As of December 31, Boshkung Brewing is closing its Lakeside location off Highway 118 in Carnarvon, Ont. But before you start lamenting the demise of the Haliburton-based business, Boshkung co-owner Mathew Renda wants you to know there’s nothing to worry about. The closure is all part of a restructuring.
“Minden and the Smokehouse are our two main locations, and we want to focus on these two spots to grow them,” he says. “They’re both year-round spaces, and they’re really busy. Whereas the Carnarvon location has seen a decline in sales.”
Christoph and Teri Mathews-Carl, the brewery’s founders, opened Lakeside in 2014. It was Boshkung’s flagship location, operating out of the basement of Rhubarb Restaurant, also owned by Christoph and Teri. Most recently, the Lakeside has functioned as a retail shop, selling canned batches of Boshkung beer.
When Renda and his business partner, Mike Rae, took over the brewery in October of this year, they shifted their focus to expanding Boshkung’s food program, an impossibility at Lakeside as Rhubarb occupied the kitchen space.
Instead, Rae rebranded Truss Foodworks, a restaurant he’d been independently operating out of the Haliburton Forest since 2020, as the Boshkung Smokehouse, bringing it under the brewery’s umbrella. The restaurant specializes in artisanal, house-smoked meats served alongside the brewery’s craft beers.
As with any cottage country restaurant, the Smokehouse faces seasonal ups and downs, excelling during winter’s snowmobile season thanks to its prime location at Haliburton Forest’s base camp. The Boshkung Social, the brewery’s local bar off Water Street in Minden, is the business’s money-maker during summer, attracting the local cottager population to its spacious patio.
To augment this income, Renda and Rae are experimenting with side hustles. “We’re in the process of validating hot sauces, barbecue sauces, and spice rubs that we can market and push alongside the Boshkung brand,” Renda says.
Juggling so many enterprises already, the Lakeside’s closure will have negligible effects on the business overall. Renda explains that the Lakeside was being operated by a single employee who also handles the brewery’s LCBO and Beer Store sales. “She’s just relocating to a work-from-home position,” he says. “We’re not losing staff. We’re not decreasing production. We’re just trying to grow and restructure.”
Moving forward, Renda says the goal is to continue expanding and improving the Smokehouse and Boshkung Social. The brewery has also started experimenting with non-alcoholic beer. And Renda and Rae are contemplating a foray outside of cottage country.
“We both grew up in Durham Region, we have family and friends there. It’s our goal to eventually have a place down there,” Renda says. “We don’t know how long that’s going to take us, but it is our goal to eventually have a third year-round restaurant location outside of the area.”
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