On January 19, The Beer Store in Westport, Ont., closed for good. The town, which is about 45 minutes north of Kingston, is one of many locations, including London and Thunder Bay, to lose its franchise in the last six months.
In 2024, 23 Beer Store locations closed, leaving just over 400 franchises across the province. “It’s due to opening up the points of sale for beer,” says John Nook, the president of Local 12R24 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which represents Beer Store employees.
On May 24, 2024, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that he would be expanding the sale of alcoholic beverages to 4,700 convenience stores, 450 grocery stores, and a further 400 big-box stores. The expansion was rolled out in stages with the final stage completed on October 31, 2024.
Previously, The Beer Store had a monopoly on beer sales in Ontario. The company, which is primarily owned by three breweries, Labatt, Molson, and Sleeman, has seen a drop in sales since the introduction of added competition.
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But, as it turns out, opening the alcohol marketplace could have an impact on all Ontarians. A report from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, a provincial watchdog, revealed that expanding the alcohol marketplace will cost the province $1.4 billion over the next six years. In part, this is because Ford broke the Early Implementation Agreement, a contract the Beer Store signed with the previous Liberal government, giving the company exclusive rights to the market.
This agreement was set to expire at the end of 2025. By breaking it 18 months early, the Ford government will have to pay a lump sum to The Beer Store. The agreement also stipulates that The Beer Store must keep at least 300 locations open across the province until January 1, 2026 to help with the marketplace transition. After that, the company can shutter as many locations as it likes.
The UFCW has managed to relocate most Beer Store employees at closed locations to other franchises, but Nook says that as more and more stores shut down this will become untenable.
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He argues that opening the marketplace has caused a loss of jobs rather than an increase. “We know through major grocery chains that are part of UFCW that they’re not hiring extra people because of the beer. Everybody just has more duties,” he says.
There’s also concern about losing the Beer Store’s recycling program. The company has recovered more than 9.1 billion beer bottles, cans, and other recyclable materials over the last five years. That’s approximately 94 per cent of all Beer Store sales returned.
Under Ford’s expansion, grocery stores enrolled in the program are expected to take this duty on. Starting October 31, 2024, all grocery stores larger than 4,000 square feet and more than five kilometres from a beer store were required to start accepting returned cans and bottles. Grocery stores that don’t fall within these guidelines are expected to follow suit starting January 1, 2026.
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But Nook says this doesn’t seem to be enforced. “There’s a grocery store by my home, which is 15 kilometres north or 15 kilometres south to the nearest beer store, and they don’t return empties,” he says. “You call and make complaints to the government, but there’s no follow-up.”
The Beer Store has signed an agreement with the provincial government to continue its recycling program until 2033, but Nook questions how feasible this will be with fewer stores.
“How many beer stores close is going to dictate how much further people have to drive to bring back their empties,” he says. “Will the blue boxes start filling up because people aren’t willing to drive an hour to take their empties back?”
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