The Cannery Brewing Company is on its way to a new venture, having received the unqualified support of Penticton city council for their brewery lounge application.
The local craft brewery is applying to the Liquor Control and Licensing Branch for permission to operate a 50-person lounge where customers will be able to purchase and consume not only the Cannery Brewery’s products, but experimental brews and food from local purveyors.
“We are looking forward to having a new direction for the brewery. As the liquor regulations are changing, we have to kind of change and adapt with them,” said Ron Dyck, one of the owners of the brewery.
“We are not changing dramatically, we are not talking about a club or anything like that. We are talking about an area where our customers and visitors can come and have a glass of beer, that is what we are talking about.”
In a letter to council, co-owner Pat Dyck described their plans as not being to create a “drinking bar,” but to provide a place where customers can taste and sample locally-made products.
“Those products will include food, music and art as well as the beers that we produce,” she wrote.
The lounge will also have an educational component.
“We see this new expansion of our business to allow us to have a conversation with our customers. To explain to our customers, this is what craft beer is about, this is why it is different,” said Ron, adding that it will also be an important way for them to test new brews.
“We like to do experimental beers, we are constantly making them — it’s 25 litres of beer. So what it will allow us to do is get feedback from our customers,” said Ron.
And as the craft brewery sector continues to grow, Ron said, so will its importance as a tourism driver, as wineries have become.
“It is going to be awesome. People will come here and we will be a destination. They will spend a day, they will spend two,” said Ron.
“Everyone can’t just come here for the wine all the time.
“You will find that breweries and wineries, we get along. We work together, we support each other. We are all floating on the same raft.”
Council voted unanimously to support Cannery Brewery’s application for the lounge, which now moves on to the LCLB for approval.