The Beer Store

(We recommend that you stay standing in the same location, but turn to look at the Beer Store to reduce noise pollution)

The Labatt Beer Store is the final stop on our tour of London’s beer related history, and it’s also where we speed up to recent history and the modern day. We’ve talked about the early industry and culture surrounding beer; temperance, prohibition, and policing; brewers and some of the drama around their business. Listening to all of this, you might think that the tensions and drama surrounding beer and alcohol consumption have disappeared in the present day. You would be wrong.

Liquor laws (which includes beer) have remained since prohibition. Mentioned at the Temperance House stop, prohibition aimed to stop the consumption of alcohol. Though prohibition ended in 1927, the Liquor Control Act took its place and the province created the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) to enforce the act. Ideas of temperance didn’t go away when prohibition ended, and the Liquor Control Board now had to straddle a line where they were meant to both make a profit by selling alcohol and maintain a level of “social responsibility.” In the early days, this social responsibility meant high prices and making the process of buying alcohol shameful and difficult. They accomplished this through high prices, requiring all individuals to have a liquor permit, monitoring what and how much of things individuals were buying, the threat of being placed on the interdiction list, and making individuals go to a clerk rather than shop for themselves. While LCBO is the only place to buy liquor in Ontario, there are other options for beer and wine.

The Beer Store--a store that continues to operate today--opened in 1927 just like LCBO, and required the same permits as LCBO until they went out in the 70s. The key difference between these two entities is that the Beer Store is exactly what the name implies--a store that sells beer. Where LCBO is a government run affair, The Beer Store is actually a private entity, even if it is held to the laws of the Liquor Control Act. The Beer Store was originally a consortium of Canadian brewers, but currently the vast majority of shares are held by three major companies--Anheuser-Busch, Molson-Coors, and Sapporo.

Here’s where the modern day drama heats up--it came to public attention in December of 2014 that a very, very shady deal had gone down between the Liquor Control Board and The Beer Store in 2000. A ten page government prepared document that was leaked to the Toronto Star outlined an agreement between the two entities that limited competition in the Beer Store’s favor. In the agreement, the Control Board agreed to not sell or promote anything other than six packs of beer, leaving the larger sales of twelve and twenty four packs to the Beer Store. While this seems relatively minor, the profits of selling beer in larger quantities is… large. Millions of dollars. Millions of dollars that were going to foreign companies rather than the government, for seemingly little reason. The document also highlighted the quasi-monopoly The Beer Store and LCBO have on alcohol sales and inflamed already intense debates about liquor laws in Ontario.

After the leakage of that document in 2014, a new Master Framework Agreement was finalized in 2015. This ten year agreement allowed changes to Ontarian liquor laws with the goal of having 450 grocery stores carry beer and for LCBO stores to trial selling twelve packs (as in only 60 of the over 600 stores in the province could sell them in the course of the decade), as well as having the Beer Store enhance their customer experience. However, the agreement largely maintained everything else from the previous arrangement, much of which seems to favor the interests of the Beer Store rather than the province or LCBO. Frustrations seem to have continually grown, and in June of 2019 the Ford government passed a bill allowing for the province to break the contract, with Minister of Finance Vic Fedeli calling the 2015 contract a, “the sweetheart deal three global beer giants negotiated with the previous Liberal government.” The bill was never enacted, though the province has made some changes over the course of the pandemic that violates the 2015 agreement, such as allowing bars and restaurants to sell alcohol to go.

Overall, it’s clear that modern Ontario liquor laws have a long and complicated history that have shaped the current market and customer experience. We’ve covered a lot in this tour, from the early history of beer in London to the modern implications of it all.

Cheers! You made it, congratulations. We hope you found this tour engaging, enjoyable, and memorable. As you have seen, heard, and experienced, London was and remains to this day a “stout” place for beer production in Canada. From its origins off the Thames River to the wild stories of King Street, the histories surrounding beer in London are “lager” than life. So next time you come down here, “hop” on over to the Labatt Brewery, and you’ll be the historian with a “6 pack” of historical knowledge, filled with tidbits that will wow your friends, that’ll make ‘em say, “cool story brew” every time. Thanks for participating!

Canadian Beer News. “Ontario Government Tables Bill to End Master Framework Agreement With Beer Store.” May 27, 2019.

Finkelstein, Chad. “Big changes to Ontario liquor laws.” Financial Post, May 30, 2011.

Ghebreslassie, Makda. “Kathleen Wynne heralds start of beer sales at Ontario grocery stores.” CBC, December 15, 2015.

Jones, Allison. “Ontario moves to end Beer Store contract, paving the way for beer in corner stores.” National Post, May 27, 2019.

Lilley, Brian. “Allowing Ontario alcohol in Ontario corner stores just makes sense.” Toronto Sun, October 6, 2021.

MacPherson, Maggie. “Ontario makes changes to liquor rules, allows permanent delivery of alcohol with food.” CBC, December 10, 2020.

Prouser, Fred. “LCBO-Beer Store deal looks unfair and will 'absolutely' be changed: Wynne.” CBC, December 19, 2014.

Prouser, Fred. “LCBO, Beer Store deal limits competition in beer sales: report.” CBC, Dec 9, 2014.