The high Canadian dollar is enticing American craft brewers to increase exports and appeal to Canadian beer drinkers who can now buy more for less.
The trend enables the second annual Vancouver Craft Beer Week (VCBW) to reap dividends. The May 6-14 festival will more than double in size compared with last year’s and includes 55 breweries at about 70 venues.
The event has grown from being exclusively for B.C. brewers to including 18 U.S. brewers who will be at a May 12 event at the Beatty Street Drill Hall, which can accommodate 800 people.
“We obviously have a huge focus on B.C.,” said festival president Paul Kamon, who edits the online magazine Urbandiner.ca. “We support our B.C. brewers, but we love craft beers and some great ones are not from B.C.”
American craft brewery brands such as Dechutes Brewing, Stone Brewing and Elysian Brewing have made inroads in the B.C. market, and Bob Pease, who is COO of the U.S.-based Brewers Association, expects that to continue. His association is subsidizing U.S. craft brewers that are coming to Vancouver by paying to lease the drill hall and transport their beer.
“U.S. craft beer exports to Canada last year were up 83% by volume over the year before,” Pease told Business in Vancouver. “The total amount is still small at about 12,000 barrels or 14,040 hectolitres.”
Pease said the high Canadian dollar makes Canada a more attractive export market even though craft brewers mostly sell to local drinkers.
More than 20 B.C. craft brewers will stage a similar tasting at the drill hall on May 13.
Beer dinners have also helped increase the festival’s size; one competition will involve beer sommeliers pairing a beer and a wine with each dinner course. Diners get to vote on the winner.
Largest chefs’ conference in Vancouver history on June’s menu
Vancouver will host the largest chefs’ conference in the city’s history June 12 through 15 when more than 500 chefs from around the world converge in the city.
More than 2,000 people are set to attend the 48th annual National Chefs Conference – an event that Vancouver has not hosted since 2002.
Four major competitions anchor the conference:
- the semi-final of a global chefs’ challenge;
- a Canadian national chefs’ challenge;
- a world junior chefs’ challenge; and
- a Canadian junior chefs’ challenge.
Local celebrity chef and Cactus Club food concept architect Rob Feenie will speak about the business of being a chef, while C Restaurant chef Rob Clark will discuss sustainable seafood.
“That discussion will address what’s next with sustainability and what our responsibility is,” said conference director Dawn Donahue. “So there will be some hard questions.”
Three local Asian chefs’ associations merged on March 22, when the Chinese Canadian Chefs Association, Hong Kong Chefs Club and Dim Sum Chefs Association became the Asian Culinary Team.
Members of that new association will host a luncheon at the conference featuring food prepared by a group of 15 local “dragon” chefs from China.
The conference’s glitziest event will be a posh black-tie gala – although tickets for that event, much like the delegate fees, are affordable enough for up-and-coming chefs to attend.
“The value of a delegate pass for the conference is well over $1,500 now,” Donahue said. “Because delegate fees are subsidized by the British Columbia Chefs Association, the early bird rate for junior chefs is $300 and it is $500 for a regular chef. That price won’t even cover the cost of their food, so we really have reached out to our sponsors.”
The latest example of a Vancouver restaurant rebranding as a more downscale eatery is set to launch May 5.
Amacon Group-owned Tableau will open in that ownership group’s Loden Hotel at the corner of Bute and Melville streets where Voya operated for a few years before closing December 23.
“It wasn’t promoted the right way on the first go,” executive chef Marc-André Choquette said of Voya, which sold entrées for $28.
He told Business in Vancouver that the priciest Tableau entrée will likely be $22.
The trend of high-end restaurants becoming more affordable eateries started more than a year ago when:
- Angus An converted Gastropod into the more affordable Maenam;
- Chris Stewart and Andrey Durbach renovated their Parkside restaurant to make way for the reasonably priced L’Altro Buca; and
- Tom Doughy and Robert Belcham shucked the white tablecloths at their Fuel restaurant, lowered prices and opened Refuel.
David and Manjy Sidoo’s decision to close Lumicre illustrates the fate of restaurants that fail to adapt to changing consumer demand.
Amacon had another reason for converting Voya into Tableau, however.
Choquette said its executives reasoned that a more profitable use of space would be to reduce the restaurant’s size to make way for more meeting space at the hotel.
Voya had 120 seats; Tableau will have 72, plus 16 on a new patio.
No one from Amacon was available to discuss how much the company spent to renovate its hotel’s restaurant, which now has an entrance to the street and is closed off from the hotel lobby.