Beer wars

>> Small breweries complain that giants and chain stores are trying to squeeze them off the shelves

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

When you walk into a grocery store in Montreal, chances are that the microbrews will be tucked away in a corner. Consider it evidence of a money conspiracy engineered by big breweries to suppress their smaller competitors. Or so say Quebec's microbreweries, businesses that are anxiously awaiting a federal decision they hope will condemn the practice.

"We're talking about the Sobey's-IGA-Provigo group that includes Loblaw's and Maxi, as well as Metro and Couche-Tard, who in my view are the biggest of all the money sluts," says Peter McCauslan, president of the small brewery that sports his name. "Couche-Tard is like, 'Give us money we don't need to offer product selection, we just need money for shelf space.' They were the guys that started this business."

Typically, Couche-Tard--like the others who are named in the case--deny that they've been paid to minimize space devoted to smaller breweries. "To make shelving in these stores it requires that the sales justify it," says Henri Richard, a representative of the Couche-Tard chain. "It's easier to have 15 cases of Labatt and Molson, which are easy to sell, than to have Boréale or Unibroue. It's more difficult because we'd sell like two cases a week," he says.

But Molson and Labatt still get more shelf space than what their numbers merit, according to Laura Urtnowski, president and brewmaster of Les Brasseurs du Nord, makers of Boréale. "Take a look at Rickard's Red. They get more shelf space than us, even though they're selling less than us. The big brewers are able to use their clout to get more shelf space than their market share deserves." She says that it has proven impossible for the microbrewers to negotiate shelf space in many individual stores in Quebec because head office decides what goes on their shelves. As a result, the microbrewers have scored their three to four per cent market share in Quebec in areas like the Plateau, where unaffiliated mom'n'pop dépanneurs still thrive. "If you're in Quebec City or St-Hyacinthe where there's just a Maxi and a whole bunch of Couche-Tards, small breweries will have trouble getting in stores," says Urtnowski.

Two small brewers have already gone belly-up this year alone, proof enough, critics charge, that mergers and corporate monoliths have made it a tough climate for smaller challengers. "At the beginning, when we started 12 years ago, the big brewers thought we were a bunch of crazed home brewers, which wasn't far from the truth, but I think they misread the change in market circumstances and the need for specialty beers for consumers," says McCauslan. "We were something they wanted to dry up and blow away but we--and consumers--have changed the way beer has been sold in our marketplace."

Since last December, when the Quebec microbrewery association laid the abuse of market complaint, the federal Competition Bureau has been studying contracts signed by various parties from 1995 onwards and expect to have a decision by the spring.

Representatives from Labatt and Molson both told the Mirror that they are not guilty of unfair marketing practices. "We're just confident, absolutely confident that we have respected all regulations, all laws, that everything we've done falls under the law," says Marieke Tremblay of Molson Breweries.