One of the main structural problems that exists with the beer industry is unchanged since the beginning of the industry in Canada: Beer is heavy, and the roads are poor. Back when Toronto was Muddy York prior to 1834, it was a common complaint. 

Brewing is one thing, but the logistics of sales and delivery are quite another. As we speed along towards 2025 and the end of the Master Framework Agreement, this is becoming something of an issue to be dealt with for small brewers across the province. The LCBO will sell your product if you can get it on shelves, but there’s a limited capacity for listings. The Beer Store will put your product on shelves if you buy space there, but it’s not going to get top billing when the store is owned by your largest competitors. 

At the beginning of the pandemic when delivery was in its infancy, there were a number of breweries repurposing employees from their taprooms or kitchens in order to make delivery work. Not only is that something of an imposition on people who weren’t hired for that role, it’s not a brewery’s core competency. Suddenly you’re in the car delivering beer to people all across the city. It’s insane but necessary because in adjacent industries there’s immediacy in delivery. 

People who subscribe to Amazon Prime might end up with same day delivery of sundries like cat litter, USB cabling, or just about anything you can imagine. Uber Eats will deliver a meal to you within an hour. Because of the novelty of the situation, we had people attempting to do all the heavy lifting themselves. This is untenable in the long term. It makes sense that there should be a centralized distribution service specializing in the beer industry.

This is where Janus Craft Beverages comes into play. While there are bottle shops and breweries that are partnered with Uber Eats and Ritual, the assumption is that there’s going to be a food order. For your favorite brewpubs this makes a lot of sense, but for beer enthusiasts, you might decide that you want same day delivery of a new IPA you’ve just seen on instagram. 

I’m currently looking at Indie Alehouse. It’s 1:30 in the afternoon, so I could schedule delivery for three hours from now and have a brewery fresh can of Instigator IPA in my hands for supper. Speaking of supper, the options available for order do  include food, but the primary focus is on the beer the brewery is producing. 

Janus currently has a roster of breweries in their lineup including Indie, Shacklands, Junction, Black Oak, People’s Pint and Eastbound amongst others, with plans to expand across the province and other parts of Canada. Gary McMullen, the founder, has experience in the craft beer industry having founded Muskoka and the Ontario Small Brewers Association.

In this instance, with outsourced logistics, the fee structure Janus is employing is a significant improvement on other delivery services. Uber Eats had something like a 30% commission rate in 2020 for delivery. Janus is around 16% with free delivery over $75.00. The commission is even lower on pickup orders, making it a reasonable avenue for craft brewers to pursue. 

Additionally, they have an app, centralizing all of their partners in one place. At the moment, there’s no crossover between brewery partners for the purpose of ordering, but with bottle shops like C’est What and Bossanova, there’s a wide variety of options available at your fingertips. As time goes on and additional partners join the platform, who knows what will be possible in terms of curation? 

As they’re launching the App, they’ve given me a code to share with you (CRAFTLOVE) which is valid for five dollars off your order until February 14th. As you can see from the accompanying pictures, they’ve also sent a media package with Valentine’s Themed goodies. I particularly liked the amount of thought that they’ve put into thematically appropriate beer cocktails. While I don’t believe in beer cocktails, I do like thought. And Pretzels.

That’s not why I’m writing about them here. I like the idea of Ontario’s brewers outsourcing something they’re not great at. I like that Janus doesn’t cost them as much as some of the more exploitative delivery services out there. I like the fact that effort is being put into building a platform that specifically exempts shelf space from retail and that it’s not being done by Amazon. I like the fact that Gary’s involved. He’s a straight shooter.

Come 2025 when retail options open up to include more grocery locations and potentially convenience stores, you might find that the selection on shelves gets a little uniform as chains make purchasing and planogram decisions. A robust online retail platform with the capacity to deliver directly to your door is the logical workaround for that problem. As the platform adds partners and shores up some of the app’s beta tier functionality, Janus has the potential to increase the market share of the craft beer segment and provide an alternative to traditional bricks and mortar retail.