Updated on January 21, 2026

You know things are going badly when radio stations get in touch to ask me how badly things are going. 

I’ll tell you how badly: Both Goose Island and Blue Moon have shuttered the Toronto location. They no longer feel that they need to compete in the sector at Toronto rents. The less economically literate craft beer fan might think, “we beat them.” That is not the case. 

In November, I said that we are up to something like 376 open physical brewing locations selling beer, although that will be in sharp decline over the next few months. It’s down to about 358 physical brewing locations from just over 400 at the beginning of 2023.

In 2025, we lost Andrew Peller (Wayne Gretzky), Blue Moon, Belle River, Beaches, Black Bellows, Burlington, Brock Street, Big Rock Liberty Village, Bayfield, 7/62 Craft Brewers, Craft Heads Brewing, Fogorig, Furnace Room, Haven, Indie Alehouse, Innocente, Goose Island, Longtooth, Lot 10, Mascot Vaughan, Northern Maverick, Quetico, Saulter Street, Schooner Street, Shacklands, The George Hamilton, and Turkey Shoot. A number of others seem to be on their last legs.

My best guess, having done some back of the napkin math on ownership structures, is that we have to discount 35 of those locations as single companies with multiple heads. There are, for example, 3 locations of Old Flame. 

We should probably, given the niceties of ownership structure, further reduce the number of companies. Take Signal, Spearhead, and Skeleton Park. Three breweries in two locations, but under one corporation. There are 12 such ownership arrangements made public, so we may reduce the number of physical brewing entities to 311, meaning that we have lost about a hundred in three years.