Sudbury’s Stack Brewing has had a lot of growth since it was founded three years ago, but it continues to face the same challenges it had when there were only a few employees at its Kelly Lake Road location.
“We can really overextend ourselves really quickly if we wanted to,” said Shawn Mailloux, Stack Brewing’s founder and owner.
The borrowed a page from southern California on Saturday, and celebrated its third anniversary with a taco festival. The day’s scorching weather helped set the mood, along with taco stands from local restaurants Tucos Tacos and Taco Sol.
The day also featured musical performances from Don Kunto, Spencer Jose, and Murder Murder, along with plenty of Stack beer on tap.
But the main theme for the third anniversary, said Mailloux, was expansion.
Stack beer is now available throughout Northern Ontario – as far west as Thunder Bay – and has taken up shelf space everywhere beer is sold in the Sudbury region. That includes the LCBO, the Beer Store, and Sudbury’s two Walmarts, which now carry beer.
But Mailloux said with expansion comes a difficult balancing act of meeting demand, which is challenging when a small brewery produces so many different types of beer.
One of Stack’s newer beers, a Belgian blonde called La Cloche – named after the mountain range in Killarney – has proven to be very popular.
To meet demand, they had to increase production beyond their initial expectations for the beer.
Mailloux currently has around 15 employees, but said he envisions having closer to 40 over the next few years has he plans further expansion across Ontario.
Stack beers are already available in parts of the Greater Toronto Area, but Mailloux said he has also been eyeing the Ottawa region and southwestern Ontario.
To make that happen he’s looking for more sales representatives, and pouring all of his capital into growing the company.
