Nova Scotia Liquor Commission

Which Canadian city has the cheapest beer? We get answers

Cheapest Beer in Canada

So where’s the cheapest beer we found? Montreal and Gatineau in the National Capital Region are tops when it comes to rock bottom beer pricing, and British Columbia and Manitoba are at the high end. (Store pricing information includes relevant taxes and deposit.)

When it comes to a six-pack of beer, in Montreal you can often find a domestic brand close to the province’s mandated floor price, which is $5.96 for a beer with between 5 percent and 6.2 percent alcohol. (Beer sales are decentralized in Quebec, meaning there is a lot more competition and prices vary from one depanneur and grocery store to the next.)

In Calgary, the cheapest six-pack at the store is Bow Valley ($6.87). Just a few years ago, Calgary was reportedly home to the country’s cheapest store beer prices. But increased taxes and higher minimum prices set by the province have seen the cost of alcohol rise almost 21 percent since 2002. Mind you, it’s still more affordable than a lot of other provinces.

At the expensive end, a six-pack of usually affordable brands such as Molson, Coors or Budweiser will run you $11.49 in Vancouver. The best you can do in that city is six Bowen Island lager for $8.45. in Winnipeg you’ll pay $11.25 for six Sleeman Clear, the cheapest domestic brands in that city. The cheapest sixer in Toronto and Hamilton is Laker Lager ($7.95). Ottawa’s Beer Stores offer multiple brands at $9.95, and the Waterloo Region offers brands such as Lakeport, Lucky Lager and Carling at $8.95 for six. It goes to show that within the same province, there are can be notable difference in pricing. (The Nova Scotia Liquor Commission doesn’t sell six packs, but you can get eight cans of Moosehead Dry Ice for $13.89.)

Quebec is also the best place to find cheap 12- and 24-packs. The provincial minimum price of $11.92 for 12 beers of between 5 percent and 6.2 percent alcohol is often offered at larger grocery store chains, even on local labels such as St-Ambroise and Griffon. You can also frequently grab the minimum price of $22.99 for 24 bottles of brands such as Budweiser and Coors, or $23.85 for Blue, Molson and others.

Trusting Your Staff » PR to Go

Empowering your staff to make good decision is just half the equation. The second is to step back, let them make the decisions, and trust them to do what’s right for your business.

Of course, your mileage may vary, and you need to stay interested and involved, but I’ve been shocked by the number of employers who don’t trust their hires to do good work on their behalf. It was common 20 years ago. Now it seems to be ubiquitous.

Twenty years ago, when I was managing restaurants, we received a letter from a customer who praised our food, the wait staff, and my work as a Maitre d’ for recommending a wine that cost less than the one he planned to order.

I expected the owner to be thrilled by the stellar dining experience, but I was raked over the coals for costing his business money by recommending a less expensive wine. He walked out in a huff and told me to never to do that again.

He missed out on a great story.

Restaurants often hired me because I was a wine expert when such knowledge was uncommon in Atlantic Canada. Indeed, I started writing for wine magazines just a few years later.

So I had built this restaurant’s wine list from the best wines available locally, but I had also imported wines from Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, where prices were low and selections vast. The wine that I recommended sold for just $7 in Alberta because it was purchased before an enormous spike in Bordeaux prices in the 1980s. It was a highly-sought after cru bourgeois from a respectable vintage that was drinking beautifully. By way of comparison, the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission had just ordered an immature vintage from the same chateau, and was selling it for $42.

So I had added the wine to our list with a retail price of $35. Yes, the markup was steep, but only if you knew the original price. No one would. If you compared our retail price to the NSLC’s in-store price for a similar, but immature vintage, we would actually save you a pretty penny, and afford you the opportunity to taste a ready-to-drink vintage.

So, had I been given the chance to explain, I would have told the owner that while I had recommended a cheaper bottle of wine, the restaurant actually made more money per bottle on the wine that I had recommended.

The entire night was rare and memorable, one that could be featured in guides that describe best restaurant practices.

The customer loved his meal, and found our staff to be charming. He was a wine lover, and delighted in being afforded the opportunity to taste a mature vintage that was not available locally. But what really sealed the deal for this customer was that we took steps to offer him better value for his dining-out dollar.

Evaluation of business options with respect to the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission

The statutes of Nova Scotia

The Canadian abridgment, Consolidated table of cases

Price list

Beyond the Atlantic roar, a study of the Nova Scotia Scots