Edmonton craft breweries invited to bid on supplying events, concerts, K-Days

Big events in Alberta's capital could soon get a whole lot “craftier" now that Edmonton's tourism body is allowing small breweries to bid on its alcohol contract.

It’s an effort to add more local flavour to concerts and celebrations like K-Days.

Alley Kat is one of a handful of local breweries bidding for a slice of Explore Edmonton's new alcohol deal.

"It’d be a pretty big thing just because most venues of this size you see typically aren’t local, they aren’t craft," owner Cameron French told CTV News Edmonton.

Explore Edmonton operates the convention centre downtown and the Expo Centre near the shuttered Coliseum, which both frequently host concerts and major events, including K-Days and Farm Fair.

Breweries can bid to supply as many venues or events as they like, provided they can pump out enough beer.

"Just in the convention centre, we’re looking at 250,000 meals served a year. So you’re into hundreds of thousands, millions of cans of beer basically, is one example," said Dan St. Pierre with Explore Edmonton.

Traditionally, multi-national brewers like Molson or Labatt were the only ones who could make enough beer to meet the demand in major venues.

St. Pierre said the fact that multiple local craft breweries have bid on big volumes shows how successful the industry has become, something his tourism body wants to promote.

"We can honour our mandate, which in large part is about elevating local products and elevating Edmonton flavour into our facilities, into the marketing work that we do," he said.

Bidding on the contract is now closed. Explore Edmonton plans to announce the winning breweries in the next month or so.