With drastic changes in the world, companies are shifting gears to help where they can. Last week the BC government gave all distilleries and breweries permission to produce hand sanitizer, something the community is in dire need of as we fight Covid-19. Parallel 49 Brewing Company made the switch to producing hand sanitizer for the past week to help the community and to keep things running to protect employees’ jobs.
“Really quickly it went from us doing a nice little thing for the community to the province is in desperate need and we need to pump out as much as we can.” says Anthony Frustagli, Co-Founder at Parallel 49 Brewing Company, “that’s where we’re at right now, production is in full swing.” This past Saturday the East Vancouver brewery delivered their first batch of 11 thousand litres to charitable organizations around the city. Downtown Kia heard what they were doing and offered to help. “They reached out saying that they’re not selling tons of cars right now but have vehicles and people able to help deliver the hand sanitizer to the charities.” The team effort doesn’t end there. Vessel Packaging donated the cans and Glenmore Custom Print + Packaging supplied the labels. All these companies have come together in such a short amount of time to help where they can.
“Obviously the sudden closure of all bars and restaurants in the province really hurt our revenue stream,” says Frustagli, “we started looking into producing hand sanitizer a couple weeks ago to see how we could help, the next thing we know, I was getting thousands of emails a day and government agencies asked us to produce hand sanitizer.” Parallel 49 is pumping out as much as they can to supply those in need. The brewery now has full funding from the government, giving them back a revenue after their drop in sales. “We’re revenue neutral now which is nice,” says Frustagli, “it’s keeping everyone working while keeping safe on the job and respecting social distancing and getting use to all the new safety standards that just appeared in the past couple weeks.”
For now, the team at Parallel 49 Brewing Company is in full swing. Frustagli says, “it’s a pretty drastic switch and makes us think – once everything is all over, hopefully in a few months, we can reflect on this situation but right now we’re just 100% go go go.”
Anyone wanting more information, please email: info@parallel49brewing.com
Other breweries supplying sanitizer:
- Black Kettle – www.blackkettlebrewing.com
- Factory Brewing – https://craftcollective.beer/
- Sheringham Distillery – www.sheringhamdistillery.com/
- Greenworks Distillers
- Vitex
- Bridgeland Distillery – https://bridgelanddistillery.com/
- Mad Lab – https://www.madlabdistilling.com/
- Salt and Stone
If you’re looking to source hand sanitizer, please feel free to reach out to these companies.
by Sierra Simpson