As businesses continue to rebuild post-pandemic, there is one issue that is now resurfacing.

“We were really hitting our stride up until March 2019 when everything kind of happened,” Overflow co-owner Brad Fennell said. “The concerts in our taproom were booked out almost every day over the next year. We started building up our licensees with bars and restaurants across Ottawa. Things were going great.”

The province of Ontario temporarily froze taxes for breweries but has now ended the program and is looking for brewers to pay their deferred taxes.

“When COVID hit, it really knocked the industry onto its heels,” said Scott Simmons, president of Ontario Craft Brewers.  “It was great the government deferred those taxes, and now that they’re coming due, there’s still a lot of debt to pay back. This will be an issue coming out of the pandemic — the ability to pay the tax burden is going to be a huge barrier for most brewers.”

There were over 300 craft breweries across Ontario before the pandemic. Since the start, industry sales have plummeted a whopping 77 percent and counting as beer drinkers are opting to stay home rather than go out.

As most other breweries had to get creative to survive and stay in business, Overflow set up an e-commerce website to sell its beer just before the pandemic. Online revenue is substantial but profits are low. It didn’t get much traction at first but it did pick up speed during the pandemic and ended up accounting for 95 percent of Overflow’s sales.