Halifax gastropub Hart & Thistle closes
http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/1 ... tle-closes" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
A Halifax pub and eatery that recently launched its own take-home craft beer is shutting off the tap.
Bruce Keith, owner of Hart & Thistle Gastropub & Brewery, said on the company’s Facebook page Wednesday morning that it was a “difficult and necessary decision to close.”
“Many reasons have led us to this decision, however with the bulk of our business occurring inside the short summer season, coupled with large growth of independent restaurants in greater HRM, we ultimately noticed an impact to our bottom line that we could not overcome.”
The closure was effective Wednesday.
The Upper Water Street business opened five years ago and just last month announced the launch of take-home growlers — 1.5- or two-litre jugs — of craft beer. The move coincided with the change in government regulations that allowed brew pubs and microbreweries to sell their locally made product in the pub instead of a separate storefront.
“We’re not going to be selling thousands of growlers per year or anything, but the change will generate some extra business and we think it will be a wonderful marketing tool,” Keith told The Chronicle Herald last month.
Keith, who could not be reached Wednesday, thanked management, staff and suppliers and wrote: “We will continue to cheer on the city of Halifax and fellow members of the food service industry from the sidelines.”
Patrons took to social media to express their disappointment and to wish owners and staff well.
“It’s a shame,” Kevin Keefe, president of the Craft Brewers Association of Nova Scotia and owner of Granite Brewery Ltd. in Halifax, said in an interview Wednesday.
“It’s lined up there in the summertime, with probably 120 people working there.”
The pub also sold Granite Brewery beer, and Keefe said the departure of Hart & Thistle means “that’s a good customer that’s gone, so it’s not going to help us.”
Owner of Nova Scotia’s first brew pub in 1985 (the first one east of the Rockies, he says), Keefe said that “it’s been a tough last few years in the bar business.”
Tough enough that he decided to get out of the Halifax bar and eatery business in 2009 to focus his efforts on brewing beer.
The closure of Hart & Thistle was likely caused, Keefe said, by the state of the downtown bar business and the poor winter weather.
Bars and restaurants like Hart & Thistle pay higher rent to be on the waterfront and have to work that much harder to keep going, he said.
Weather has always been a factor in the bar business, Keefe said, adding that bad weather can “have a very dramatic impact on people’s going-out habits.”
His own beer sales there were about 30 per cent lower this past summer compared with the summer of 2012, when the weather was better.
Business usually drops on the waterfront over the winter, but “this is the winter from hell,” Keefe said.
He didn’t expect Hart & Thistle’s departure to have much of an effect on Nova Scotia’s industry, which is expected to see even more new brew pubs or microbreweries across the province again this year.
There are 16 craft breweries with about 100 different types of craft beer in Nova Scotia, and Keefe said he expects another five or six to open later this year.
When a new place opens, “the guys are going almost full tilt from Day 1,” said Keefe, adding that usually means everyone’s sales go up.
“There’s never been a brewery that opened that dropped sales. It always goes up. Overall sales are up; it’s still not hugely dramatic.”
But craft beer accounts for only about two per cent of all sales in Nova Scotia, with Molson and Labatt still holding the vast majority of sales, he said.
