Making the Ontario craft beer market

The Ontario craft beer industry developed as an adjacent localised market in competition with the conventional beer industry that largely controlled regional market access. Using a markets-as-practice perspective, we conduct interviews with craft brewers to investigate institutional work and market-making processes in distribution. Our study shows how entrepreneurs employ practices of creating social relations with customers through regular face-to-face interaction to overcome market blockages in a localised market context. The results indicate this was enabled by establishing personal relations with nearby licensees and customers, strategic selection of brand ambassadors, product development through close brewer-licensee interaction, and employing dedicated sales representatives with production know-how.