CJOB 680 - Willows from Shrugging Doctor Beverage Co. Talks COVID-19 Supply Chains w/ Hal Anderson

[Music] so we're talking today about the supply shortages and certainly let me know the supply shortages that you're running into out there at 204 780 6868 or hal cgob.com i was reading about a wine bottle shortage on the weekend so i reached out to shrugging dr beveridge company willows christopher joins us now willows good morning good morning how thanks for having us thanks a lot for doing this i appreciate it are you still winnipeg's only winery uh to my knowledge yes we are cool uh we've talked before and uh i i reached out to you and i said hey wine bottle shortage true and you said yes but that's not all so what are some of the challenges the supply challenges that you're facing right now at shrugging doctor yeah so i mean the shortages number of have been pretty much extending to everything i guess it's a combination of you know kova 19 and then probably boats getting stuck in the suez canal didn't help anything either um but my my wine bottle price uh baseline has gone up you know 20 30 percent um our corks have doubled in price the seals for the wine bottles have doubled in price um aluminum cans there's a shortage as well we have some uh vodka sodas and seltzers and stuff to go in aluminum cans we've had trouble getting those um and not only has the price gone up on a lot of things but also the shipping time um has increased significantly so where you know you used to be able to get a pallet in you know a few weeks now it's a couple months and so all of that it makes your uh business tough to complete yeah i mean like manufacturing in general right like you have to buy a lot of um you know inputs from different places and then assemble them and then sell them right so when costs and time uh go up you know it's it's more difficult to run the business for sure um i'm curious to know um and we'll get back to uh the issues that you're dealing with the the shortages um did you see during the pandemic more of your product being purchased because we heard that a lot of people were drinking more wine through the pandemic they were home more maybe they were stressed out a little more glass of wine in the evening you know to kind of calm the nerves did you see an increase in business during the pandemic i wouldn't necessarily say increase but definitely a shift like we saw our you know we're on delivery services like skip the dishes and uber eats so we saw our delivery volume uh go significantly up but then obviously with bars and restaurants being closed we're not selling you know to them and birdies in the city aren't selling their kegs to the restaurants if they're closed and we still haven't been able to go back to uh sampling our products because of the pandemic so you know that was a great way for local businesses to kind of show people and let them taste and experience new products so we still haven't been able to go to that um but yeah i don't know it's it's kind of we got to wait for the every the dust to settle before we can kind of jolly up everything you know what i mean yeah for sure and so are you able to produce as much wine and other beverages then as you want right now obviously the cost is higher so i'm sure you have to pass that along to the consumer but are you able to produce as much wine now or are you having to pull that back because of the supply shortages that you mentioned yeah you know what we're we're hoping so um it's starting to really kind of hit us now because obviously with a lot of our the wines we make out of manitoba grown grapes and the old wines that we make out of local fruits we all usually age those for about a year 12 months to 18 months so you know what i'm selling right now is all last year's product that we've made but now that we're kind of you know the pandemic's been going on for a long time we're starting to to see where we have to make a new batch for 2021 and oh the price went up by you know four times or whatever um so you know hopefully things kind of correct themselves and get back to normal because i don't know you know how much more of this kind of stuff manufacturing can take yeah yeah and you know we're hearing depending on what the item is middle of next year before things might get back to something close to normal yeah well and then the at least for us the the drought this year didn't help either like our the cost on my my raspberries and my cranberries and my strawberries are all significantly up just because of um of bad harvests uh this year because of the the huge heatwave we had in the in the summer i think you said in a text message on the weekend to me some of your fruit costs are four times higher yeah yeah it's it's ridiculous it's um you know it is what it is like uh i understand the the growers you know if their harvest is a quarter of what it uh used to be then they have to sell it for four times to make the same amount of money right so you know i empathize with uh with the farmers and that we work with but um you know it's hard to pay four times the price for something and essentially reducing our margin by you know four times and so have you had to raise or do you anticipate having to raise your price for a bottle of shrugging dr wine then based on what you're dealing with right now i know that you know some of the fruit that's fermenting is last year's crop that maybe didn't cost more but wine bottles and corks are costing more so i mean what do you do right as a as a a wine maker you you have to pass those costs on i would imagine yeah i mean like ideally not um you know i grew up in winnipeg i don't want to pay 30 for a bottle of wine and i think we're at kind of a nice level balanced level right now where we're getting a fair price for our product but um yeah i mean like what do you what do you do right like if if things um continue this way and it looks like the you know the the government's support for businesses is kind of over at this point so it's like what what do you do if prices don't go back down then i yeah i guess we have to increase prices but i'm trying to avoid that yeah if i can i think everybody is i think you know you point out that businesses really hate to do that but at some point uh you have to look at it seriously i'm curious you know we've seen such a sweet you talk about a shift or or a change a swing we've seen such a swing uh further toward buying local you're a local beverage company are you seeing that support as well willis yeah i i think there's really been kind of a um mentality shift with a lot of people uh we do a ton of like uh farmers markets uh even through the winter we're at the st norbert farmers market every saturday and sunday from 10 to 2 and we see a lot of people come out there because you know like these supply delays are hurting the consumer too right they buy a toy on amazon for their kid for christmas it might not arrive in time because everything's delayed so being able to go down to a farmers market and buy stuff from from local um you know makers not only helps you know the local businesses but also helps the consumer get a better product quicker and and right there too so i think there has been a big shift in people coming out and and realizing that if they don't support local businesses there there won't be any local businesses right yeah will uh willows thanks a lot for doing this and uh it's you got a great product i'll encourage people to try it out they it's available as you mentioned the farmer's market but it's also available out there at some retailers and then your website is shrugdoc.comshrugdoc.com thanks a lot yeah thanks al i really appreciate it willow's christopher shrugging dr beverage company it really is in winnipeg's only winery and it really is a great beverage uh company and they've got some really cool products so i would encourage you to to check them out you wind people out there if you haven't tried shrugging doctor [Music] final half