As Ontario Beer Stores close, new tenants move in — but no one wants the empties

For now, it’s just an empty shell — a former Beer Store in London, Ont., stripped to the rafters and cinder-block walls — but soon, the space will be transformed into a bustling café, dining room and catering hub for one of Canada’s most in-demand restaurants.

Cintro, recently named among the country’s top 100 restaurants, has become so popular that it’s nearly impossible to get a table.

“We currently don’t have a single reservation available for the next 60 days,” said co-owner Shauna Versloot. “Each night has a waitlist of anywhere from 20 to 50, sometimes 100 people.”

Chef Joe Tran’s ever-changing Asian-fusion creations have made the intimate 28-seat restaurant one of the city’s hottest tickets, with demand far outpacing supply. To keep up, the team is moving kitty-corner to a vacant Beer Store, where the new Lotus and Lime café and adjoining Lanoa Restaurant will accommodate up to 120 diners. 

“We are thrilled. We are beyond excited, to say the least,” Versloot said.

A few blocks away, another former Beer Store has been transformed into a pet store. It’s among the 86 outlets throughout Ontario that have been shuttered due to Premier Doug Ford’s alcohol expansion plan but have quickly found new life 

However, the recycling system that once helped define the Beer Store — handling some 1.6 billion empty alcohol containers returned each year — is proving much harder to replace. 

The responsibility has landed uneasily on grocery stores. Of the 70 already required to accept returns as of May, just 14 are doing so, and many operators are openly threatening to surrender their licences rather than take on the sticky, costly task.

“Dirty empties, whether they’re cans or bottles, just don’t belong in a grocery store, full stop,” said Gordon Dean, who owns five independent grocery stores — four in Ontario, where neither the Beer Store nor the LCBO operates, and one in Quebec. 

Dean’s Ontario stores are four of the 14 grocers currently meeting the province’s demands. This Jan. 1, more than 1,000 grocery stores licensed to sell beer and wine will be required to take back bottles and cans.

The empties are filthy, attract vermin and have no place in a facility that bakes fresh bread or prepares ready-to-eat meals, Dean said. The yellowjacket bugs and fruit flies they bring have already forced him to increase his pest control costs. 

“We’ve devoted 10 per cent of our footprint in the store to this and at the end of the day, it is actually costing us money,” he said. “Are we really going to be continuing that investment?”

It’s a question many grocers are asking, and the province may be facing an open revolt.

Both the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers (CFIG), representing 59 per cent of Ontario’s roughly 6,000 grocery stores, and the Canadian Retail Council, representing larger chains such as Metro, Sobeys, Loblaw, Costco and Walmart, have indicated that many operators would rather surrender their licences than take on the Beer Store’s old job. 

“It’s a dog’s breakfast. Really, I don’t know what other way to put it,” Gary Sands, the CFIG’s vice-president of government relations, told CBC News. 

Sands said the province’s push to give consumers more convenience by allowing grocery stores to sell beer and wine comes as Beer Store locations continue to close. By year’s end, roughly 86 outlets will have closed, and some grocers are already signalling they will remove alcohol from their shelves rather than handle the empties.

“It’s just a fact. It’s not a hyperbolic statement. This will happen. So you’re going to have less choice and less convenience.”

Sebastian Prins, director of government relations for the Canada Retail Council, said many of its member grocers are considering ditching their alcohol sales licence too. 

“Ultimately, it will be a store-by-store decision,” he said, with grocers weighing costs, complexity and competitive fairness before moving forward.

Prins said he hopes the issue can continue to be discussed and the province will address some of the challenges before 2026, warning that the recycling system could face serious problems.

“We’ve got a recycling problem without any kind of margins or business case to support it,” he said. 

Scott Blodgett, a senior media relations adviser for the Ontario Ministry of Finance, told CBC News via email that only grocery stores with over 4,000 square feet of retail space, and that are more than five kilometres from a Beer Store, have so far been required to join the Ontario Deposit Return Program (ODRP) since November 2024. 

“Beginning in 2026, all grocery stores will be required to participate in the ODRP,” he wrote, noting grocers with under 4,000 square feet of space will be exempt. 

The Beer Store will continue to run the ODRP until its current contract with the province expires in 2031, he said.