The Expert Corner: Building a Pack with Wolf Brewing

*This article is Part 1 of a 2 part interview with Rob Regner and Kevin Ward from Wolf Brewing. Stay tuned for Part 2 featuring Wolf's Brewmaster, Kevin Ward*

Who are you and what do you do at Wolf?

I'm Rob Regner. I'm a Co-owner and Managing Partner of Wolf Brewing, and I've been with Wolf since February 2019. So, six and a half years.

What led you to Wolf?

My wife and I are born and raised in small Alberta towns. When our kids were young, we ventured overseas and lived in a variety of different countries, but always with the intent that when our kids were about to enter high school, that we were going to plant roots somewhere. When the time came, we elected to come to the Nanaimo area.

During that time, we made the decision that we either wanted to buy or build a business — really to become a part of the community in some fashion. Didn't really care what that business was, but it had to be appealing and interesting and something that we could really make a difference. Coincidentally, Wolf was the first place I came to that actually was willing to rent me a keg for my kegerator, and I went, “Boy, that tasted really good." I came back and over the course of, six, eight months, I tried a number of different products.

On our journey, we looked at a number of different businesses, and we saw this one that was a brewery for sale in the area, and lo and behold, it was Wolf. So my wife and I found two of our very close friends and said, “Is this something we want to see if we can have some fun with it and make a difference?” They said, “Absolutely”, and we're still all one cohesive ownership group today, joined by and working with an amazing team.

Did you have any reservations about buying a brewery?

Were there some hesitations? Yes, there were, but I think that just really kind of pushed us to do a little bit more due diligence, better understand the market, because we didn't have experience in the liquor industry, in the brewing industry, or even hospitality.

We knew that this was going to be a leap for us, but we saw that there was a good foundational structure in place.

Wolf Brewery Co-owners from left to right: Jody Regner, Rob Regner, Darcy Stephenson, and Tim Lotzien. Image Credit: Wolf Brewing Facebook 

What's been the biggest learning curve? Were there any big hurdles that you had to deal with right off the bat?

One is, the regulatory environment is a lot tighter than I expected, so we needed to make sure that we were dotting our I's and crossing our T's. The second, was simply, the competitive environment. There's not a liquor store you walk into that you're not walking into a sea of labels on a craft beer shelf. So how do you differentiate yourself? The same with on premise and taps, it’s a very competitive environment.

What have you done to differentiate Wolf? What do you think makes you stand out in that market?

We didn't just want to be a business that was in the community, we wanted to be a business that was a part of the community. And so, for us, our ethos, "West Coast creativity built on European tradition" aims to define who we are and guides many of the decisions we make and the activities we engage in. Breaking our ethos down a bit, from [Kev’s] accent alone, you know that all of our beers will always have European brewing traditional base.

The West Coast creativity, though, we allow ourselves the latitude to interpret that in whatever fashion that we like. One of them is, we support West Coast artists. If you go onto the actual labels, you can see who the artist is and what the piece of work is. We've got some fantastic Island artists that are featured on our label designs.

The other part is really the community partnerships that we make, have been incredibly important. We engage in a number of different community type programs, the different charity programs that we’re involved with and that we support.

Kev spends an inordinate amount of time working to help the education process within the industry. We recognize that a lot of people within the industry may not know how a brewery works and how beer is made, and maybe the way Kev brews is a little bit different from bigger commercial brewers. So, they get to come in, do some tasting, learn a little bit more about the industry, and then our hope is that they become advocates for us locally within the community.

What would be the product that you would recommend for someone who's not familiar with Wolf?

I always say the German Pilsner - you love the product so much, you buy the company. More recently, is our West Coast lager. It's very quickly raced up the charts to be one of our top sellers, and it's super light, refreshing, just a great lager, that I'm a really big fan of.

*A Note from Brewmaster Kevin* The West Coast Lager actually has Canada's one and only proprietary hop. It's from Fraser Valley, and it's called Sasquatch. So, that West Coast Lager is an absolute 100% West Coast lager. All ingredients are B.C., including the hop.

A selection of Wolf Brewing's products featuring imagery from West Coast artists. Image Credit: Wolf Brewing Facebook

Can you talk about how the distillery, West Coast Spirits, came to be?

About three years ago, we knew we wanted to diversify beyond beer into the spirits world, and we took quite a bit of time to study the market.

In B.C., you designate yourself as either a craft distillery or a commercial distillery. On the craft side, there's already a ton of fantastic local distilleries on the Island as well as throughout B.C., and generally speaking, those are more kind of niche, quality-based, higher price type products. If I'm being honest, it kind of scared us, because how do you carve a niche and even compete in that environment?

When we looked at the commercial side, we saw a gap in the market. It's generally a decent quality product at the lowest price on the shelf, but what really stood out, is that few if any of them are B.C.-based companies. We firmly believe that local wants to support local, but they can't do it at all costs. So, we said, “What if we can produce a comparable or better quality product at that same low price on the shelf, but it's made locally? Would that make a difference in buyer decision?”. Now we've grown to being distributed in hundreds of locations across the province and we're super, super grateful for the way that our product has been adopted by British Columbians.

West Coast Spirits Vodka. Image Credit: West Coast Spirits Instagram

What would you say is the number one reason someone should try both West Coast Spirits and Wolf?

It's gonna sound cliché, but there's such a huge push around supporting local, and we talk about community and the importance of community, so we've put a lot of our actions and even a lot of our investments behind that. We want to be that local community business that people feel proud to be able to support.

Was there always a taproom with the brewery or did you make the decision to go from manufacturing only to opening the space up to the public?

Like many craft breweries that are starting out, there was a very small tasting room when we took over in 2019. They were operating under the brewing manufacturing license that allowed samplers. One of the first things that we did is we applied to get our lounge endorsement, which would then allow us to start serving pints, and I think it’s evolved from there to include a small kitchen with a pub-style food menu. I feel like we're one of south Nanaimo’s locations that people can feel comfortable. We’re family-friendly, dog-friendly, and have the patio.

A glimpse into Wolf Brewery's taproom, the Wolf Den. The brewery hosts live music on Friday nights and public and private events year-round.

Talking about evolution, there's been quite a lot of growth over the few years. Can you talk a little bit more about what's next for Wolf and West Coast?

On the distillery side, we've started out with vodka, and we do have a product development plan in place that will look to continue to expand that product offering.

From the brewery side, a lot of our time and energy is really focussed on enhancing the experience here at the Wolf Den. We'll continue to have Kev producing, not only our core beers, but continuing to flex his creativity from a product perspective.

Can you talk about some of the upcoming events and happenings?

The Sea Wolves Men's Cancer Pack came to me about four years ago, and [I] heard their story, heard what their mandate is, what they're all about, and it took no time at all for us to say yes. They call themselves the Wolf Pack, we’re the Wolf Pack. It was a great match, and so we have our fourth annual Man Up to Cancer fundraiser here September 27th.

Join Sea Wolves Men's Cancer Pack and Wolf Brewing for the Man Up to Cancer event on September 27. Image Credit: Sea Wolves Website

How else are you championing the idea of "part of the community" and not just in the community?

There's a lot of need in the community for supporting different charity and community events, and we get asked multiple times a week to be able to support. We really want to do as much as we can and cast as wide of a net as we can, and so we said, “How do we make a meaningful impact, as opposed to just little bits here and there?”. What resulted is the start of the Stronger as a Pack Program.

What is the Stronger as a Pack Program?

We partner for three month periods with three different charities. Currently, we have Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Central Vancouver Island. We have the Clay Tree Society, and we have Kw'umut Lelum, which supports Indigenous youth programs.

What happens is for every $25 that customers spend, they get a token, and then they get to take their token and put it in one of the mailboxes of one of the charities that they want to be able to support. At the end of that, we give a percentage of the proceeds back to those charities.

The thing that I really like about it is it's not just about the dollars. We have people coming in and going, "Who's Clay Tree?" “Who's Kw'umut Lelum?”. Right beside their mailboxes is the poster, which says, here's who they are, here's what they do, here's how they do it, and if you put your token in our box, here's what you're supporting. It just creates that added awareness of these great organizations.