ercousin wrote:Hockley Dark
What?
How did Hockley get in but Steamwhistle not?
Looking over the beer list, the vast majority of products seem to be under the InBev umbrella.
If the company has any influence over the beer selection at the stadium, they would obviously want to veto Steam Whistle's availability. In addition to directly competing with several of their core brands (e.g. Stella, Labatt 50, Keith's, etc.), Steam Whistle would attract the craft beer crowd, who would otherwise be content to stick with the existing GI offerings 95% of the time.
Hockley Dark is literally the only 'dark beer' on the menu, so it isn't really competing with anything InBev (or anyone else) offers at the moment. Let's face it... the few who would order something like Hockley Dark at a Jays game are unlikely to be very interested in anything that InBev currently has on tap in the first place (again, excepting the GI beers, but none of those are dark ales so the overlap is minimal). It's something unassuming with relatively low brand recognition (unlike, say Guinness) that Rogers Centre can add to the beer menu and say "hey look, we have a dark beer too, and it's (sort of) local!" to satisfy the small fraction of people that want dark beer at the ballpark and are willing to find the one or two concession stands that actually have it.
There are a few other non-InBev selections... Sapporo and Corona have deep enough pockets to presumably buy a spot for a couple of their labels, which they appear to have done so. The only other craft option I see is NB gluten free, which is obviously not going to be a big draw for most beer drinkers.
All just baseless speculation, of course. And good for Hockley!
