Plenty of beer, but no one to deliver it: Manitoba distributor

Can't find your favourite brew? Manitoba's main beer distributor says a "perfect storm" of weather, illness and labour problems is to blame for empty shelves at Winnipeg vendors.

Officials with Brewers Distributors Ltd., which supplies 90 per cent of Manitoba stores' suds, say the sudden arrival of summer weather has combined with a labour shortage, making it difficult to get cases from the warehouse to stores fast enough to meet demand.

"There's no shortage of beer whatsoever. We've got lots and lots of beer. It's just a matter of getting the product out into the marketplace," director Barry Booth told CBC News on Tuesday.

"It's just kind of like that perfect storm scenario, if you have a situation where you've got a shortage of manpower, plus you've got hot weather plus you've got a deluge of orders then you know, that's what breaks the system," he said.

"We've had kind of a crappy spring, so all of a sudden when the warm weather hits, and compounds the demand, and then we experienced shortages within our own labour force — a number of people were down with sickness and a couple of people left for other employment — so that put us behind, and once you get behind, it's very difficult to get out of the hole."

Booth said his workers are trying to "triage" trouble spots, asking stores to order full pallets whenever possible, as doing so speeds the delivery process. He hopes to hire more workers and clear the backlog by the end of the week.

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