Sybil Taylor is communications director at Steam Whistle Brewing, Canada's most sustainable brewery. A marketing veteran, she began her career in the industry in 1987. In 2000, Taylor became Steam Whistle Brewing's first employee, filling the role of director of marketing for the brewery's first three years, during which she launched its iconic brand and helped to shape its unique market position. She then switched gears, transferring her focus to communications, developing one of the most active and interesting websites in the beer industry, and bringing record media attention to her brand. Taylor also became the steward of Steam Whistle's environmental initiatives, for which the company has received much public recognition and numerous awards. She is proud that many of the founding principles and programs she established in the early years are still driving the marketing for one of Canada’s best brewing success stories.
What’s behind the name Steam Whistle?
The Steam Whistle story begins in 1998 when three friends were on a canoe trip in the Ontario heartland. Greg Taylor, Cam Heaps and Greg Cromwell had been colleagues at one of Canada's premier microbreweries before it was bought out by a national brewer and closed down. As they sat around the campfire, the self-named “Three Fired Guys” dreamed of running their own brewery one day. They incorporated as Three Fired Guys and began writing their business plan. Early on, there was a discussion about how this name had slightly bitter undertones, which maybe wasn’t ideal in association with a social/celebratory drink, and alternate names were being considered. While searching for a brewery building, they were standing on the roof of one potential location looking downtown at all the office towers, and co-founder Greg commented, “We should have a steam whistle sound off at the end of the workday to let everyone at their desks know it’s quitting time, and time for a beer at the end of a hard day’s work.” Cam, the other co-founder said, “Why don’t we just name it Steam Whistle?” And so they did. It seemed destiny when they came upon the empty/available historic railway roundhouse built in 1929 to service steam engines. Steam Whistle was a sure winner.
Are you surprised that in just a decade your company has taken off so fast? How do you think the sustainability efforts of the company tie into that success?
Let’s just say we are pleased at our brewery’s quick success, but not totally surprised. The co-founders and most of the management team have worked in the beer business a long time so we had a running start. And our business plan of DOING ONE THING REALLY, REALLY WELL simplifies everything for us. Every day each employee comes in here focused on doing one thing— making Steam Whistle Pilsner better and better, whether there is an aspect of production, distribution, marketing, sales, or administration that the individual is involved in. This focus on excellence, on quality and not variety, keeps us moving in the same unified direction. And Cam and Greg are very good to their staff— in terms of involving them, communicating with them, treating them well— and that is powerful stuff. If you have a group of happy, impassioned people all with a clear, unified goal, there are bound to be good results. It’s the triple pundit: people, planet, and profit all considered. Our commitment to the environment is a good example of how this passion and engagement works. Our staff members want to work for a company with good moral fiber, and demand that we do the right thing, whether that integrity applies to environmental stewardship, standing behind our product or providing outstanding customer service. Our owners similarly believe, listen to the staff, and invest in their ideas. We know from customer feedback that they respect our commitment to being more sustainable—not just using natural ingredients, but reducing our footprint in all aspects of our operations—and these efforts make them more loyal to our brand. The beer industry is a crowded marketplace, full of many competitor brands and lots of discounting. Drinkers feel more comfortable paying the premium that craft beers demand when there is an environmental component to the overall product. Beer in particular is a badge product: The beer you drink, like the car you drive, demonstrates your personality, so by having the reputation of being environmentally conscious, we definitely attract a consumer that similarly cares. There’s great payback here for considering people, planet, and profit in our business model. We’ve been voted one of Canada’s Greenest Employers, Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures, and Canada’s Top Employers for Young People. All good stuff!
Steam Whistle has a very cool retro electric truck (EV). How was that vintage pickup converted to an EV, and what other sustainable aspects does your transportation fleet have?
Any company’s vehicle fleet is a major contributor to carbon count, so we’ve taken a number of measures over the years to reduce that. Firstly, we keep our fleet well maintained so that the vehicles run more efficiently. We started to look at the kind of vehicles we were driving: trucks, vans, and sales/service cars. We were the first in Canada to use a smart car for urban-short-distance driving for service; we have a number of energy-awarded Minis for our sales guys; we have several hybrids (Ford Escapes); we’ve always purchased/leased the latest model energy-efficient trucks. In 2006 we began using B20 bio diesel for our fleet, which is a combination of soya fuel and recycled restaurant oil. We have a tanker truck come to our parking lot three times a week to fill up the trucks in our lot, saving time for our drivers. There are some far reaches of the province where they may have to refuel with regular diesel, but for the most part, we run on bio fuel.
Steam Whistle also has a fleet of vintage vehicles that we use for promotional purposes and while these vehicles are a lot of fun and reflect the retro aspects of our brand, they aren’t terribly “green” (except that they are saved from the metal scrap heap and some of them have updated engines). So the idea of “Retro Electro” was born—to take, for instance, this 1958 Chevy Apache pickup truck and convert it to an electric vehicle, which, in turn, is powered by Bullfrog Power—a green energy provider that draws electricity from wind farms and Eco Logo low-impact hydro dams. Our entire brewery and all our offices across the country are powered by Bullfrog, so it made sense to power Retro Electro with it too. We think it’s the first wind-generated electric hot rod in the world. Retro Electro is the brain child of Mike Kiraly, our manager for British Columbia. You can have our sustainable “suds” delivered emissions-free there. We will be watching how this vehicle works for us in Vancouver, and may consider converting our entire vintage fleet.
How does Steam Whistle work with the Toronto Environment Office? I understand you have several forms of partnership and collaboration.
Steam Whistle has been recognized by the City of Toronto as a model green manufacturer, and therefore we’ve participated in a few ways with them. We were a founding member and hosted the inaugural meeting of the Greening Greater Toronto initiative, which seeks to make the Greater Toronto Area the greenest city region in North America.
We were also one of the first participants in the City’s Live Green Toronto program, which provides free membership to any interested resident. The program provides tips for living greener lives, including discounts and special offers from socially/environmentally conscious businesses.
Steam Whistle was also a signatory business to Toronto’s Public Health initiative ChemTrac, which had industry voluntarily reporting what chemicals they used in their operations in an effort to urge businesses to reduce toxic chemicals in our environment.
In addition, every year we sponsor the Green Living Show (Canada’s largest sustainable living show). I think we were the only beverage participating in early years but there is now a full beer garden of craft beers. We were voted the greenest exhibitor at the show this year. One component of the show is the Green Toronto Awards. In 2009, we were given an Environmental Award of Excellence for Energy Conservation and Use of Alternative Energies.
I love the fact that your company is so sustainable in all aspects and also the historic structure where you are located is such a great example of adaptive reuse of an empty industrial building. How was the building converted into a brewery? Were there any specific green/sustainable features you would like to highlight?
The John Street Roundhouse is a national historic site that had been sold from Canadian Pacific Rail to the City of Toronto for $1 in 1988. It sat empty for 11 years before we moved in and breathed life back into the building. What we inherited was literally a building with a dirt floor and no services because they had disassembled part of the Roundhouse to construct six floors of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and then built the Roundhouse back brick by brick to heritage standards. We therefore had the opportunity to do a few things differently as we built the basic infrastructure for our brewery. First was our HVAC system: instead of using Freon air conditioning, we hooked into a unique-to-Toronto technology called Deep Lake Water Cooling, which brings cold water from the bottom of Lake Ontario and uses the water’s chill to cool air, which is in turn piped through our brewery for climate control.
We decided as well to forego the usual gas-fuelled boiler which runs 24/7 in most industrial plants as a heat source, and instead drew steam (steam being the most efficient form of heat) from Enwave’s District Heating System. This means we only use what heat we need when we need it, saving an incredible amount of energy and emissions.
In 2007 we took a leap and began paying a 25% premium to buy green electricity from Bullfrog Power. Their energy is generated from wind-farms and Eco LogoTM low-impact hydro dams. For four years now, we have run 100% on this green electricity; we even Bullfrog Power our offices in Western Canada as well.
These alternative energy sources garnered us some attention and in 2007 we were named one of only 21 green buildings in Toronto by the Clean Air Partnership.
Are you planning anything special for Green Build 2011, taking place in Toronto this fall?
Within our brewery, we have three event rooms, and during the Green Building Conference—which will be held here on October 4-6, 2011—we are booked by the Canada Green Building Council who will be playing host to all Canadian exhibitors and other Canadian companies who plan on hosting social events. We are something of the “Canada Pavilion” for this conference. Should be awesome!
Paul McGinniss, "The Green Advocate," is a columnist for www.newyorkhousemagazine.com. You can read more about green building and the sustainability movement on his blog: www.thenewyorkgreenadvocate.blogspot.com . Paul is also active in the green real estate movement and works in New York as a real estate broker and green building and renovation consultant: www.paulemcginniss.com
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