“I started to think about a local craft brew tour and what we can do to drive people around, package a deal,” said Tim Feick, General Manager at Stock Transportation.

“I had been on a wine tour in the Niagara region before and participated in that and absolutely loved it. My wife and I  went through the wine region of Niagara on the Lake and we just had a great time,” said Feick.  “I was on social media with all the craft breweries and seeing that it is becoming a growing industry across Canada, I have really gotten excited about the local aspect of it. These are people from our community and people that I know who put their dreams and their visions into practice. They are making a product right here in town, people are enjoying it. It is bringing us together.”

The company did a trial tour with local bus drivers to the patios of three places in Ontario: Cecil’s, New Ontario Brewery, and Gateway Brewery.

“I started to think about a local craft brew tour and what can we do to drive people around, package a deal,” he said.  “Our target market for a bus company is usually people without vehicles, but this one is a great one because here people have vehicles but they just should not be driving. This is really about getting people out to enjoy the patios to enjoy the local craft breweries with no liability so they will be driving from A to B.”

The first official event took place last week. “We called ahead to see if they could accommodate us and they could,” said Feick. “We went around, we did the timing and how many pints of beer we needed per group, and how many appetizers so we could start making a costing out of it and now that people have seen it on social media; to say it is going viral, it is really catching on.”

The new tours not only help businesses recoup funds they lost during the pandemic, but it gives drivers a chance to get behind the wheel again.

“It has been stressful for everybody no matter what industry you are in, but it has been really hard for our drivers. Many people don’t realize that a school bus driver is essentially a parent or a grandparent to all of those kids on the bus,” explained Feick. 

“They really treat them like they are their own. They care about them, they know their families, they know their lives, they are invested in them and they have really missed their kids a lot. They are worried about the kids’ mental health. their scholastic situation, and because of that it has been really hard on our drivers.

Feick is also looking at running tours outside of North Bay like Whiskeyjack Beer Company in Haileybury and Copperhead Distillery in Sundridge.

“I have reached out to those distilleries as well to see if we can help our region just move people around to have a taste for the finer libations in life and see if we can do that safely and provide that service,” he said.