Server Kristy Sefton pours a pint of Beau’s at Connor’s Gaelic Pub on Bank Street.
Walking through Beau’s Brewery is like walking through a Beauchesne family album.
The two men who started the brewery are father and son, Tim and Steve Beauchesne.
There’s also Denise, Tim’s wife and Steve’s mother. Then there’s Steve’s siblings, Jen and Phillip, and their spouses, Kevin and Laura, who sell the beer, manage the stock, deliver the beer, run the store and do pretty much everything else that needs to get done.
All in all, seven of the 24 people on staff at Beau’s are part of the family. Steve Beauchesne says that after they ran out of family, they moved onto close family friends.
Now, about half the company is still made up of family and friends, four years since it began.
Beau’s has won many awards for their beer, and earlier this month at the yearly Ottawa Business Summit, they were presented with the award for excellence in family business from Ottawa’s chapter of the Canadian Association of Family Enterprise.
According to a study done by CAFE, about 70 per cent of family business do not make it to the second generation. Support systems like CAFE, now exist to help family businesses make it to that key second generation.
The idea for Beau’s Brewery started with a pint of beer between Tim and Steve Beauchesne.
It has expanded to provide beer to over 90 Ottawa bars and restaurants and is now available all over the Greater Toronto Area as well.
Although they haven’t ruled out expansion, Beauchesne says they plan to stay in Ontario for now.
“A lot of what makes us special is that we are regionally-based.”
Beauchesne says it would have been impossible to start the brewery with the success that it has had if he wasn’t working with his family.
“When you’re in it with your family, everyone’s as dedicated as everyone else,” says Beauchesne. “You have everyone putting in ridiculous hours that you could never ask any strangers to do.”
He says it wasn’t just a job to everyone.
“It’s mom and dad’s retirement, it’s our kids’ school.”
It was this dedication that brought the success they’ve had, but not all family businesses are so lucky.
Eileen Hennemann is the president of Ottawa’s chapter of CAFE, a group that organizes events and provides monthly opportunities for family businesses to get together and talk about the difficulties and successes they have encountered.
She says family businesses can be everything from a husband and wife running a convenience store to the Bombardier Inc. corporation, as long as the family members have control.
CAFE Ottawa represents about 76 businesses, everything from car dealerships to hotels to catering businesses.
“[They] understand the dynamic of running a business with a family member,” says Hennemann. “It’s much easier to relate to them.”
The members of CAFE meet to talk about issues, such as determining a wage scale for family members, how to switch your mind off business when you get home, and how to work out handing down the company to the next generation.
Francois Brouard is a professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University.
There are now classes to help students interested in the field of family businesses. These classes have been in place for less than five years, but reflect a resurgence of interest in family businesses.
Brouard says family businesses tend to be smaller and are able to react more quickly to changing markets, which is definitely a benefit in being able to survive the current recession.
He adds they’re definitely still relevant even though many family businesses many not advertise themselves as family-owned.
Steve Beauchesne says that although their decision not to advertise came from a financial need when they began, but it definitely ended up suiting the business.
He says it forced them to get out there and put their beer in people’s glasses to get people talking.
“It’s a matter of focusing on what matters most, which for us, is making really fantastic beer,” he says.