E-Malt.com News article: China: China's Olympic beer flowing in capital Beijing

The official Chinese beer of the summer Olympic Games in Beijing was flowing in Victoria as the distributor of the product tried to light a little Olympic fire in would-be retailers, Times Colonist reported March 26.

Shu Guo of Hi-Bridge Consulting, the Canadian distributors of Yanjing beer, was meeting with cold beer stores, liquor stores and restaurants and pouring samples of the rice beer hoping to entice more outlets to take on the product.

"Yanjing is the official beer of the Olympic Games and I'm thinking it will sell because everyone is looking for Olympic things, especially with Vancouver hosting in 2010," Guo said during her stop in Victoria.

Shu Guo pours a Yanjing Beer at a trade event yesterday at Ambrosia Event Centre, hoping to attract more private stores and restaurants to carry the product. Yanjing is the official beer of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and has an 85-per-cent market share in China.

"People can drink Yanjing and go to Beijing or drink Yanjing and watch the Olympics on TV," she added, referring to an online contest (www.yanjingcanada.com) Hi-Bridge is sponsoring which offers round-trip tickets to Beijing, accommodations for two weeks and tickets to Olympic events for one lucky Yanjing beer drinker.

Guo, who moved to Canada from China seven years ago and started distributing the beer two and a half years ago, planned to make stops this week on the Island and Vancouver before moving on to Penticton next week and then Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario.

She says the beer, which is already available in many liquor stores in Victoria, sells quite well and seems to have a wide appeal. "It's very clean, smooth and refreshing," she said, adding the large Asian population in Vancouver is the largest market for the product.

According to Guo, who had been an associate professor at Beijing University before coming to Canada, Yanjing is now the largest brewery in Asia and enjoys an 85 per cent market share in Beijing.


26 March, 2008