The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

9 | O akville B eaver | T hursday,S eptem ber 3,2020 insidehalton.com The site of the new Holy Family Cemetery © G oo gl e M ap s ANewCemetery forHaltonRegion Holy Family Cemetery is open to assist members of the Catholic community in Halton. Conveniently located at Lower Base Line and Bronte Road, the cemetery offers options for in-ground burial and above-ground niches for cremated remains. T h e R om a n C a t h o l i c E p i s c o p a l C o r p o r a t i o n o f t h e D i o c e s e o f H am i l t o n i n O n t a r i o www.thecatholiccemeteries.ca For more information, please call 1-800-661-5985. A new beer company is now calling Oakville home. The head office for Crank Lite Lager took up residence in the basement of an Oakville dwelling in late July, bringing with it a philosophy that "cheap beer shouldn't taste bad." The company's found- ers, Mikey Woolfson and Jack Jelinek, said they de- cided to get into craft brew- ing while attending the University of Western On- tario in 2019. The idea was to create an easy-drinking beer at a low price for the university market. "Mikey was thinking about creating a value ses- sion beer for young adults -- a beer that's good, light, low-carb and cheaper than anything else on the mar- ket," said Jelinek. "No one in Canada was doing that. There's not enough margin in it for big beer companies, and Gen Y and Millennials are drink- ing less so no one sees the need. But we're both 21- year-old university stu- dents who live on campus -- we know there's a demand for this kind of product and we understand the target market," said Woolfson. Crank has a brief, but turbulent history. While Woolfson, Jelinek and their friends worked hard to create a recipe for Crank Lite they did not have sufficient funds for test batches, which meant they didn't have a chance to taste their final product until after receiving their first batch of 10,000 cans from the Equals Brewing Company in London. They tasted the beer and realized they had a win- ning product, but were soon confronted by a sec- ond major hurdle -- the global coronavirus pan- demic. The pair had picked up their 10,000 cans on March 13, 2020 only to discover their plans to sell them had been destroyed because COVID-19 shut down all bars, public events, major gatherings and schools. To make matters worse, the Equals Brewing Com- pany still needed to be paid and Woolfson and Jelinek had nowhere to store these 10,000 cans of beer. "It honestly felt like the world was ending," said Je- linek. "No one knew if they could leave their houses. We realized we had to leave our houses because we were stuck with these 10,000 beers and no way to pay for them." By cleaning out their savings, cashing in their in- vestments, getting some loans and some help from Crank fans, who pur- chased $3,000-worth of Crank T-shirts and hats, Woolfson and Jelinek were able to raise the money they needed. The beer was stored for a time at the pair's respec- tive fraternity houses and then in the garage at Woolf- son's parents' home. Then the pair got an idea. They realized that with the arrival of St. Patrick's Day all major events were cancelled, but some stu- dents were still celebrating at home. To that end the pair ar- ranged to sell their beer through the popular Lon- don club, the Belfort, and deliver it to customers' doorsteps themselves. This resulted in Woolf- son and Jelinek selling and delivering 150 cases of beer in a six-hour period. The Western grads said their first batch of 10,000 cans sold out by mid-April. They picked up their second batch on June 12 and sold 3,000 beers online in two days. That batch sold out July 10. A third batch of 20,000 cans of Crank Lite was de- livered to the pair in late July and is rapidly selling out. Jelinek and Woolfson plan to pick up a fourth batch of 40,000 cans on Sept. 7. The beverage, which is described as a crisp and smooth neutral beer, is now available at seven Beer Store locations, in- cluding at the Maple Grove Beer Store, and the Lake- shore Road and Kerr Street Beer Store in Oakville. The pair plan to expand to eight more Beer Stores in September and ultimate- ly, the LCBO. Jelinek said the experi- ence has been a crazy one. "We're flying by the seat of our pants a little bit, try- ing to figure out how to get things going when things move so fast," he said. "People have been so sup- portive, and we are so grate- ful for everyone's help." Jelinek said the new challenge is to crank up production considerably in order to keep up with de- mand. He said they need to find working capital to make that happen and noted that while they've had some in- terested investors, the pair is also considering crowd- funding since it feels like a logical way for their fans to get involved. Online order and deliv- ery of Crank is available at cranklite.com. One case of Crank (24 beers) is sold online for $36 and comes with a free bag of chips. STRIVING FOR 'SUDS'-SESS Jack Jelinek (left) and Mikey Woolfson are the co-founders of Crank Lite Lager. Graham Paine/Torstar DAVID LEA dlea@metroland.com FOOD AND DRINK UNIVERSITY MATES CARVING OUT THEIR PLACE ON CRAFT-BREWING SCENE CRANK LITE LAGER Crank Lite Lager is described as a smooth, crisp neutral beer. Type: Online ordering is available Hours: Daily 12 a.m. to 8 p.m. Contact: www.cranklite.com 905-330-1875 info@cranklite.com