Distilleries
This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in distilling liquor, except brandy; blending liquor; or blending and mixing liquor and other ingredients. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 226
- Under 10 employeesA
- 58%
- Establishments · USA
- 1,281
- Employment · USA
- 23,736
- Payroll · USA
- $1.6B
Size and shape
How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.
Canadian establishments by number of employeesA
Of 226 Canadian establishments with employees, 58% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Where they areA
Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 312, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.
Craft beverage is reachable and crowded. Shelf access is controlled by boards and distributors, and taproom sales are usually the only full-margin channel.
- Who sets the price
- Provincial liquor boards and distributors for alcohol; retailers for the rest.
- The software it runs on
- Brewery, winery and distillery production and excise-compliance systems.
Market screens and studies
Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.
Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 3121 Beverage manufacturing covers it.
The buyer pool is small, shrinking at the brewery end, and has already been sold to three consolidators — so an entrant would be fighting owners with payment and distribution networks for a few thousand customers. TTB's own count of brewery permits that filed an operational report fell from 8,199 (2022) to 7,888 (2024) and 7,228 (2025, before late filings); in 2025, 4,781 of them made 1,000 barrels or less and 1,040 made nothing at all [A]. Distilled-spirits permits are still rising (4,036 at the start of 2022, 5,069 at the end of 2024) [A], but they are the smallest pool. In Canada the whole beverage-manufacturing group is 1,862 establishments, 859 of them with fewer than ten employees (per the 3121 operating record) [A]. The vendors have consolidated around those buyers. Brewery and distillery production belongs to Ekos — bought by Next Glass (Untappd, Untappd for Business, Ollie; backed by PSG) in October 2025, with 1,200+ active producers and a two-year price freeze for existing customers [B]. Winery direct-to-consumer (ecommerce, POS, wine clubs, reservations) belongs to Commerce7, a British Columbia corporation owned by Fullsteam, which bought WineDirect's SaaS division in January 2025, VineSpring in 2022 and WinePulse in 2025, and says 3,500+ wineries use it [B/C]. Winery production is split between InnoVint and vintrace — and vintrace now sits inside Encompass Technologies, which VIP (the beverage-distributor software house Warburg Pincus agreed to buy for about $1B in February 2025) acquired on 14 September 2026 [B]; OrchestratedBEER's old domains now redirect to Encompass too [C]. The compliance work is real but it is a feature, not a moat an entrant can own: US producers file the Brewer's Report of Operations (TTB F 5130.9, or quarterly 5130.26), the Report of Wine Premises Operations (5120.17), the distilled-spirits monthly production, storage and processing reports (5110.40, 5110.11, 5110.28) and the excise return (5000.24) [A]; in Canada the CRA levies beer duty per hectolitre under the Excise Act and spirits and wine duty under the Excise Act, 2001, with the reduced rates on a domestic brewer's first 15,000 hL cut in half and the annual CPI adjustment capped at 2% for two more years by Bill C-30 (royal assent 18 June 2026) [A]. Every incumbent already generates these. How this differs from its neighbours: 3121 Craft Beverage Production is the operating business (taps, shelf listings, excise as a cost); this record is the software that business buys. 722511 Restaurant Operations Software is Toast's market — it meets this one only at the taproom POS, where Arryved sells against Toast and Square. 3241 Process Manufacturing is refinery-scale simulation; the national brewers in Canada run enterprise ERP and are not buyers of anything here. Market size decides it: a few thousand mostly sub-1,000-barrel producers, already captured by owners who earn on payments (Fullsteam, Next Glass PaySmart) and distribution data (VIP).
Category volumes are falling, the shakeout among small producers is well under way, and the unit economics only work through a taproom — which makes this a hospitality business with a brewery attached, carrying both cost structures. Excise, packaging and distribution access all favour the incumbents that already own shelf space.
Software serving this industry
The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.
Sold across the wider branch
Catalogued categories — named, not analysed
And what every business buys · 33 generic categories
Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.
Who works here
The occupations employed in Manufacturing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Concentrated in this sectorA
These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.
And the jobs every business has
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.