Greater Toronto's Top Employers (2025) Magazine - Flipbook - Page 90
90
( 2025 )
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Labatt’s Toronto head office is its innovation hub
W
hen Doug Port
took on his
latest position at
Labatt Breweries
of Canada in March 2023, one of
the first tasks facing the new vice
president, Beyond Beer, was bringing Cutwater canned cocktails
on board. If the Canadian launch
of America’s bestselling readyto-drink cocktails wasn’t a large
enough project in itself, there were
other, closely related, innovations
on the near horizon.
In Ontario, Cutwater varieties
and other Labatt brands would
soon be available in a new venue
– the province’s convenience stores
– and Labatt was also investing
millions in packaging technology
that would see the end of plastic
beverage rings.
Port, like Labatt as a whole, was
ready for it all. “We always like to
be out of our comfort zone here,”
he says. “Innovation is at the heart
of our culture at Labatt, and we
wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Jaime Gancman, senior innovation manager since 2023, echoes
Port. She joined Labatt as a logistics employee four years ago and
soon learned about the innovation
team. “Everything I had heard
about Labatt being an excellent
place to work, with amazing people, was already confirmed,” she
says. “So, I really wanted to switch
over to the innovation team. For
someone who wants to explore
new products and gets excited
about new things to come, this
company, especially this office, is a
great place to be.”
“Our head office in Toronto is
Labatt’s hub for innovation,” says
Port, “because you can’t innovate
in a vacuum – it’s a highly collaborative process.” The colleagues
who surround Port and Gancman
come from across Canada and
around the world, bringing a
variety of tastes and ideas with
them.
“There are people on my team
from Winnipeg, from Vancouver,
from our Edmonton brewery, from
our Calgary office, and people
who began in Toronto, moved
to other offices, and then came
back,” says Gancman. “There
is a lot of movement for career
reasons.”
“For someone who wants
to explore new products
and gets excited about
new things to come, this
company, especially this
office, is a great place to be.”
— Jaime Gancman
Senior Innovation Manager
Doug Port, vice president, Beyond Beer (left), and Jaime Gancman, senior innovation manager at Labatt
Breweries of Canada.
Those colleagues are crucial to
bringing everything to life, Port
says. “We receive ideas from all
corners – the legal team, supply
team anecdotes, people stopping
me in the hallways to tell me
about something they drank while
travelling, from everywhere – and
we encourage that.”
In the rapidly growing readyto-drink category, a third of the
volume sold in any given year consists of new brands and flavours,
Port continues, including Labatt’s
SVNS Hard 7UP launched in
2024 in partnership with PepsiCo
Canada.
That’s why Gancman has a
second fridge in her home to
hold new products to try, whether
Labatt’s or not, and why Port sees
the Ontario convenience store
