ABOUT
US
MINHAS SASK VENTURES INC.
Background: Founded in 2017, by Moni Minhas, Minhas Sask is the largest Brewery, Distillery, Winery & Cidery in the history of Saskatchewan. With the main objective of providing a long-term boost to the Saskatchewan economy and reversing the flow of alcoholic imports into the province of Saskatchewan, from other provinces and other countries, Moni Minhas, the founder of Minhas Sask is committed to using as many local Saskatchewan ingredients in his products as possible. This includes barley, fruits, honey and other products. All the products are distilled, blended, produced, bottled in Regina Saskatchewan. This helps the province’s economy sustain increased growth. The slogan “Made Of Saskatchewan” expresses the concept that our company’s products are made with local Saskatchewan raw materials, created by local ingenuity and people. Being a local business, the main ideology of the company is to support other local businesses and help them expand in any way possible. Therefore, we shop local and serve local so that the dollar stays local.
Facilities: Spread over several acres, Minhas Sask has three locations, at 435 McDonald St and 444 McLeod St in Regina and at 602 51 St in Saskatoon. Both cities contain a Gift Shop, off-sales retail store and distribution centre. All the manufacturing and packaging takes place in our expansive Regina campus which runs between McLeod to McDonald streets. We have 100+ tanks, 4 vessel brewhouse, 2 state-of-the-art distillation columns, sugar inverter, cold filtration systems, yeast propagation systems, canning, bottling and kegging lines, sophisticated quality control lab and a variety of sophisticated equipment for creation and production of our products. We offer educational tours and tasting experiences in a dedicated hospitality room, which is also available for private social and reception events for up to 75 people. Minhas Sask has the largest fleet of its own vehicles operating from 2 distribution centre and 4 warehouses, delivering our products to each and every city or town in Saskatchewan on a weekly basis.
Variety of Products Produced: Our state-of-the-art facility produces alcoholic products at affordable prices in almost all categories including:
Beers: Craft, budget and specialty
Spirits: Vodkas, Whiskies, Gins, Rums, Brandy, Ready to Drink Cocktails, Moonshines, Cream Liquors, liqueurs, and cordials
Winery: Dry, semi dry, carbonated and fortified wines, and
Ciders: Apple, pear and 15 fruit ciders
Personnel: We employ 120+ staff in Regina and Saskatchewan, as well as tasting personnel in almost all other cities. It is interesting to note that none of our employees had any prior experience in creation or production of alcoholic or any other types of beverages before starting work for our company. As a result, all of them have been trained by our company, and without any financial assistance from provincial or federal funding. Moni Minhas arranges, leads and coaches the development of the staff. Consultants and trainers are regularly brought in from US to accomplish this.
Marketing & Design Innovation: Moni Minhas creates our own unique bottle molds/drawings, comes up with brand names and design concepts, TV, radio, print and social media ads for all of our products. No outside marketing agency is used for creation or booking of air time and ad space. We use Saskatchewan based media outlets including all 4 TV networks (Global, CBC, City TV and CTV), 15 city and rural Radio stations, 2 main City newspapers and other media outlets to air/publish our ads and marketing materials. All the ads are produced by in-house staff. All the labels, Point of Sales Materials, Posters, Banners, Social Media graphics, sales materials, brochures etc are conceived, designed and produced by our in-house staff. Level of in-house innovation at Minhas Sask in marketing and design is unprecedented in North America.
Minhas Sask Innovation Lab: Minhas Sask Innovation lab is led by Moni Minhas, where all the 100+ products we manufacture and market from scratch. There is no equivalent lab of this type anywhere in North America. I should point out that no provincial or federal funds have been used in creation or development of this innovation lab or our products.
Community Assistance: Minhas Sask actively supports the community it does business in. During Covid, we donated hundreds of thousands of Hand Sanitizer bottles to 100+ non profit organizations, front line workers, police organizations, shelters and many other groups. We support and donate to all types of non profit, community organizations and community fund raisers and raffles throughout the province - on a weekly basis.
LCBO Permanent Listing: Last week, we received the great news that our Sask Prairie Dill Pickle Vodka has received a permanent listing from LCBO. Our product is now available in 250+ LCBO stores throughout Ontario, and in the coming weeks, it will be added to another 300+ stores. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first permanent listing ever of any alcoholic product made in Saskatchewan. To further clarify, LCBO does routinely lists products on a temporary basis and stocks them in a select few stores or stocks a handful of cases in their special order central warehouse; however, in all these cases, the products get delisted after a few months based on “lack of sales”. Getting a permanent listing speaks volumes of the quality, innovation and potential of our products made in Saskatchewan. Interestingly, we have potential to sell more of our products to other provinces and countries if the SLGA Craft Alcohol regulations were to be modified to exclude exported volume in the quota and mark-up calculations. On Sask Prairie Dill Pickle Vodka, we are in effect paying both Ontario and Saskatchewan provincial mark ups for our products we are currently selling to LCBO.
“Made of Saskatchewan”, and “Produced in the Land of Living Skies”: We do not just use these as marketing slogans, we live them every day. The theme and designs of all our products highlight the rich and beautiful province of Saskatchewan. Here are examples of some of the hyper-local brand names we produce: Wascana Creek Gin, Sask Prairie Vodka and Whisky, Taylor Field Vodka, Craven RTD’s, Moosejaw Apple-pie Moonshine, Kamsack Brandy and of course, Top 20 Sask Cities Vodka. Not only this resonates with the people of Saskatchewan, it also resonates with all tourists and visitors to the province, who buy them as souvenirs when visiting the province.
Moni Minhas
M.S. (Moni) Minhas, P.Eng. was born in Punjab India. At the age of 22 years old, he moved to Canada with $6 in his pocket. He got married to Rani Minhas from Vancouver Island and the 2 of them soon moved to Calgary. He did an Engineering degree from the University of Calgary. Upon graduation, he worked for the largest oil and gas company in Canada for 13 years, progressing from engineering to senior management positions, and completed about $200 million worth of oil and gas projects and developments. During these 13 years, he and Rani became parents of 2 kids - daughter Manjit and son Ravinder – as well did evening classes of 1st years of MSc Chemical Engineering and MBA from the University of Calgary.
In 1993, he became a full-time entrepreneur.
He taught industry seminars in Project Management, Economic Evaluation and Petroleum Engineering to engineers, geologists and senior management of the largest oil companies in 12 countries. He also was a co-founder of 2 oil companies listed in NASDAQ, one of which had a market cap of $300 million. In 1993, he started a chain of private liquor stores in Alberta (OK Liquor Stores) which became one of the most successful retail liquor chain in Alberta. He sold the liquor stores chain to the largest publicly traded retail liquor store chain in North America in 2005. In his latest venture, Mr. Minhas has invested multi million dollars in building Minhas Sask Ventures Inc, the largest brewery, distillery and winery in the history of Saskatchewan.
Available for public speaking engagements. Contact pa@minhassask.ca for more information. Follow us to keep up-to-date on promotions and news
Messages from Our President & CEO
To all restaurant, tavern & bar owners and managers:
Minhas Sask is thrilled to give you a rare opportunity to improve the bottom line of your business. Simply switch to our world-class tasting spirits, liqueurs, wines, beers and coolers which are offered at 5 to 105% lower than others. All you have do is call our sales representative who will visit your facility, provide you samples and come up with promotions to suit your business. We will deliver the products to your door and we even sell in mixed cases.
To all Liquor Store owners and managers:
With all the new liquor stores opening in your area, it is imperative that you partner with Minhas Sask. We will deliver products to your door at amazing prices, we will sell in mixed cases so you do not have to order full cases, and our wholesale prices are such that you will make 30% margin and still sell at Lowest Legal Prices/SLGA’s Social Reference Prices. And we offer Point of Sales, On Packs, posters, tasting, and a whole lot more, so that our products fly off your shelves. We use TV, radio, print and social media advertising so that customers look for our products in your store.
Message to Event organizers, brides/grooms, wedding planners & Hotel Managers
Please contact us for supplying alcohol and design/bottle decoration for your projects. We will be pleased to design and produce a custom labelled spirit, wine, cooler, beer bottle or can with your or your organization’s name, picture and logo to commemorate your special event or day. Hotels can have custom made alcohols in their rooms for their guests to purchase and enjoy. We will also be delighted to contribute a non-alcoholic raffle item for your fund raising events.