Thanks to a working man at a south-end Barrie grocery store, Zehrs is making permanent waves with a new beer honouring some homegrown rock legends.
The iconic band Rush has inspired a beer wall at the Zehrs at 620 Yonge St., located at Big Bay Point and Yonge Street.
The Rush Canadian Golden Ale, made by Henderson Brewing Company, was delivered to the south-end store on Wednesday afternoon and due to a little creativity, it has become the talk of Rush fans all around the world.
A picture of a “beer throne” quickly made its way to the Canadian rock group's Instagram page, with almost 18,000 likes as of noon Thursday and hundreds of comments.
Store manager Melissa Barbosa said the social-media post is making the local Zehrs location quite popular, putting them in the camera eye, if you will.
“Yeah, we’re getting a lot of attention, in a good way, so it's nice to see everyone having fun with,” Barbosa said Thursday. “When we saw Rush share it on their Instagram account, we were so excited.”
The in-store display was planned by the store’s grocery manager and “beer guru,” Kevin Wilkinson.
Wilkinson is a self-professed “Rush geek” and was so honoured to have the band know about the beer wall and let their fans know, too. It's certainly a band that is close to his heart, no doubt about it.
“I’ve seen them live about 13 times, so yeah, I am a huge Rush fan,” Wilkinson said. “They’re my idols.”
The beer display is a nod to the band’s 1977 album cover for A Farewell to Kings.
In an Instagram post, Rush said “shout out to Zehrs in Barrie for this awesome Rush Beer wall, an Ontario cottage country version of the FTK’s throne.”
As intricate as it looks, Wilkinson said it only took about 15 minutes to build. Grace under pressure, perhaps.
“My Henderson Brewing rep let me know that we were going to be among the first in the area to get the beer and I wanted to do something cool,” Wilkinson said. “I told her what I had planned when she dropped it off and she said she definitely needed a pic of that. It was delivered at 4 p.m., yesterday, and I sent her the pic around 4:15 p.m.”
The beer is a hot item as it already needed to be restocked this morning when Wilkinson got into work.
“I had to fix it up and add more cans because it is really moving,” said Wilkinson.
