Sea Change makes ripples to Calgary

With an expansion to Calgary and growth in Edmonton, it might look like Sea Change Brewing Co. is charting a course for the edge of the world, but one of its founders says the company is just going where the current takes it.

"We've never planned this," creative director Pete Nguyen said of the brewery's expansion from one location to four. "We didn't have a marketing or branding plan that says, 'This is how our brand will progress when we open up multiple-city locations,' or things like that. So what we're dealing with now is … making it up as we go."

Sea Change operates three locations in the Edmonton region: the original taproom at 9850 62 Avenue NW, another in Beaumont, and its distillery/ready-to-drink brand Shiddy's at 9908 78 Avenue NW. It also co-owns the food brand Flat Boy Burgers, which operates at Shiddy's, in Beaumont, and in Calgary.

Sea Change, Shiddy's, and Flat Boy made their way to Calgary in July. The operators took up the former Inner City Brewing Company space with collaboration in mind. The launch of Skelly Club, the formal name of the brewery-taproom-restaurant, included brews made with existing operators in Calgary.

"We wanted to integrate ourselves in the brewing community, and also make it very apparent that we're brewing beer in Calgary," Nguyen told Taproot. "I think, at our size, people just assume we brew off-site … We wanted to ensure that people knew that we were innovating and creating something special for the Calgary market."

Sea Change has worked closely with the arts communities in both Edmonton and Calgary, sponsoring the latter's East Town Get Down festival, among other happenings. A "very gay nature exhibition" that took place in mid-August is another example.

"Sea Change has been an incredible supporter of Calgary's local arts community," Natasha Faye Jensen told Taproot via direct message. "When we reached out to them about supporting our exhibition Earthlings at The New Gallery, they responded immediately and were so generous and easy to work with."

Growth came partly due to necessity, dating back to when the Beaumont location opened in 2019, just two years after Sea Change was founded in Edmonton. (The company marked its seven-year anniversary in Beaumont on Sept. 26.)

"I don't think at that time we were ever thinking about it as gaining territory or building and expanding our brand," Nguyen said. "It was more a utilitarian move in order to do more research and development, because we ran out of space in our Edmonton brewery."

Though its capacity has expanded, Sea Change isn't as titanic as it looks on paper, he said. For example, Big Rock Brewery sold just shy of 70,000 hectolitres in 2025, while Sea Change and Shiddy's have capacity for half of that. It remains well below the reduced cap for small-brewing tax designation, but incremental tax increases since 2021 for brewers over 15,000 hL are eating into profits, Nguyen said.

Taxes aside, Nguyen might be being modest about the Blue Sky City opening. The company has hired Mike Garth — a former rep for Steam Whistle Brewing, Big Rock, Village Brewery, and Annex Ale — as its Calgary-based sales and community manager.

"The more brewers we hire, the more marketing people we hire," Nguyen said. "It's never really about how big we can get, it's what we need to do to have a sustainable team, and that just comes with growth … We get to be a lot more experimental at a bigger scale."

The inspiration to expand to Calgary may have been natural, but the execution happened with intention.

"It's one of those things that we had to put a ton of focus into," Nguyen said, "or not do it at all."

Nguyen wanted to make it clear that Sea Change is still DIY as it approaches a decade in business. Even the photogenic Skelly Club is a labour of love.

"I've become the interior designer, and I'm not an interior designer," said Nguyen, a former creative director for Berlin Communications and art director for what's now called Edify. "We sort of built everything by hand. We cut every piece of wood, we painted the art by hand, and all of our sign painting is done in-house with our team."

The new port of Sea Change is part of a steady wave of Edmonton-based hospitality operators in Calgary.

Skelly Club is two blocks away from Modern Love, an 11 Avenue SW venue owned by the team behind The Buckingham on what was once a main street for hockey fans, 11 Avenue SW. Modern Love replaced the beloved Broken City with a redesign that included orange-and-blue elements in 2022. Plus, Edmonton-based restaurants Padmanadi and Seoul Fried Chicken have also expanded their footprint into Cowtown.