Before the pandemic hit, Jenn Coyle and Lindsey Herrema were already busy. Their 2011-founded Can Van is likely the world’s first mobile-canning company, and their operation had, pre-COVID-19, been so successful they had expanded their portfolio to service not just craft breweries like Russian River Brewing Company, Moksa Brewing Company, Faction Brewing, Cellarmaker Brewing Company, and Urban Roots Brewing, but also boutique wineries getting into smaller-format aluminum and distilleries venturing into ready-to-drink (RTD) packaging. Every week, their seven canning lines deployed from their Sacramento headquarters to work with companies across northern California.
When the shelter-in-place order was issued, breweries faced a bleak prognosis: There would be no on-site revenue for the immediate future, so everything sellable would need to be packaged for individual sales. That raised several other questions for brewers across the state, but among the most pressing was how. There was an aluminum shortage, not to mention the fact that many couldn’t even afford a canning line to begin with.
But there was the Can Van.
Coyle and Herrema buckled up, heeding what they felt was an obligation to support the industry that facilitated their growth.
“How do we not let anybody down?” Coyle told me over the phone in May, sitting in her car between canning runs. “This is the time to pull out all the stops to do what we can.”
They resolved to reduce their standard minimum order and to set out on multiple canning runs a day wherever possible. The goal: to keep as many breweries in business as they can.
“We’re not in a position to pick winners and losers,” Herrema said in the spring. “We want as many to get through this as possible.”
Words,Alyssa Pereira