“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.”<\/p>\n
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<\/a>, while Sea Change and Shiddy’s have capacity for half of that. It remains well below the reduced cap for small-brewing tax designation<\/a>, but incremental tax increases since 2021 for brewers over 15,000 hL are eating into profits, Nguyen said.<\/p>\n Taxes aside, Nguyen might be being modest about the Blue Sky City<\/a> opening. The company has hired Mike Garth<\/a> \u2014 a former rep for Steam Whistle Brewing, Big Rock, Village Brewery, and Annex Ale \u2014 as its Calgary-based sales and community manager.<\/p>\n “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 \u2026 We get to be a lot more experimental at a bigger scale.”<\/p>\n The inspiration to expand to Calgary may have been natural, but the execution happened with intention.<\/p>\n “It’s one of those things that we had to put a ton of focus into,” Nguyen said, “or not do it at all.”<\/p>\n Nguyen wanted to make it clear that Sea Change is still DIY as it approaches a decade in business. Even the photogenic Skelly Club<\/a> is a labour of love.<\/p>\n “I’ve become the interior designer, and I’m not an interior designer,” said Nguyen, a former creative director for Berlin Communications<\/a> and art director for what’s now called Edify<\/a>. “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.”<\/p>\n The new port of Sea Change is part of a steady wave of Edmonton-based hospitality operators in Calgary.<\/p>\n Skelly Club is two blocks away from Modern Love, an 11 Avenue SW venue owned by the team behind The Buckingham<\/a> on what was once a main street for hockey fans<\/a>, 11 Avenue SW. Modern Love replaced the beloved Broken City with a redesign that included orange-and-blue<\/a> elements in 2022<\/a>. Plus, Edmonton-based restaurants Padmanadi<\/a> and Seoul Fried Chicken<\/a> have also expanded their footprint<\/a> into Cowtown.<\/p>\n