Buy a pint for your favourite nurse, doctor, or hospital custodian

These past few months haven’t exactly been a cakewalk for medical professionals, and though we're all thankful for the work they're doing, clapping your pots and pans together on the front porch at 7pm isn’t exactly a tangible way of giving back.

Why not buy them a beer?

“They deserve more than a beer, but that’s about all we can give them,” says Nick Ogden, operations manager at 2 Crows Brewing in downtown Halifax.

With many friends and family working long shifts in hospitals or long-term care homes, the staff at 2 Crows wanted to find a way to pay them back in the best way they know how.

“It came about from Jeremy, he’s one of our owners and our head brewer. He was just noticing some buzz across the country and in the industry itself, trying to do something for people that are fighting the good fight on the front lines,” Ogden says.

When Haligonians are shopping on the 2 Crows website–whether it's a few cans of Pollyanna IPA or a four-pack of Jamboree sour–there is also the option of buying a pint for a healthcare worker.

“We thought we’d step up a little bit,” Ogden tells The Coast. So 2 Crows donated 50 pints to the fund to get the ball rolling. But since then, more than double that has been purchased.

“As of right now we have 118 eight dollar pints sold,” Ogden says. “I’ll try and spread the love, restrict it to one pint per person per visit, because we want to give back as much as we can to as many people as we can.”

Most of them are designated for front line hospital staff, but when you purchase a pint for someone, Ogden says you’ll have the ability to choose who your pint goes to.

“We opened it up to any front line worker, as long as the person when they buy it specifies who they want to donate it to,” he says. “That encompasses everyone from nurses to doctors to admin staff to the janitorial staff as well.”

It even includes everyone from grocery store staff to firefighters and police officers, but most people have been earmarking the pint for hospital staff. “So far it’s been 99 percent health care workers,” says Ogden.

The brewery still doesn’t know when it will be able to re-open the taproom to give those pints away.

“We’d love to get back to everyone and anyone right now, but we can’t. Not yet,” Ogden says.

2 Crows is considering installing an outdoor patio, but will have to work within social distancing regulations and a lower capacity once bars are allowed to re-open.

“I don’t think any of us know what normal is going to look like from here on out,” Ogden says.