mill street brewery

Toronto brewery hires Angela from The Office as their spokesperson

Do you ever think about what the employees of Dunder Mifflin must be up to these days, more than eight years after The Office aired its final episode?

I'm not talking about the actors. Like, we know that Steve Carell and John Krasinski are movie stars, but what are Michael Scott and Jim Halpert up to? Is Jim still married to Pam? Will little Pee Pee be off to college soon? What's up with Kevin's bar? Has Creed been arrested yet?

A surprising, yet pretty dang perfect new campaign from Mill Street Brewery gives us some insight in this regard, but only for one character: Angela.

"[Angela] has finally taken over *the* farm and has some big changes to make. Any guesses what they are?" wrote Mill Street in the caption of an August 6 Instagram video post featuring actress Angela Kinsey, who played Angela Martin (then Lipton, then Schrute) on everybody's favourite workplace sitcom.

A follow-up video posted last week went into greater detail about the unexpected partnership, explaining that Angela was in the process of converting Dwight's infamous beet farm into to an organic operation.

Set in a field of crops with a location captioned as "Angela's farm," the spot shows Kinsey wearing a buffalo plaid shirt with Mill Street's logo and, later, a Mill St. Brewery hat. While she doesn't explicitly mention Schrute farms, the actress can be seen at one point pushing a wheelbarrow filled with beets.

"Converting the farm to organic takes a lot of work. Work that I'm completely capable of doing. I am very strong," says the actress, quite clearly reprising her role from the hit NBC TV series.

"Switching is also expensive. I did the math. I'm very good with numbers. So that's why Mill Street is helping Canadian farmers who want to make the switch to organic with Mill St. Organic Future."

It's not clear why Angela would take over the farm from Dwight — did they get divorced? Did he die? Did Rainn Wilson turn down the gig?

Angela acknowledges this in the ad, stating: "I took over because I knew there was a brighter future for the farm if we stopped using pesticides."

Whatever the case, it's a cute little spot with some cheeky winks to The Office and Kinsey's iconic role as a small-but-fierce, uptight accountant.

And of course, the draw works to highlight the Mill St. Organic Future program, which takes 50 cents of every organic future beer sold and donates it (through the Canada Organic Trade Association) to help Canadian farmers who want to go organic.

"Angela Kinsey strikes the perfect balance between professionalism, light-hearted humour, and doing good. She comes from a farming background and really believed in our goal of making it easier for farmers to convert to organic agriculture," said Sam Jacobs, VP of marketing for Mill Street, which was founded in Toronto circa 2002 and purchased by Labatt in 2015.

Jacobs also confirmed the rumours that Kinsey, the actress, is a way cool person who doesn't have even a bit of the snobbery that her Office character is famous for.

"Angela was so excited with the idea, especially since its purpose is to help the farming community," says Jacobs. "She's an incredible talent and made the day such an enjoyable experience with her light-hearted humour — we have a ton of hilarious outtakes courtesy of Angela's comedic prowess."

The ad was actually shot on a beet farm, too — in California.

"We were hoping to film the scenes on a local farm in Ontario, but COVID-19 restrictions prevented Angela from coming to Canada," says Jacobs. "Instead, we found a local family-owned beet farm in California that represented the farms we're helping here in Canada."

The farms they're currently helping to convert range widely by product and location. Jacobs says they include everything from "zucchini farms in Quebec to vineyards in British Columbia." In other words, it's not just beer stuff — they're focused on organic farming in general.

"Here's the thing: it's really hard for farmers to transition from conventional to organic. For starters, the whole process takes three years (blame pesticides)," explained the company on Facebook last week.

"And it probably won't come as a total shock to hear that it's an expensive endeavour. But as lovers of all things organic (but especially organic beer), we think it's worth it. That's why we're doing what we can to help Canadian farmers make the big switch."

Lead photo by

Mill Street Brewery


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