Meet Our Team
Beer Matters is a collective of experts with hands-on experience working in the Canadian craft beer industry or in support of it. We’ve dealt with many of the challenges you may be facing, and we’ve developed specialized solutions to deal with them.
Rick Dalmazzi
Founder and President
Rick oversaw Sawdust City Brewery’s transformation from contract to bricks-and-mortar brewery in 2014. As partner and general manager, he established the taproom as a community hub and the bottle shop as the largest in Ontario at the time.
From 2016 to 2019 Rick served as board member and Treasurer of the Ontario Craft Brewers Association.
In 2019, Rick became the founding Executive Director of the Canadian Craft Brewers Association and launched the Canada Beer Cup in 2021, the industry’s own national beer competition.
Prior to entering the craft beer scene, Rick spent over twenty years as an executive and consultant in the technology sector, working with management teams, directors and investors of early-stage companies across the United States and Canada.
Danielle Martin, CPA, CMA
Financial services Lead
Danielle Martin is a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Management Accountant, and is the owner of Strata Accounting Professional Corporation. She is the practice lead for Beer Matters clients.
Strata Accounting employs a team of seven accounting professionals with experience in bookkeeping, accounting, inventory, payroll, and tax preparation.
Strata differentiates itself from other accounting firms by providing added value through informed management reporting and analysis. Danielle believes strongly that every business owner must understand what their financial results are telling them about their business. She and her team provide important insights based on observed trends in client data. The result is better financial and strategic decision-making by the client’s management team, and often money-saving through a better understanding of cost structures.
Michael Urlocker, CFA
strategic advisory Lead
Michael is a Chartered Financial Analyst with more than twenty years experience analyzing investments on Bay Street.
He has also studied professional brewing at Niagara College, University of California at Davis and at VLB in Berlin. Michael has worked as a strategic consultant to breweries and the tech industry since 2004.
Michael is a BJCP-certified beer judge and has been home brewing for more than three decades.
Michael and his brother recently published their first co-authored novel, The Man From Mittelwerk, a Cold War spy thriller, available on Amazon.