Extras: Blue Truck, Red Truck, Blue Buck? The Story of Blue Buck Ale with Matt Phillips

With the new season of The Entrepreneur Podcast just around the corner, here's a story from our upcoming episode with Matt Phillips, Founder of Phillips Brewing & Malting Company, on the creation of their popular ale, Blue Buck.

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Matt Phillips: 00:00

Well, my original delivery vehicle was a Subaru station wagon.

Eric Morse: 00:06

But

Matt Phillips: 00:06

But But

Eric Morse: 00:06

But from BC, so that's required.

Matt Phillips: 00:08

Yeah, exactly. It's exactly it. But I kept blowing the windows out when things would tip over, so that didn't last for very long. But the second vehicle I had was a 1965 milk truck. And so the milk truck was, it was actually really cool fiberglass, early fiberglass.

Matt Phillips: 00:25

It was fairly porous. It was like driving a colander around. So in the winter, it was a bit of a thing. I remember driving up, up and over the the Coca Cola to Kelowna in it for a beer festival in a sleeping bag, and snow coming through the the radiator and threw everything into the truck. But she was a great old truck and, eventually, I painted it blue because at the time I was living on a steel sailboat and I had painted the bottom and I had paint leftovers, so I painted the truck blue, which then became our company color eventually.

Matt Phillips: 00:56

But anyway, one day, I left my truck at my now wife's place and we went to Tofino surfing for the weekend, and I came back and the truck was gone. I couldn't find it anywhere. And it turned out that, because they didn't have locking doors, some kids on the neighborhood I was parked on the hill, some kids in the neighborhood had taken it for a go kart joyride down the hill, and then ditched it in the middle of an intersection and the police came and found it and they decided it wasn't overly road worthy. So they slapped it with an inspection order, which it didn't have a chance in hell of passing. So my idea was we'll have a beer.

Matt Phillips: 01:35

And every time we sell a pint, we'll put a nickel in the jar and we'll get the truck back on the road. And at the time, we were, with our first music sponsorship for the the folk festival. And, they need we needed an amber ale, so we came out with Blue Buck. And, sorry, we called it Blue Truck at the time. And about a year after that, we got a cease and desist from a small brewpub that had a brand called Red Truck, but it was owned by, lawyers with deep pockets.

Matt Phillips: 02:05

And they were adamant that we were going to change our name. And I talked to a trademark lawyer, and he kind of gave me an idea of how much it was going to cost to fight. He thought we'd win, but he also gave me a fairly good idea what it would cost. And, it was far more than I was going to make that year. And I thought, discretion is a better part of value here.

Matt Phillips: 02:26

I'm out. It's not,

Eric Morse: 02:27

you know, we're we don't need to do this, even though it was doing really well as a

Matt Phillips: 02:31

brand. But we decided to make media hay with it. And so we contacted local media and they bit. Because a Vancouver brand is picking on a small little island brewery. Well, it caught really well.

Matt Phillips: 02:55

And we got a lot of traction. And all of a sudden, the brand really took off. So it was one of those silver linings where we're able to take a pretty uncomfortable situation and and, and turn it into a real launch for that brand.

Eric Morse: 03:10

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