Those of you familiar with myself, or those who have frequented the brewery for open days or to buy beer, are also likely familiar with the van that has been parked in various positions outside our different units on Boston Business Park. Well, this is Fifi La Bus, my 1968 VW camper van, which I have owned for many years now. About 3 years ago she was due an MOT, and I just did not have the money to get her through. Add to this the fact that I was so rarely driving her, it just didn’t seem worth it. And there she has sat ever since, moving occasionally as the landlords have commented, or we have tried to incorporate her into events. But at no point in the time has she moved under her own steam.
Every time I walked passed my heart broke a little more. I used to tap her in a friendly way, and whisper “Hey Fifi, not long now girl”. But it soon became clear that this was a lie, so it happened less frequently. And for the last year or so, she has just served as a sad reminder of better times. How things have changed over the last year. And how I have been thinking about the old girl. First off, we opened our on-line shop, and offered free local delivery. But local delivery is not always walking distance, especially with 4 cases of beer under your arms. We have week days covered, but Steve out sales guy, and recently promoted local delivery drive, does deserve his weekends off. So I try to step in and do these deliveries on Saturdays. I started doing these on a very illegal electric scooter, for which I got lots of positive feedback about as I ride past people. But again, I was limited to what I could carry. I've also got a front puncture, and these are a nightmare to fix. So I found myself hiring a car to fulfil these orders. But for this to be economically viable, we have to have a decent volume of orders. It soon became clear that it would be good if I had my own vehicle again.
I remember the heady days back in 2013 when we first opened the brewery, and I would often do London deliveries in my van. I always got so much interest, and such a great response from customers. So it got me thinking that it would be well worth trying to relive that. Which then led me on to think that it would be good to have the brewery branding, in a tasteful way, all over her. That way she becomes something of a mobile billboard. But then, well, my brain went off on one and the ideas flowed. More on that a little later, as I am digressing.
Another thing that got me thinking about getting her going again, and to flip back to the start, one of the reasons I stopped using her. Along with the financial side of driving a classic vehicle, there is the time it consumes. I am a very hands on person, as I used to be an engineer. I am also tight, so do not like to spend money paying someone to do something that I should be able to do myself. Also along the being tight, a lot of the fixes for the van were just sticking plasters, which always needed more attention down the line. This meant owning a classic VW was a time consuming hobby as much as just owning a vehicle. Now this was fine in my previous job, when I essentially worked week on week off. But as the brewery grew, my time and personal finances were quickly consumed. And unsurprisingly, as previously mentioned, this all dried up. But I have a lot more time on my hands right now. We are obviously selling a lot less beer than we would like, which means we are brewing a lot less. We are also sending our beers off site to be canned, as we don't don't currently have the funds for in house canning equipment. Filling a large vessel for shipping is a lot quicker than thousands of mini bottle shaped vessels. I have been in charge of, amongst other things, production in the brewery since the start. In the past we have had a team, but this has shrunk over time as we made things more efficient. But as production time is now at an all time low, we have taken advantage of furlough. This means I do now have more time on my hands, going from being in the brewery pretty much every day to check on something, to sometimes not at all. Meaning I can get stuck into a good project.
So the time is now, or potentially never to get the old girl (she is 53) back on the road. I am no spring chicken myself at forty mumble mumble. Now I am pretty much out of practice, so would not trust myself with any of the more in-depth safety orientated stuff that needs doing, like structural welding etc. But luckily, we have one of the best VW specialist garages just under 2 miles from the brewery, who just happens to have a massive gap in his schedule. So the plan was to drop it off with Luke at Terry's Beetle Services for a once over, so we know how bad things really are. Well, things are pretty bad. A lot of welding is needed to get her through an MOT. She is exempt from MOT, as she is so old, but safety dictates to us that she needs one anyway. It was decided that while Luke and his team had her up on their lift, it was be quicker, and ultimately cheaper (due to the quality of the work), that they would do all this welding. Then once she has passed her medical (MOT), we will take her on and make her our own.
How are we going to make her our own? Well, to start with, she will not be getting a full on paint job. These can run into thousands of pounds, which we just don’t have. The paint she does have is about 15-20 years old. This means she already has a nice 'well used', worn', 'Ratlook', which we feel is a great look for the brewery. So once we get her back, in a road worth state, we will spend some time painting and merging the new panels into the original paint job. Another reason for not spending thousands on a new paint job is that fact that she is going to be a bit of a work horse, like what she was designed for. We need to not be afraid to use her, and not be face with a huge bill if someone else damages her.
Next will be to get the branding right. We will have Weird Beard Brew Co. written in large letters across both sides, obviously, with some social media details smaller. We will have some kind of mural on the very front to give her some attitude, and something for all the people passing us on the roads to look at in their rear view mirror. So we will have one of our tell tale skulls very prominent on the front. And while we are at it, we may as well get something on the back too. But most people will be speeding passed that anyway. Now we have some decisions to make here. We can either get some large sticker decals printed, which will have that instant impact and visibility, along with ease of application and updatable. Or, we go with a faded old fashioned look, which will go with the overall look of the van. This options will take more time, care and money, but will be a lot more subtle, which kind of goes against what we are looking for.
Potential branding
Then we have the windows. She is a camper van as opposed to a panel van, meaning she has windows all the way round. And these windows are also prime real estate for branding, but they also do need to be usable as windows, we do need to see all those cars, motorbikes, and pushbikes passing us. So do we go with stickers on the windows that will impact visibility but fade in the sun, or do we make some really good curtains, that have these skulls or other branding on.
Now it is the interior that is where we foresee most of our time and efforts being spent. We do have the classic interior, with rock & Roll bed, sink, cupboards etc, but that has never really served my purposes, even when I was camping. So we have stripped out everything and plan to start again. But before we start filling the space, we will need to insulate for sound and temperature. There really is nothing worse than driving a noisy VW bus rattling down the motorway with the stereo super loud to get over the road noise. Well, maybe sleeping a cold badly insulated van is.
We will keep a bed, as we may need to sleep in her at events in the future. And we will need storage. But we want to focus our attention on serving beer, and making her usable at events. Add to that, we may need to ferry people around, so need seating. So what we are planning on doing here is occupying the bulk of the back with a large U shaped booth style seating plan. The driver and passenger seat will be replaced with a long bench seat that is reversible, so when parked up, will be facing backwards, into the van. There will then be another long bench seat towards the rear of the van, facing towards the front. So now we have space for 4 people, 2 each side facing each other. It is worth mentioning at this point, that there is a large sliding door on one side, the passenger side, of the van. The next step is to add another long bench seat, this one will be facing out towards the sliding door. This now gives us a nice booth for people to sit in, we just need to add a table in the middle. For usability, we can make the seat at the very rear of the van a rock & roll bed, which is just like as sofa bed, meaning it opens up to make a double bed. The seats that were facing the sliding door will also be rotatable, so when we are driving, and the front seats are now facing the front, these side seats can now act as 2 more seats, but facing towards the back, as no one wants to be sideways in a moving van. It also makes supplying seat belts to all usable driving seats a lot easier. This means we should be able to carry, along with the driver, up to 6 people.
Possible inside cushion colours.
We will be making, and upholstering all these seats ourselves, and are planning on going with a red and green striped pattern based on my favourite 80s horror film character. Also green is one of the brewery branding colours. All exposed panels or wood work will be covered in our own can labels. This gives us the opportunity to update it on a day to day bases when we have new releases. We will also need to build in some useful, well designed storage into the back, possibly including a fridge.
This is not going to be cheap, so we are hoping to get some money to fund this from the crowd funding campaign we are running. One of the paid rewards is the chance to get your name written somewhere on the van. We are yet to decide where this will be, and I guess it is kind of dependant on how many people buy this option. We could potentially have all the names on the back of the van, on a panel on the inside of the van, around the bottom of all the windows. There are many options, and we would welcome any feedback. But let me take this opportunity to encourage you to all 'buy' your spot, for just £15. And I am pretty sure you will get a beer from me if we ever cross paths at a festival we are pouring at.
We are also going to need a sound system. We are known for our love of music, especially heavy music. So we need a good sound system that can be played loud when needed, but also good enough quality to be clear at lower levels. All of this will need powering, and we can't always rely on mains power getting to the van in a muddy field. So we will have several large batteries built in, with efficient solar panels to charge them.
These are all decisions that we will be making as we go, and will be very much dependant on finances. But we plan to write at least a blog post each week, to keep anyone interested updated on progress. Also so we have it recorded for future reference,