Its is CRAZY how far a brand can get you.
We started a brewery (House of Funk) that is ultimately failing, but we did our best and launched incredible beer and coffee, along with unique imagery and packaging. Despite failing and now being up for sale, the brand we built opened doors to new opportunities that we couldn’t foresee or been able to enter without the hard work we did from day one.
FUNK Coffee Bar: The owners of Bentall Center in Vancouver wanted to create amenities for tenants that make it more appealing to sign leases. They envisioned a large expansive cafe which did happy hour beer at night. Being the only shop that did really good coffee and beer in town, they built a location with us in mind, and offered us a sweetheart lease deal which we would never had been able to get if it wasn’t for our brand. This cafe has ultimately acted as a launchpad to the coffee business thriving.
House of Lager: A multi-billion dollar development project was about to break ground in Squamish, and the developers wanted a brewery attached to their presentation centre to be able to talk shop with potential residential buyers after the presentation centre. Their GC, upstairs from our humble brewery, really loved our beer and brand, and introduced our team to the developers of Squamish Oceanfront.
Over the years, our brand has become disjointed, with the brewery failing, and the coffee business being the business that is thriving. So we’re relaunching everything for scratch, FUNK coffee, FUNK coffee bar, and the upcoming FUNK listening bar (shhh!) will the cafe that lives on, all powered by Bitcoin treasury, events and customers.
My advice to builders is do NOT make brand an afterthought. People need to understand what you are about, and how it relates to them. Done well, doors will open in ways that you could never have imagined. Especially with Bitcoin companies, technology is usually considered first and Brand is often an afterthought, but this is not how we are going to scale adoption. People need to think you are cool, and that you fit their lifestyle in order to want to relate. Think about Cash app and how sick their brand is, I WANT to be a user of this over something like Venom.
