Today we’d like to introduce you to Dave and Will Willis.
Dave and Will Willis, brothers and co-founders, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
We started Bully Boy Distillers in 2010, becoming the city’s first craft distillery and have been making award-winning whiskeys, rums, gin and vodka ever since. We were inspired to begin distilling after growing up on our family’s fourth-generation working farm in Sherborn, MA, first making apple cider as kids, and then apple jack brandy as we got older. We later discovered a vault in the farm house basement that had dozens of Prohibition-era spirits bottles belonging to our grandfather, which further fueled our interest in distilling. Once Massachusetts enacted legislation making it easier to open a craft distillery, we decided to give distilling full time a try. We chose the name Bully Boy as a nod to our family farm and our great-grandfather’s favorite farm workhorse named Bully Boy.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It hasn’t always been the smoothest of roads, but we’ve learned a ton along the way. When we started, we were pretty much navigating on our own, from sourcing raw ingredients to distributing our spirits. For the first year or so, we self-distributed and personally ran each and every tasting event we held at liquor stores and restaurants. It was very tiring and time consuming, but looking back, it was absolutely the right thing to do in order to grow our consumer fan base. Much of the success of the brand is due to the connection we have formed with the consumer. They know it is real people – two brothers – behind it making the product and being involved with every aspect of the business is critical to getting that message across.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Bully Boy Distillers – what should we know?
There are a lot of things that set Bully Boy apart from other distillers, but when I think about what drives us, its innovation. When we roll out a new product, we try and create something unique, whether it’s approaching a traditional spirit from a different angle or rolling out a wholly unique product. Take gin. Instead of doing a standard London dry, we decided to use a Brandy base and source local Juniper. We are not in this business to replicate what big brands are doing. We make spirits to expand traditional expectations of a given category.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
The one thing we always try to focus on is being authentic to ourselves. We never intend to become a large, generic spirits company, so instead we focus on strengthening the local ties that we have in the New England area. We want to continue making a name for ourselves here, and building trust in the community.
What are you looking forward to or planning for?
We just recently opened up our new distillery and tasting room at 44 Cedric Street, so for now we are just looking forward to settling into the new space and working on some variations of our existing spirits. The tasting room serves as our very own cocktail bar from Thursday–Saturday, so we’re really looking forward to hosting some events there and hanging out with consumers who come for a drink.
Pricing:
- Bottled Old Fashioned – $29.99
- Estate Gin – $29.99
- Hub Punch – $28.99
- White Whiskey – $29.99
- White Rum – $29.99
- Vodka – $29.99
- Boston Rum $32.99
- American Straight Whiskey – $34.99
Contact Info:
- Address: 44 Cedric Street
Boston, MA 02119 - Website: Bullyboydistillers.com
- Email: info@bullyboydistillers.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bullyboybooze/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bullyboydistillers/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bullyboybooze
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/bully-boy-distillers-boston
Image Credit:
Jason Zucco
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