The Adventures of Freezie Girl & Wreck Beach Spirits…. Reality.. not a video game.
Wreck Beach ‘Blurb’
I’ve been described as a ‘serial entrepreneur’ because since the age of 6, I’ve had my own businesses. Nothing big, mostly 1 person operations with the exception of my childhood businesses where I managed to get the neighbourhood kids involved – packing up our little red wagon to sell used books or picked cherries door to door. Flash forward and after multiple failed attempts at trying to work for other people and right smack in the middle of my existential mid 20’s crisis of “who am I? How do I achieve success (unbeknownst to me at the time it was a drive for the approval from my parents and what I perceived as there definition of ‘success’) a friend of mine pitches me the idea that I should come work on the legendary Wreck Beach. Ohhhhhh the 20’s struggle.
I’m just going to quickly paint the picture in case you haven’t been, heard or experienced Wreck Beach. Weave down 480 stairs through a rainforest on dirt stairs and you hit the sand of Wreck. No city in sight, only the open ocean and the faint outline of Vancouver Island. The beach is not a long beach and it packs people in blanket to blanket on a busy weekend. It’s a clothing optional beach with a bohemian vibe where on any given day you will meet the most outrageous characters. In the back of the beach you’ll find the legal vendors flipping burgers, making sandwiches and brewing coffee. Amongst the crowd you’ll find the illegal vendors moving in laps through the crowd selling beer, chocolate mushrooms, jewelry, empanadas, etc.
I had just fallen in love with Wreck Beach a couple years previous. Ask my best friends in high school who would be the last person to fall in love with this bohemian, funky, open and clothing optional beach and they would say Alana. I had been a very closed off, low key person but since going to university on the opposite end of the world with a rowdy bunch of Australians, coming out to my family, working on luxury yachts in the Caribbean and fulfilling a life goal of volunteering in Africa, I had evolved into the type of person that would not only gravitate to Wreck Beach, but as it would turn out, live, breath and pay my bills via the beach for the next 6 years.
I can’t tell you for certain whether my need for efficiency is ultimately motivated out of laziness, but I’m not sure whether that matters. Boozie Freezies where born out of my skill of efficiency/laziness. A couple days after my friend suggested I start working the beach, I’d had enough of my boss at the bar I was working. So I impulsively quit (my impulsivity is both a pro and a con still to this day) and set out to work on Wreck Beach. Out of fear of doing something illegal, I settled on fudgsicles and popsicles to sell. This proved unsuccessful. The margin was good but the volume not so much. I needed to sell booze if I was going to make any money. So, I came up with a plan. It seemed very logical to me… a compromise you might say. I came up with a plan to sell a cocktail hidden in a Mr. Freezie – a Boozie Freezie.
This idea changed the course of my life.
People kept saying to me my Boozie Freezie business was a great idea, I should go on Dragons Den or Shark Tank and sell them legally. That seemed impossible to me. Such a big goal. And after scaling up to having 5 woman working the beach selling with me, a security detail on the cliff and a production crew working at my home; 6 years after launching Boozie Freezies the RCMP kicked down my home door on a search warrant for alcohol and proceeded to remove 4000 double shot freezies. In the 21st century I didn’t know that a search warrant for alcohol was a thing – but apparently it is. I’d scaled up and was preparing to branch out into the festival circuit. Instead I was looking at prison time.
I was the absolute worst criminal! I had nooooo idea the police had me under surveillance. After all, I was such a little fish, why the hell would the care about little ‘ol me? Well they did. Eventually, that was settled and no, I didn’t do any prison time. Thank God. I would have been eaten alive! I am by no means a hardened criminal.
Flash forward another 5 years and we filmed Dragons Den and we’re about to launch Wreck Beach Boozie Freezies in 5 US states and we just launched our Vodka Soda line in BC. It’s crazy where one little idea can take you.