Blog to Brick: How We Turned our Blog into a Bar
Tuesday, March 12
11:00AM – 12:00PM
Hyatt Regency Austin
Hill Country ABCD

Ever wonder what would happen when the digital and physical worlds collide? Nick Vivion and Kevin Farrell wanted to find out.

The pair began their journey with Unicorn Booty, a now widely successful blog that caters to the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community. The blog covers a wide range of topics and reaches a variety of markets, sexual preferences aside.

“A unicorn is lucky, special and different” explained Vivion. “Booty comes from the idea of pirates finding treasure. Our blog, brings gay treasures of the world and Booty’s bar brings the food treasures, creating a fun duality that also works for branding purposes.”

Once their blog took off, Vivion and Farrell found themselves frequenting coffee shops.  “Our second expense after rent was food and coffee,” said Vivion. With this in mind, the pair decided to turn their blog into a bar.

After throwing around several ideas, a simple concept emerged.

Booty’s street food, located in New Orleans, Louisiana, serves international street food and is the brick and mortar to the Unicorn Booty digital world. “We wanted to create a physical space for people to have face to face connections, but also have a space that reflects our passions,” said Vivion, who is a travel journalist by heart.

“Kevin and I blog everyday and we are able to work alongside people that come in from all over, said Vivion. “We essentially created a space where our digital world could come to life.”

During the SXSW core conversation “Blog to Brick: How We turned our Blog into a Bar” Vivion and Farrell will share their story and talk about the journey they took in order to create their physical space. “We are hoping to go beyond the story and also talk about what we learned, and discuss different takeaways we have had from the journey,” Explained Vivion.

Vivion has always enjoyed the process of creating a story and sharing it and is looking forward to speaking to a large group. “It’s great to share our experience and we are hoping our story will resonate with people, said Vivion. “We want to be a catalyst for people to start thinking in different ways.”

In essence, Vivion and Farrell want people to understand how they can approach going blog to brick and what it all means in a world where you have to be good in the digital space. “In this type of process you not only have to be good on the Internet, you also need social skills and need knowledge on how to combine these two great things.”

Clearly, the pair accomplished this feat and most likely have several other tricks up their sleeves.

Nick filmed the blog to brick process. Check out how Booty’s came to be!