A handful of people showed up last Friday as Taylor Carter and his partners bid farewell to their 12-year-old passion project.
Carter said he wanted it that way, just a few friends and family to celebrate what the Golder Ranch Fire District firefighters had built since launching Sentinel Peak Brewing Company in 2012.
He posted a note on his personal Facebook page, but they said nothing on the business socials.
The restaurant at 4746 E. Grant Road was the brewery’s flagship and the last of four locations to close in the past 18 months.
Taylor Carter, left, and Matt Gordon launched Firetruck Brewing Company — originally as Sentinel Peak Brewing Co. — in 2012 with fellow Golder Ranch firefighter Jeremy Hilderbrand. The brewery had four restaurants and a tap room in 2020; it closed its final restaurant last Friday.
Carter and partners Jeremy Hilderbrand and Matt Gordon opened the midtown restaurant in early 2014 just as their beers were gaining an audience in Tucson and statewide. You could find their brews with firefighter-centric names — the Bavarian-style Heatwave Hefeweizen, the West Coast IPA Code 3 and the super hoppy Hotshot Hazy among them — on tap at resorts, bars and restaurants throughout Phoenix and Tucson, and in Flagstaff and Yuma.
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In 2017, they joined the growing list of Tucson breweries canning their beers and found a distributor to help put their Salida del Sol Mexican-style amber ale on store shelves statewide.
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Buoyed by the success, the partners opened the Tanque Verde Road location in 2019, followed in spring 2021 with a location at 9630 N. Oracle Road in Oro Valley and Firetruck Pizza Company at 800 N. Kolb Road in late 2022.
“The expansions and everything were going really well,†Carter said, although the partners “had some contracts and promises†from parties that didn’t uphold their ends.
In 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Carter said Firetruck Brewing was told by its beer distributor that its Mexican amber was posing too much competition for a national brand. He would not name the brand or elaborate.
From left, Matt Gordon from Firetruck Brewing Company, Borderlands owner Es Teran and Firetruck’s Taylor Carter on the day in 2020 when the two breweries collaborated on Voltron Brewing Co. Firetruck closed its last brewpub last Friday.
“Overnight, we got pulled off of pretty much every single store shelf in in Arizona,†he said.
The pandemic shutdown further complicated business, he added, as the partners pivoted to takeout.
“We tried to do grocery store style, you know, just really anything to get anybody in the door and keep our employees employed,†Carter said; the company at its height employed 100, with 40 of them full-time. “We went into massive debt keeping our employees. We didn’t lay a single person off during the whole time, which was probably one of our mistakes.â€
Carter is retired from the Golder Ranch Fire District, where Hilderbrand and Gordon are still employed.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Bluesky @Starburch
Cathalena E. Burch
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