BrewDog Revisited : The Rise, the Hype, and the Hard Crash

BrewDog was once the poster child for punk business – cult branding, guerrilla marketing and a loyal army of “equity punks” behind it. So how did a billion‑pound craft beer darling end up as a cautionary tale?

In this episode, Danielle and Simon revisit BrewDog – not just the headlines, but the actual full story. From two mates with a van and a second‑hand brewing kit to global bars, a US expansion and sky‑high valuations, they unpack how the brand rose so fast… and why it all started to unravel.

They dive into:

• How BrewDog used controversy, stunts and storytelling to build a movement
• The power and pitfalls of “equity punks” and crowdfunding your superfans
• The toxic culture allegations and open letter that lifted the lid on life inside the business
• What went wrong financially – from rapid global growth to a risky push into the US
• The role of the founder’s personality: when a strong personal brand becomes the biggest risk
• The deeper questions around growth, ego, and what “success” should really look like

If you’re building a personality‑led brand, scaling a values‑driven business, or just fascinated by how quickly a darling brand can lose its shine, this conversation is packed with lessons – and a bit of beer‑fuelled nostalgia along the way.

About Simon and Danielle:

Simon and Danielle are both business owners, based in the East Midlands, who met through mutual business contacts and who share a love of all things business. 

Simon runs Skylight Media – Award-winning experts in Website Design, E-commerce & Marketing running since 2003.

Danielle runs Goldspun Support – a multi-faceted support service for fractional directors and small business owners across the globe, running since 2009.

Since they first met Simon and Danielle have spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about the subjects that interest them – usually over a drink in the pub – and they decided that now was the time to bring these conversations to a wider audience and invite them to join the chat. 

Both Simon and Danielle are successful business owners in their own rights with big plans for the future but will never lose their love of talking all things business… and the pub.

Transcript

Hi, I'm Dani
and I'm Si. Welcome to Business in the brew, a podcast dedicated to all things business, with the occasional cover.
You take a business story theory or something. We just want to chat about special personality and sense of humor combined with our experience and knowledge. We're both business graduates and have run our own businesses for many years. We can't wait to listen.
You
Hello,
good morning, good
morning, or afternoon, or evening, or whenever you're listening to this, I am going to revisit something we have discussed before, but from a different angle. So I am revisiting brew dog.
Oh, yes, so
we did brew dog before
we did
about their forestry. We did it about when they were planting trees.
It was
all to do with green washing, some other bits and pieces, yeah, but this is now. Now it's very topical, because brew dog have gone a bit, pop, a bit, pop,
just a bit,
just a bit. And you were really upset, weren't you, because you really liked the brew dog pub that was in Nottingham.
I've always liked it, and I've been going there for like, 15 years, and then all of a sudden it's gone.
Yeah, yeah.
But we're
going to go through the whole story, and this is especially interesting, because I think you and I, when we did help to grow they use brew dog as a case study.
Yeah,
because it is shown as a really clever example. And actually, when I was doing research on the other episodes
we're
gonna do in the future, brew dog keep coming up as an example of things like cult branding, de marketing, things. But ultimately, it didn't work.
Well, it did, it did work. An awful lot of it, a lot of it did work. But I know there was, there's some failures along the way, yeah,
if to
put it bluntly, yeah.
So for the first time in my life, I've actually done a script. So what do you mean now? So I might actually have answers to questions,
okay,
which I don't usually
hit me, come on. I really want to hear this. You're because you've got going to have a slightly different take.
Yeah, because I don't drink craft beer. In 2007 James Watt and Martin Dickey started the brewery in, I can't say it. Fraser Burr, Aberdeen, sure. Berg, whatever, with 30,000 pounds a second hand brewing kit and a van, but within 15 years, BrewDog become one of the most valuable private companies in the UK, valued at over 1.8 billion pounds.
Yeah, which
is massive. They had bars in 60 countries, 130,000 small shareholders. You were one of those,
correct
and
useless. Now,
what they Yeah, all right, I paid for them, so it was a gift. So it doesn't really matter. Really matter. And a cultural footprint that went far beyond beer, they'd reinvented how a small business could market itself, how customers could invest in a brand, what British manufacturing could look like in the 21st
Century.
They'd also created a workplace culture that dozens of former employees described as toxic, frightening and dehumanizing, which is quite the statement,
isn't it?
And
then in 2024 and 25 the financial reality caught up with the story. So this episode is about the full brew dog story, not one little element forest or anything like the full brew dog story, the rise
like a timeline,
yeah, the rise, the crisis, the collapse, and what it means for anyone building a business on the back of a strong personality
and
a compelling narrative. So brew dog didn't just build a brewery. They built a movement, or at least a very compelling appearance of one from the outside.
They did it was very new. Punk is what it was, punk. Punk IPO is the was the main beer that they launched with. But they had a punk mentality.
It reminds me,
is basically giving the fingers to the to the man, you know,
beaver town with the skulls.
Yes, that
reminds me of that kind of branding. Anyway.
Oh, it is, well, that, yeah, this was a lot less graphically. Beaver towns kind of more kind of cartoony characterization, whereas brew Dawn was less about that was a lot more stayed, yeah,
so the origin story was deliberately, I can't say this word mythologized.
Mythologized,
yeah, so two friends a passion for good beer, or refusal to compromise a war against the industrial lager establishment, and the early beers really represented that. So you had, like you said, your punk IPA, your 5am st, your hardcore IPA. They were genuinely good beers, and they were genuinely different from what dominated the British shelves at the time. The early marketing was extraordinary, its creativity, its willingness to court controversy, the equity. The punks,
have you
got the squirrel in there?
No,
oh,
tell me about the squirrel.
They produced a beer. I can't remember the name of the beer, and actually, the packaging of beer was a squirrel,
like
it looked like a squirrel.
No, it was a dead squirrel.
Was
it
was no squirrels were harmed during the making of that but where the taxidermist supplied them with dead squirrels and stitched a squirrel's skin over the bottle so the top of the beer bottle came out of the Squirrel's mouth. You have to look it up online. Did
you ever have one of those?
No, I didn't. They're worth a fortune now, probably worth a lot less,
well,
but the beer was amazing.
Dead squirrel bit,
the name of the beer. But, yeah, yeah, dead squirrel beer just happened to be that, that controversial, yes.
I mean,
they were doing stuff like
you
actually made me speechless.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow,
I can't now you've made I've even lost my place now,
sauce. There
was creativity. The crowdfunding model, that's it. The equity shares. That was radical at the time. They raised money directly from beer drinkers, and not just for their beer in exchange for shares lifetime discounts. They turned customers into CO owners and CO advocates.
They did, and I thought there was protection in that. I remember how lots of people said, you know, I don't really like, I don't really like brew dawn, and you know, what do you think? Are they right for takeover? And I always said now, they can't really, because there's too many equity holders.
Yeah, you couldn't.
No one's going to want to go and pass that over. So I always thought it protected the brewery, not necessarily,
because you just buy out the share value. So when Deliveroo had to take over my shares and delivery.
You're gonna tell the truth on this. Yeah.
Anyway, by 2017 they'd raised over 73 million pounds from over 100,000 equity punk investors across multiple rounds.
Yeah.
TSG consumer partners, which is a US private equity firm, took 22% stake. Percent stake for 230 million pounds in 2017 which valued the company in its entirety at 1 billion pounds.
So
it was a success.
It was, it was, and they had basically national and international distribution. And a small brewery can't do that, has no ability to do that. So, and
it did get a lot right. So their marketing was amazing. They were a challenger brand. They definitely disrupted the marketplace, and what was essentially a limited budget at the time, tactics were deliberately provocative. That's the word driving a tank down the street outside camera competition, when their beer was disqualified for excessive strength, creating a beer called tackling. You talk about this attack the nuclear Penguin,
tactical nuclear penguin. That's the 132
32% ABB, yeah, and getting into public's arms race over strength with Scottish Brewer sending
but did you know the counter to that they were they were lambasted by a by Parliament, or by a member of parliament who said, this is, this is completely irresponsible, irresponsible drinking to brew a 32% beer. Shouldn't we be telling people to not drink as much? You know, implying that someone, a man in a park, was going to be drinking 32% beer for, who knows how much it was. I mean, it was expensive,
because they're always
expensive. A lot of duty on that and the comeback from brew dog was they brewed a beer at 1.4% called nanny state. They
did. It's, I think originally it
was 1.4 but I think they might have reduced, reduced it further anyway. They can't. They can't, we can't ask them.
No, they generated apparently enormous press coverage because
it was a
product that was, by definition responsible
brilliant. It was brilliantly done.
Yeah,
they brewed the first beer underwater. You've got me on the subject.
I might have made a mistake talking
to you. I'm going to shut up.
Yeah. Each stunt cost almost nothing, but generated coverage worth hundreds of 1000s of pounds,
yeah.
So they did get that right, and they did get their equity right, because that really created super fans in the people that brought into into the brand, definitely. So when the cracks began to show that, then I decided I don't sing. So in July, no, that doesn't say June. June. 21 an open letter signed by over 60 former brew dog employees was published under the headline, punks with purpose. The letter described a culture of fear, of senior management behavior that left people with post traumatic stress disorder, of an obsession with growth that put relentless pressure on individuals, of a culture of lies around the brand's values.
Oh
no, that's very strong lies. Yeah. Specific allegations included bullying by James Watt, personally, a pattern of dismissing concerns raised by employees, and a disconnect between brew dogs public values, which were transparency, inclusion, sustainability and the internal reality. The letter was significant partly because it was so specific. And partly because it was signed by people from multiple departments and levels of seniority. So it wasn't one Mona, it wasn't a small handful of people. This was a lot of employees. It was not disgruntled individual. It was a pattern
and
brew Dawn's initial response, which was a letter from what acknowledging that our culture has become too pressurized, was widely criticized and insufficient and performative,
didn't they? No, this isn't a question. It's more a statement. They did a program on the telly where they were looking for a replacement or a chief executive.
Yes, yeah.
And that kind of lifted the lid on the whole, on the whole environment there. And you kind of got the impression, but it
wasn't quite
as Yeah, there was rosy as it seemed off the back of it,
yeah. So James Watt is apparently one of the most interesting, complicated figures in recent British business history. Again, quite a statement. He has got a genius for marketing, and he has got a genuine passion for beer. I completely believe that, because they were the engine that created brew dogs rise. His book, business for punks, which was published in 2015 is a genuine, often excellent piece of business writing
that
does reflect insight from his journey, his personality, combative, attention seeking, reflexively provocative, possibly the source of some of the company's problems. And I think that when you've got a founder led business like that, and the founder is so intrinsically linked to how the business runs, if you've got someone who is quite
adversarial,
volatile, almost,
it is
reflected in the culture. It is reflected in the business. And that is what happened.
Yeah,
he stepped back from his role as CEO in 2024 initially remaining as Chairman, before leaving the business entirely. But by that point, the damage was, really, did
you leave that with quite a lot of money
as
well? Yes.
Are you going to come to it? Yeah.
So financially, brewdox financial position was for most of its existence, significantly less triumphant than its public narrative suggested, which is the case for most businesses anyway. The company posted losses in multiple years throughout its growth phase, justified, internally and externally, as investment in future growth. Again, I mean,
if
there was still around now, you wouldn't be criticizing that. You'd be saying that's a standard part of growth investing for for that the US expansion, huge and expensive facility in Columbus, Ohio, which was substantial capital commitment, but the under formed underperformed expectations for many years.
Yeah, after all, they were almost selling snow to Eskimos by selling craft ale to Americans. You know this, they have a real issue over there, which is where they have such saturation of different beer types. But they also have a problem with distribution over there as
well.
It costs so much money to distribute across America because you've got these
different stations. Yeah, the global bar network at its peak, included over 60 included bars in over 60 countries. Was operationally complex, heavily exposed to the hospitality pressures of the post 2020 environment with energy costs surging, consumer spending interacting the cost of living crisis, the margins, which were never good, just came under severe pressure. So bar closures followed. The Columbus facility went in 2024 in multiple rounds of redundancies, the 1.8 billion pound valuation, which had been based on growth project projections that were not being met, became theoretical. It just
just
wasn't true by
2425 the company that once talked about $100 billion IPO, was navigating a very difficult financial restructuring,
sorry, 100 $100
billion IPO,
really? Yeah, one of
the most troubling dimensions of the brew dog story is what it meant for the 130,000 plus small investors. So you and the 129 99,000 other people, many were ordinary beer enthusiasts, enthusiasts who put 95 finding 500 or a few 1000 pounds. They're not sophisticated investors. They are just people who genuinely supported a
brand. They believed in it, believed in the whole thing. Yeah, some people put up to a up to five grand
they wanted. They just wanted
in terms of, it's not actually investment, it's
no but it's
relief for
your average person who's not investing, the shares they received were in a private company with no secondary market. They couldn't sell them without brew dogs Corporation finding a buyer,
you
were stuck with them. Basically, when the company's financial position deteriorated, the valuation contracted, and the notional value of those shares fell significantly. Unlike institutional investors, who had board representation, financial information, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the equity punks had limited rights and limited information. It was innovative and authentic as a model in its early stages, but the power imbalance between
just.
Standard investing and this model,
it
just didn't protect you in any way. So you're left with something that's essentially worthless, a pub you can't spend your discount in.
Yeah,
so I think
I've still got the app.
Oh, good.
I think just keep it on the brew.
Dog is it is genuinely complex. It is a fascinating study into how guerrilla marketing disruption, you know, really passionate family businesses can take off
and riding the crest of the craft ale movement and a new movement like that.
Yeah,
they have, because they it
was the right people at the right time doing the right thing. Absolutely,
yeah,
but there's so many other lessons about how if you have a set of values, if you are not living those as a company and as a person, you can't cover that up forever, that is going to come
out
sooner or later. And you know, you can't grow at this speed without having margins in place and structure in place, and financial security in place,
and everyone on that same journey as well.
But, yeah, but if you're alienating
your work so yeah. So if you don't take people on the journey with you, people are going to get left behind, and they're going to stop there's going to start becoming tension and friction,
yeah, and it would be quite easy to just blame James Watt for everything, and it absolutely wasn't just him, but his i when you're a founder and when it is you've literally found it on yourself and your personality. It is the greatest asset and the greatest weakness in the business. And unfortunately, he was a liability,
and
he just managed to tank his own
well, he became, he became the risk.
Yes, yeah. And it was too late by that point,
yeah.
So I just found it really, really interesting, because I know you love beer.
It's a fascinating story.
It's a fascinating story,
yeah. And I can't help but feel a slight grief over it, you know, the loss, the loss of that, that space in Nottingham that I particularly loved going into, I always loved the variety they had,
and you've been
drinking it
since the beginning, yeah.
And the staff there, they were always solid and dependable. You went in there any a year after, or even two years after, and the same staff were there behind the bar, so they had something going. And
I was assuming you started with punk IPA right at the beginning, because it was, you like things,
because it was new, like, delicious, yeah. And it was even though Scottish, it was homegrown, you know, effectively, you know, yeah,
yeah, Nottingham, Scotland,
yeah,
it just, I don't know, it really fascinated me. If you'd have had this conversation with me two years ago, I would have told you that brew Dawn will be around forever. They've done a really good job of scaling. I'm really impressed by their marketing. And
that's what I would have thought, to be honest,
and to have this level of decline so rapidly in such such a short space of time,
yeah,
that came out badly. Such a short space of time is just
sounds to me like it was the it was expansion into America, that that's that was probably what undermined it.
I don't think there was one thing that caused the act,
but I do think massive,
yeah, the amount of money they invested in Ohio, it probably wasn't a market they should have,
yeah, with it, with a confident expectation it was going to work, you know. But how many people along the way advise them?
And sometimes,
rightly or wrongly,
when you start a business, all right, a lot of people start because they want to earn some extra money, or they want to pay the bills, whatever it is. And then there's growth, and that's fine, but then there's growth. For the sake of growth, when do you go? Do you know what? I'm big enough. I don't need to push it any further. I don't need to do more. When does it just become a bit selfish,
fiduciary responsibility of a business owner is, is to forever perpetuate growth.
Their responsibility to him,
well, to the business, to the business, that is, that is what you sign as a director, yeah,
but the business is a living entity,
no.
But it's seen as an organism, really, that you, you have to keep feeding it. But there's a lot of ego that came into
there was a lot of ego that goes into that. I think there's a lot of ego that goes into growth full stop. I think I'm going to talk about this another time with you. But that
like this is, this is this is what capital is all
about,
capitalism. Rather, that's
the one. Capital is just money. Talk about the definition of success and what it means to different people. And for him, obviously it just meant bigger and bigger and bigger and louder and all the rest of
it. After a while, that in itself, must become so intoxicating. The challenge is always on. Otherwise you get bored with it. You know, so
seduced by
well, and if that's all you're expecting, all you're hoping for, that is the next step. That's the next step. That's the thing that keeps driving
you on the grass, always greener. See, I don't think I get caught in that trap.
Well, no, it's easy to say in hindsight. Well, I suppose you know, we can sit here like a poor person, but what was going on inside, inside the head of, you know, of a person that actually continues to do this? And we've there are so many businesses that have had utter failure, and the the owners of those businesses keep going in. It's either a vain hope or it's hope against all the odds, yeah, but they keep going with it.
And.
And then it all ends up falling apart,
yeah? And
there
are different ways to do it. So remember innocent remember this still exists. You know, innocent drinks. I
loved
innocent drinks. I've always loved innocent drinks. I love their branding. I love their marketing. Love everything. When they got to the point where they needed to grow more, they sold out to Coca Cola,
yeah,
which was the complete antithesis of what they stood for, and their customers were up in arms. They were so gross. It's been okay, all right. They've probably lost a core of
they've been left
across
length, haven't they? Yeah, to operate, and
that's worked, I think,
like a light touch,
yeah? With brew Dawn, they kept it to themselves, and they couldn't do it all, yeah, and there was no real
plan
for this next step, except for bringing in the US
equity
firm. But, yeah, I think sometimes you can do it right, sometimes you can't
it just,
I'm really sorry you don't get any more beer. There's other beer. Other beers are available.
Other pubs exist. Well, I found replacements.
It was a short lived grief sock that was really small
15 years or whatever. Yeah, tickling enough just to move on. No
doubt we'll revisit this at some point, because we do love talking about beer.
Yes,
all right, thank you.
Thank you very much for that.
You
thanks for supporting us by downloading and listening to this episode
and a massive thank you also to Dawn II, Emily, Nat and Lewis and the BTD studios for all your expertise in bringing our podcasting dream to reality.
We'd love it if you commented on this episode, as we'd really like to know what you think and what you might like us to cover in future episodes, and
we'll see you on the next one.
You.