Former BrewDog staff accuse craft beer firm of culture of fear<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLast modified on Thu 10 Jun 2021 13.47 EDT<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, barely anyone had heard of BrewDog, the self-styled \u201cpunk\u201d brewery founded in Aberdeenshire and named in honour of its co-founder\u2019s chocolate labrador.<\/p>\n
These days, it is a beer behemoth with 2,000 employees, annual sales of \u00a3215m, more than 100 bars in far-flung cities such as Tokyo, Brisbane and Berlin and its own hotel where the taps dispense draught ale.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Its flagship label, Punk IPA, can be found on the bar in pubs around the country and on the shelves of most major supermarkets.<\/p>\n
Backed by a cult following of 130,000 small crowdfunding shareholders, known as \u201cequity punks\u201d, BrewDog has grown at a rate of knots to become the standard-bearer of the so-called \u201ccraft beer revolution\u201d.<\/p>\n
Amid the hundreds of innovative startup breweries that have emerged in recent years to challenge global purveyors of mass-produced lager, such as Carlsberg and Heineken, BrewDog is by far the most successful.<\/p>\n
But its rapid growth, fuelled by controversial publicity stunts, has often tested the company\u2019s adopted image of the plucky challenger upsetting the corporate apple cart.<\/p>\n
And by co-opting the word \u201cpunk\u201d, BrewDog left itself open to charges of being anything but.<\/p>\n
In 2017, the Guardian exposed how BrewDog\u2019s pitbull lawyers aggressively pursued two small businesses that it felt were infringing on its intellectual property.<\/p>\n
One of its targets was a venue in Leeds that had plans to open under the name Draft Punk, the other a family run pub in Birmingham that had wanted to call itself Lone Wolf. BrewDog already had a spirit under that name, but decided to drop the case after generating negative publicity.<\/p>\n
Its co-founder James Watt hit back angrily via a blog and his Twitter account before eventually issuing an apology.<\/p>\n
Later that year, the sale of a 22% stake to a private equity firm raised fresh questions over whether BrewDog was really standing apart from the corporate world or had begun to join it.<\/p>\n
Undoubtedly, BrewDog does things differently, openly denouncing big beer companies, inviting its equity punks to raucous, beer-fuelled annual meetings, and loudly engaging in progressive issues such as climate change and LGBTQI+ rights.<\/p>\n
But some of its more eye-catching gestures have done as much to amplify the BrewDog brand as to garner attention for good causes.<\/p>\n
A so-called \u201ctransgender beer\u201d raised money for LGBTQI+ charities but drew criticism from Stonewall for the language used. A \u201cprotest beer\u201d mocking Vladimir Putin\u2019s homophobia deployed uncomfortable tropes about homosexuality.<\/p>\n
Pink IPA \u2013 a mock \u201cBeer for Girls\u201d released on International Women\u2019s Day 2018 and supposedly intended to challenge stereotypes, went down like a cup of warm ale. It merely gave fuel to the \u201cBroDog\u201d moniker that some on social media already using for the company, whose senior team is 72% male. Watt conceded that the idea had been \u201clost in translation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Other stunts have appeared crass without any apparent ethical upside.<\/p>\n
In 2015, intending to send up their own crowdfunding efforts, Watt and co-founder Martin Dickie filmed themselves begging and posing as sex workers. Thousands of people signed a petition calling the caricatures offensive.<\/p>\n
A web page launching BrewDog TV adopted the style of a pornography site, complete with beer-themed film titles such as Two Amateurs Go Brewdogging. Some of the beer industry\u2019s most respected female figures did not find the joke at all funny.<\/p>\n
Then there was the time BrewDog hired a dwarf to advocate for two-thirds pint measures, or used taxidermy animals in kilts to market what it claimed was the world\u2019s strongest beer.<\/p>\n
Watt has found himself apologising for stunts more than once \u2013 but with the benefit of the attention they generated already banked.<\/p>\n
Allegations of poor conditions experienced by the staff who helped BrewDog achieve its extraordinary growth may be harder to spin.<\/p>\n
Source: Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite its rapid growth, the Scottish brewer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23051],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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