Anarchy within the IPA: as punk brewer’s gross sales stall, are we previous peak BrewDog?

[ad_1] There comes a time in each punk’s life when they're not the snarling face of the avant garde.

Within the UK beer group, opinion is split about precisely when that sobering second arrived for BrewDog, the self-styled “punk” brewery based in Scotland in 2007 whose once-fizzing gross sales are actually turning flat.

Some level to the 2021 open letter by Punks with Function, a bunch of BrewDog workers who claimed to have endured a poisonous “tradition of concern”, engendered by the corporate’s bombastic and showmanlike founder James Watt.

“For many who had given them the good thing about the doubt, that was the second when individuals thought that they don’t need to be held up as a paragon of impartial beer,” says Matt Curtis, the founding editor of the drinks journal Pellicle.

James Watt (left) and Martin Dickie, the co-founders of BrewDog, of their Aberdeenshire brewery. {Photograph}: Alan Richardson/The Guardian Others return additional, to when the funding group TSG Client Companions paid £213m for a 22.3% stake in 2017. To the chagrin of some, BrewDog continued soliciting funding from the crowdfunders who had fuelled its preliminary progress, even after taking the personal fairness cash.

“That was a tipping level,” says the beer and meals author Melissa Cole. “After a non-public fairness firm has invested, can you continue to return to the effectively of your followers?”

Watt’s private {and professional} antics since stepping down as chief government final yr, broadcast relentlessly on social media, appear to have accomplished the migration into the institution.

“I examine the historical past of post-punk music with craft beer,” says Pete Brown, a beer author and creator of Tasting Notes: The Artwork and Science of Pairing Beer and Music.

“I’ve received a slide with [former Sex Pistols frontman] John Lydon doing the Nation Life butter business subsequent to an image of James Watt attending Nigel Farage’s birthday celebration.

“It’s just like the French Revolution … inevitably the revolutionaries develop into the reactionaries.”

Peak BrewDog Views might differ about when the brewer misplaced its countercultural credentials, however there may be little dissent amongst beer connoisseurs about one factor: we have now reached – and doubtless handed – peak BrewDog.

Outdoors what Brown calls the “beer bubble”, although, the hangover from the raucous progress story that outlined the corporate for thus lengthy is simply simply setting in.

Because it was based, gross sales have grown yearly by no less than 9% – and sometimes at a way more speedy clip – even through the Covid-19 pandemic. However monetary outcomes for 2024 launched earlier this month introduced that outstanding successful streak to a detailed. Takings all however flatlined in 2024, rising by lower than 1% to £357m.

Web revenues, which take note of the obligation sliced off the highest of a pint and despatched to the Treasury, truly fell barely. The corporate is taking up extra debt, at sky-high rates of interest, from TSG.

. James Taylor, the second chief government since Watt introduced his departure 18 months in the past – and the third James in a row to run the enterprise – pointed traders in direction of his most popular “adjusted” working revenue measure.

At that stage, BrewDog returned to the black, however solely to the tune of £7.5m. Pre-tax losses over the previous two years quantity to just about £100m.

To date, 2025 has provided little solace. BrewDog’s merchandise, together with its flagship Punk IPA, have been axed from 2,000 pubs as clients opted for rival beers. Final month, the brewer mentioned it might shut 10 of its personal UK bars, together with on its house turf in Aberdeen.

A few of that is right down to environmental elements. The sluggish financial system has constrained shopper spending throughout hospitality, whereas gen Z, a cohort who may need been anticipated to drink BrewDog 10 years in the past, are actually swerving alcoholic indulgence.

BrewDog says stories of its decline are exaggerated. Jettisoning loss-making bars will cut back prices, it argues, trimming a division that had over-expanded.

The corporate additionally performs down the impression of being elbowed off the beer pumps at so many pubs. They level to new distribution offers with huge venues, together with West Ham United’s London Stadium, the Isle of Wight pageant and that lodestar of punk tradition, Lord’s cricket floor.

These, say a spokesperson, have delivered greater than 3 times the quantity of gross sales misplaced from pubs.

However the notion of peak BrewDog is about rather more than the financials. It's, say observers, the inevitable end result of years of behaviour which have progressively chipped away at BrewDog’s insurgent picture till there was virtually no one left who believed in it.

From brash to cringe The whole lot appears proper with the world whenever you’re throwing stuffed toy cats out of a helicopter.

The 2015 stunt – meant to mock “fats cat” beer corporations – was simply considered one of many thought up by Watt and his fellow co-founder Martin Dickie, who adopted his associate out of the exit door earlier this yr.

Pink IPA is BrewDog’s signature beer. {Photograph}: Alan Richardson/The Guardian Their brash advertising and marketing technique elicited the odd eye-roll, however once in a while, the duo badly misinterpret the room.

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That very same yr, to ship up their crowdfunding efforts, the pair filmed themselves begging and posing as intercourse employees. Hundreds signed a petition calling the caricatures offensive.

Their Pink IPA – a mock “beer for ladies” launched on Worldwide Girls’s Day 2018 and supposedly meant to problem stereotypes – didn’t get many laughs from girls in beer.

By and huge although, drinkers beloved this model of devilment, whereas these within the business recognised {that a} rising tide lifted all boats and that within the early days no less than, BrewDog was making good beers.

“I used to be gushing about what they have been doing,” says Curtis. “They have been bringing the impetus from that US beer scene into the UK, which is what it wanted.”

He credit BrewDog with fostering proficient individuals who went on to run breweries themselves, echoing the outdated line that everybody who purchased the primary Velvet Underground document went on to begin a band.

Brown factors out that BrewDog has been a sufferer of revisionism too, from individuals who prefer to fake they have been all the time too cool for it. “They’ll say the beers have been all the time shit. No they weren’t. They're now however they weren’t again then.”

However the publicity missteps – to not point out the dissonance brought on by the corporate’s corporatisation – turned much less trivial.

Martin Dickie and James Watt (proper) photographed in 2016. {Photograph}: Alan Richardson/The Guardian In 2017, BrewDog attracted criticism for threatening two small bars with authorized motion, one for utilizing the title Lone Wolf – the identical as a spirit model that BrewDog was attempting to launch, and one other – in opposition to a Leeds pub – for calling itself Draft Punk.

The irony of attempting to copyright punk was not misplaced on beer followers.

Then got here the 2017 personal fairness funding and, in 2021 the bombshell Punks with Function open letter.

In response to mounting criticism, Watt acknowledged a few of his failings and apologised. However he reacted with fury to a BBC documentary that raised additional questions on his behaviour. The Guardian revealed that he had employed personal investigators to collect data on individuals who had spoken to the BBC.

One seemingly minor however telling element that emerged was that Watt, such a vocal critic of Huge Beer, even owned shares within the Dutch brewing large Heineken.

Canine days are over? Final yr, the corporate confronted a brand new workers backlash after dropping its dedication to the actual residing wage after which over its dealing with of a call by the EDL, a far-right group, to make use of its Waterloo bar as a gathering level for a rally.

Extra lately, Watt has courted ridicule for social media posts, together with movies filmed alongside his former actuality TV star associate Georgia Toffolo, wherein he has railed in opposition to taxation on enterprise and mooted delaying the duo’s marriage ceremony to keep away from a possible tax hit.

“Folks have checked out how he behaves, appeared on the model and thought they’d quite drink one thing else,” says Cole. “BrewDog has simply completely misplaced its id. Whether or not it was all simply smoke and mirrors is form of irrelevant.”

One cohort that BrewDog has all the time been ready fall again on was its military of shareholders, the “fairness punks” who've a monetary, in addition to an emotional stake within the firm, after participating in its early crowdfunding rounds.

Even their loyalty could also be examined.

BrewDog has beforehand indicated that it's looking for to drift on the inventory market, with valuations of as much as £2bn bandied about. Faltering progress since then seems to have made a valuation even half that measurement fanciful.

Detailed evaluation by the Monetary Occasions, revealed earlier this yr, concluded that weak profitability, with the phrases of the funding by TSG might have rendered the fairness punks’ stakes nugatory.

If that seems to be true, then some might look from BrewDog to the faceless brewing giants that they as soon as mocked and discover it unimaginable to inform which is which.

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