Scottish craft beer chain BrewDog has announced the closure of six pubs due to spiralling operational costs and a lack of help from a “clueless government”.
Writing in a LinkedIn post, founder James Watt said it was "heart-breaking" to lose the six pubs across Aberdeen, London and Motherwell, but "reality in the hospitality space is starting to bite and bite hard... The government needs to get a grip, now”.
Watts wrote: “I warned a few weeks ago, costs are rising to such a degree, with no prospect of any help from a clueless government, that these very difficult decisions have to be made.
“It was going to be simply impossible to get these bars even close to financial viability in the foreseeable future.”
Despite the closures, BrewDog just opened its largest-ever pub in London’s Waterloo station, which Watts stated received over 20,000 visitors in the first two week alone.
“The Waterloo bar in many (ways) epitomises where we want to evolve our bar estate.
Of course not all our bars can have the scale of Waterloo, but we are looking to do something different with our bars - to provide incredible experiences for our wonderful, fun, loyal customers who want to drink a beautifully brewed beer, in a great environment, served by knowledgeable, passionate people with the option of the food we all love
Referring to themselves as punks never dissuaded the folks at BrewDog from engaging in the capital markets.
The long-running Equity for Punks capital-raising campaign raised a total of £30.2mln from tens of thousands of retail investors after kicking off in 2011.
The campaign courted controversy when BrewDog paired investments from these “Equity Punks” with a 22% minority sale to private equity firm TSG, raising fears that retail investors would lose out if the brewery ever floats.
Former BrewDog staff in 2021 accused the company of brewing not just pricey craft beer, but a culture of fear and misogyny in 2021.
The revelations caused many crowdfunding participants to lose faith in their investment.