Every Dog Has Its Day

I may as well admit it now.  BrewDog and I have history. This blog was making fun of them long before it was fashionable.  Back in the day, 12 years ago amazingly enough, those plucky young upstarts from Ellon were shaking up the craft brewing scene with stunts and other assorted attention-grabbing publicity.  I'd love to be able to say I saw straight through them from the very beginning.  But I just thought they were ridiculous and needed making fun of.  And the hipster posturing with over-hopped beer and distressed typefaces was a trout in a teacup as far as targets went in 2013.

The actual beer BrewDog made at the time was still reasonably ok as far as I recall.  I ordered a few from the website (navingating past the "opportunity" to become an Equity Punk, of course) and even visited their now soon to be closed bar in Camden.  It was echoey and expensive, but there was clearly a market for such things back then.  There was a formula behind it, clearly, but it seemed reasonably innocent and authentic.

2017 was, I think, the point when questions started to be asked.  BrewDog's founders James Watt and Martin Dickie sold a large chunk of the company to private equity house, TSG Consumer Partners.  At that point, people began to wonder it BrewDog was as "punk" as it claimed to be.  It seems laughable in retrospect, really, as Watt and Dickie were clearly on the same startup/grow/sell out path as all those other "upstart" businesses like Innocent Smoothies and Teapigs.  The difference being was that craft beer is seen as a "community" and sellouts are seen as a "betrayal".  It's likely that BrewDog never came back from this.

Ex-fishing boat captain and friend, yesterday

A few years of misfired publicity, a highly critical BBC documentary, and the questionable antics of James Watt himself later, BrewDog as a brewer and bar owner is barely mentioned now in what remains of the "beer communication industry".  Punk IPA is now a commodity product sold in Wetherspoons and Tesco.  The bars are much the same as they were in 2013, with their now dated menus and industrial design aesthetic.  James Watt is virtually a pariah due to his many "sins" both serious and minor - being one of many people using "neurodiversity" as an excuse for dubious behaviour.  And the company itself?  The FT has revealed that BrewDog is loss-making, debt-ridden and its shares virtually worthless.

Is BrewDog doomed?  Hard to say.  They've announced closures of 10 bars, but service businesses both good and bad close branches all the time.  It could become yet another piece of corporate infrasructure to be sold off either whole or piece-by-piece, or it could just rumble on as a zombie business for a few more years.  Either way, Jimmy has made his pile and is no doubt looking to get out and spend more time with his Made In Chelsea wife and banal YouTube channel.

What I think will doom BrewDog in the end is the fact the world has moved on and it hasn't.  It's just not fashionable any more.  Every dog has its day, and this dog has had it.