The rise and fall of BrewDog: How the ‘punk’ beer company lost the plot completely

BrewDog is dead, sort of: The company once valued at £2 billion was sold this week for just £33 million, a fall so dramatic it feels less like a business deal and more like a cautionary tale. The brand that promised to explode onto the world stage has instead fizzled out like a flat pint.

Some BrewDog sites have survived the crash, including major bars at Waterloo and Canary Wharf in London. But many others weren’t so lucky. 38 bars have closed and 484 jobs have been lost following the company’s sudden fall into administration and rapid sale.

Unsplash/Alexander Ruiz

The collapse also crushed the hopes of thousands of fans who bought into BrewDog’s heavily marketed Equity for Punks investment scheme. It’s a remarkable downfall for a brewery that once dreamed of a stock market listing while preaching a proudly “punk” ethos.

The rise of craft beer’s loudest brand

Founded in 2007 by James Watt and Martin Dickie, BrewDog set out to shake up what they saw as the UK’s “stuffy” beer market. For a while, they succeeded.

Their beers, from Punk IPA to Hazy Jane and Dead Pony Club, became staples of bars across Britain. BrewDog pubs popped up in almost every major UK city, while international outposts stretched from Berlin to Brisbane. By the late 2010s the brand was everywhere, complete with merch drops, edgy marketing and a laddish, hipster aesthetic.

Unsplash/Ezra van den Broek

The world, briefly, was frothing for BrewDog.

When the cracks started to show

Things began to really unravel around 2021.

That year saw damaging allegations of a toxic workplace culture, which punctured the company’s carefully curated rebel image. At the same time, pandemic pub closures hit BrewDog’s bar-heavy business model hard.

More than 100 former employees signed an open letter under the name Punks With Purpose, accusing leadership of fostering a “culture of fear” driven by relentless pressure and burnout.

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Staff claimed the company’s obsession with growth meant PR stunts often mattered more than people.

Ironically, Watt had warned about exactly this problem years earlier in his book Business for Punks, writing: “Get your culture right and it’s pure plutonium. Get it wrong and it’s Chernobyl.”

PR stunts and mounting controversy

Unsplash/Sebastian Herrmann

BrewDog had always thrived on outrageous marketing. One infamous stunt involved hiring a person with dwarfism to stand outside Westminster for a week holding a placard reading “Size Matters” to campaign for two-thirds beer measures in pubs. Somehow, that one actually worked.

But over time the stunts and controversies piled up.The company was accused of stealing marketing ideas through fake job interviews, faced repeated criticism over environmental claims, and dealt with ongoing accusations about workplace culture.

In 2024, BrewDog was criticised after an Asian staff member said she was dismissed after raising concerns when members of the English Defence League held a meeting in the bar where she worked.

Too big, too fast

By 2025 the cracks were impossible to ignore. BrewDog announced the closure of 10 bars, admitting some locations were simply no longer viable. Founder Watt blamed “skyrocketing costs” and “unprecedented pressures.”

Meanwhile, nearly 2,000 UK pubs stopped stocking BrewDog beers altogether, a brutal blow for a brand built on being everywhere.

The ending feels inevitable. The company that built its reputation on being anti-corporate slowly became exactly that.

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Featured image credit: Unsplash