Punk. Elvis Juice. Hazy Jane. Wingman. Malt Fiction. Crazy Monk. In 2007, Scotsmen James Watt and Martin Dickie founded BrewDog with a simple goal: stick two fingers up at the stuffy, supercilious world of Big Beer by making some of the most unquaffable booze in all of Christendom. And for much of the early 2010s they really did capture a particular millennial zeitgeist, as the aesthetic once lazily branded as “hipster” – the beards, the Black Keys, the BBQ pulled pork – ingrained its Red Wing boots firmly into the British public’s psyche.
Post-recession, the traditional English pub, with its sticky, patterned carpets, plush ruby red banquettes, and intimate, convivial atmosphere was on the way out (a whopping 1,973 establishments closed in the year following the financial crash). What followed was a reshaping of the public house itself, with BrewDog at the dark heart of it. Suddenly, exposed brick, industrial ventilation shafts, and harsh lighting became de rigueur, as pubs turned from welcoming third spaces, which often felt like extensions of someone’s front room, into experiential holding pens; places where the deep nidor of sticky wings and dragon fries mixed with the stale smell of spilled cloudy IPAs. The chairs were uncomfortable, the drinks were expensive, and the branding was very much a focus group’s idea of hip.
BrewDog always claimed to do things differently. Its headline initiative was Equity for Punks, a crowdfunding scheme which allowed regular old pintmen like you and me to become shareholders in the company (the Financial Times recently suggested that unless a buyer comes in with a mammoth offer for BrewDog soon, the shares sold to its 130,000 “equity punks” could be “worthless”). They drove a tank down Camden High Street, and decried “tasteless, apathetic, fizzy mainstream lagers produced by huge global breweries” (leaked emails from 2018 show that Watt was open to a partial sale to Heineken, though it did not end up happening). Watt and Dickie projected themselves naked on to the Houses of Parliament, for some reason.
This week, BrewDog announced the imminent closure of ten of their public houses – including their Aberdeen flagship and three London sites – citing “ongoing industry challenges”, such as “rising costs, increased regulation, and economic pressures”. It’s no secret that the hospitality industry is currently in dire straits, but it’s been a particularly tough half-decade for these counter-cultural upstarts. In June of 2021, a significant number of former employees penned an open letter, highlighting the “cult of personality”, “toxic attitudes” and a “culture of fear” felt by staff at the company. In 2022, a BBC One Disclosure investigation alleged inappropriate behaviour from then CEO James Watt towards female employees, accusations that he denied. In 2024, the brewer dropped their pledge to pay all staff the real living wage. Later that year, a second open letter – this time from team members at BrewDog’s showpiece pub in Waterloo station – hit the news, with claims of “bullying and gaslighting” from the management, as well as “racism, sexism and ableism”.
These allegations don’t seem to have impacted BrewDog’s bottom line too much. The company’s financial results for the year ending 31 December 2024 showed gross revenues of £357m, bringing them back into profitability for the first time since 2021. But what do the closures, which are expected to happen with just four days notice, signify for the brand? The trade union Unite described them as “not just morally repugnant, [but] potentially unlawful”. BrewDog has said there will be a 14-day consultation for all staff at risk of redundancy.
As for the consumer, walk into BrewDog Waterloo on any given weeknight and you’ll find a peculiar mix of commuters, tourists and team-bonding trips. There’s a slide, there’s a podcast studio, there’s an ice cream truck. It’s certainly hard to imagine the pub being anyone’s local. And it’s also hard to imagine the next generation of drinkers ever being particularly bothered about stepping foot inside its cavernous walls.
Much has been said about Gen Z’s supposed abstinence (a recent study by the beverage industry’s data trackers IWSR found that alcohol consumption among 18- to 25-year-olds actually rose in the UK from 66 per cent in 2023 to 76 per cent in 2025) but, anecdotally, you only need to cross the threshold of a traditional London pub on a Friday or Saturday night to see that the one thing BrewDog rallied against is now undoubtedly cool again: the proper boozer, with its packets of pork scratchings and mass-produced lager and stout. London pubs like the Blue Posts on Berwick Street in Soho, the King’s Head in Finsbury Park, and the Army & Navy in Dalston are regularly teeming with young people chasing fun and authenticity (and, yes, splitting the G). Even the relatively new buzzy Soho boozer, the Devonshire, eschews the stripped-back millennial aesthetic in favour of a classic, cosy pub feel. It’s part of a broader trend away from the bland minimalism of the 2010s towards something messier and freer – and towards something that, crucially, is less concerned with anti-establishment posturing.
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In 2024, Watt stepped down from his role as CEO after 17 years, “to take a bit of time off, to travel, [and] to spend more time with my family and friends”. James Arrow, who replaced him, also quit in March of this year. But since resigning, Watt has found a second wind as something of an online celebrity, creating banal video content with his wife Georgia “Toff” Toffolo (of Made in Chelsea fame), launching a Dragons Den-style TV show called House of Unicorns, and rubbing shoulders with Jim Davidson and Lee Anderson at Nigel Farage’s 60th birthday bash.
So is this the beginning of the end for BrewDog? Have we reached peak Punk? The world is a very different place now to what it was in 2007. The try-hard PR stunts, the private equity, and the controversial employment practises – all under the inauthentic guise of “punk” – feels, in 2025, deeply uncool. So, drink up your Lost Lager. It’s almost time for last orders.
[See also: A drinker’s guide to offshore London]
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