Is there a way forward for Brewdog?

Is there a way forward for Brewdog?

Post the departure of James Watt as Brewdog CEO there is some interesting commentary on what this means for Brewdog

Pete Brown writing in the Morning Advertiser rightly underlines how ground breaking the original Brewdog beers were(on cask and in bottle). He goes on to argues that James Watt became a sort of punk figurehead to promote the brand but that era of Brewdog has now passed.

Brewdog did a great deal to launch the craft beer industry in the UK but now it’s a global company with beers and breweries around the world.

James Beeson in the Grocer, concurs with this last point. On Watt he ponders if trying to manage the transition from a garage brewer to a multinational one was part of the reason for the numerous issues that followed Watt around. In short Watt may have been an inspired marketing man but a people manager he was not. This is far from uncommon across industry btw.

Beeson notes that despite increasing revenue Brewdog is not profitable. This is perhaps not surprising- achieving such a status takes time. But time appears to be short. TSG the US private equity group which owns over 20% of Brewdog is due to cash in by August 2024. That means either a float on the Stock Exchange (IPO) or a sale to another brewer or private equity group.

We shall see on that but there is one step the new CEO James Arrow can take right now to set Brewdog on a better path and that is to recognise a trade union, in this case Unite.

Workers join trade unions to protect and advance their conditions but Employers have reasons to recognise them, and many large beer companies do. They can make there is an agreed and orderly way of dealing with issues so they don’t distract from the business (which is what has happened at Brewdog) and they can also considerably reduce the amount of money required to employ legions of HR managers