When BrewDog opened its doors in Ireland in 2019 - which it initially referred to as Outpost Dublin - it marked something of a high water mark for the Scottish craft beer brand.
Not necessarily because entry to the Irish pub scene was so important - but because it came at a point when the company's valuation had reached dizzying heights.
But despite having been worth well over £1 billion as recently as a decade ago, BrewDog was this month taken over for a mere £33 million.
The brand and some of its pubs - including Dublin - remain, but it still marks a dramatic fall from grace for what was once a leader in the craft beer market.
Where did it all begin?
BrewDog was first established in 2007 by James Watt and Martin Dickie - they were two school friends who ended up living together while studying at university.
James was studying law and economics while Martin studied brewing and distilling - and that interest quickly rubbed off on James.
They started home-brewing and, after graduating from university, the idea of forming a beer company began to grow in their minds.
And this was happening at an important time.
While the craft beer movement had been around in one form or another for decades, in the early 2000s, it was enjoying a minor boom. That was helped by a number of factors - including greater consumer awareness (particularly online), easier access to beers from around the world and a growing cohort of customers looking for something different.
In the UK in particular, the craft market was given a major boost by then chancellor Gordon Brown, who in 2002 eased the alcohol duties for those making less than 3 million litres of beer a year.
So by the mid-to-late 2000s, there were lots of older craft beer brands that were making the most of their new advantage, and newer ones trying to carve out a place in this expanding market.
And Scotland-based BrewDog became one of those scrappy start-ups.
It started life with a very romantic story of a plucky up-start - with Watt and Dickie scraping together the money they had, managing to secure a £20,000 loan and using that to lease a decrepit garage, which they stocked with second hand brewing that they’d picked up cheap. (Though that story is dampened somewhat by the fact, which emerged later, that Watt is the son of a millionaire.)
Still, though, the two had to put hard work in to create and then try and promote their first beer - Punk IPA - which ultimately became their flagship product.
By their account, it wasn’t going well at first - with trips to and from farmers' markets in an old Fiat Punto apparently not leading to much in the way of sales.
But things suddenly turned around for them when they entered - and won - a competition for food and drinks brands held by Tesco.
The prize for that was being stocked in every Tesco in the UK - which saw BrewDog go from almost no sales, to a monthly order that was twice the size of what they were able to produce.
And that became the foundation for the company's rapid growth.
Was their beer that good?
That is of course a matter of opinion - but there were lots of craft beer companies offering lots of different beers and, while people will have their favourites, the reality is that no one company is doing something that’s light years ahead of the others.
But what BrewDog - and particularly James Watt - did do differently was marketing.
From the get-go they had a very clear idea of what the brand was about - or, maybe more importantly, what it wasn’t about.
Immediately they tried to pitch themselves, in a very obnoxious, in-your-face kind of way, as the opposite of what the big brewing companies like Heineken, Diageo and AB Inbev were doing.
Those multinationals had made beers dull and boring because they wanted to be able to mass produce their product for as little as possible, BrewDog said, and they were coming along to shake things up. And they had fairly grand notions around what they were doing - they called their first beer 'punk’ because they fancied themselves as being to beer what punk rock was to music.
And as part of this, they also mastered the art of the publicity stunt.
That saw them do things like drive a tank down a road in Camden in London, or claim to hide solid gold cans in some multipacks (which turned out to be gold-plated brass).
One of their most attention-grabbing stunts saw them launch a limited edition beer called The End of History which, with its 55% ABV, claimed to be the strongest beer ever made. But to really try to hammer home the spectacle of it, they packaged each of the 12 bottles made in the taxidermied body of a small, wild animal.
BrewDog also regularly stirred the pot with their beer names – like getting sued by the estate of Elvis Presley for calling one beer ‘Elvis Juice’. Their naming also saw them fall afoul British brewing industry standards body the Portman Group, which put an effective ban on the beer they called 'SpeedBall'.
Portman Group also reprimanded them when they launched an 18% Imperial Stout, because it claimed the drink would encourage irresponsible drinking. BrewDog, though, rejected this and accused Portman Group of trying to protect the market share of Big Beer.
(Months later it transpired that Portman Group had only received one complaint about BrewDog’s Imperial Stout - and it was lodged by James Watt.)
But all of this worked very well for BrewDog for a time…
Absolutely - they grew rapidly in their early years. People liked the beers, but perhaps more importantly they liked the brand.
By getting so much media coverage and becoming well known to all consumers – not just craft beer aficionados - BrewDog quite cleverly positioned itself as the entry point into the market.
It meant that the average consumer who was curious about craft beer, but unsure of where to start, were more likely to default towards a BrewDog beer. After all, it was a name that they'd at least heard of.
But BrewDog also accumulated genuine credibility among conscientious consumers, beyond its flashy publicity stunts.
As the business grew and they moved to a new, bigger brewing facility, they made a big play about it being carbon neutral. They were one of the earlier adopters in the UK of the living wage. They regularly launched special edition beers where the profits were pledged to certain charities and rights groups.
This was pitched as a small business doing the right thing, but it was also an opportunity for them to point out the perceived wrongs of the bigger brewers. And they clearly got under the skin of the mainstream beer-makers.
In 2012, BrewDog was supposed to be named "bar operator of the year" at the British Institute of Innkeeping awards - but on the day a different bar was named the winner.
It quickly emerged that someone who worked for Diageo - which was the main sponsor of the awards - had told the organisers at the event they’d end their association if BrewDog won.
One of the reasons the subterfuge came to light was because the bar that was announced as the winner spotted 'BrewDog' etched onto the trophy, and refused to accept it.
Diageo apologised afterwards and said it was a "serious misjudgement" by a member of staff. But it was probably the best thing that could have happened to BrewDog - here was proof that the plucky underdog was putting it up to big business, and proof that the big guys were willing to fight dirty to defend their sales.
And on the back of that they continued to grow a very devoted fanbase of customers - something some people described as almost cult-like at times.
Which brings us to Equity for Punks… what was that?
This was a crowdfunding scheme BrewDog first launched in 2010 - where they offered customers the chance to become shareholders in the company.
They pitched it as their way of raising money without having to sell out by being acquired by a big brewer - which a lot of other craft beer companies have done - or by taking money from corporate investors.
They held a number of fundraising rounds - and it’s estimated that 200,000 people bought shares, with the company raising upwards of £75m in the process.
And that money was vital in them expanding their production capacity with new facilities in Scotland, and eventually Australia and the US. They also went on to establish a distillery, and they opened pubs across the UK, Australia (and eventually one in Dublin too.)
Some of their 'Equity Punks' invested as a kind of membership club. Shareholders were given discounts in BrewDog pubs and on beer purchases made through their website - so a small investment could potentially have been a money-saver for a regular customer.
Others, though, invested serious money into shares because they believed so strongly in the brand - and in the company’s ability to grow.
When did things start to go sour for them?
It's hard to pinpoint an exact moment - but the company’s downturn reflects something that often happens to disruptive, start-up brands as they transition into profitable, large businesses.
By 2017, BrewDog had a turnover of more than £110m - it was employing hundreds of people across multiple countries - and in that situation it’s much harder to pretend to be punk.
The publicity stunts that might have been seen as edgy a few years ago, suddenly start to look cringe or even reckless.
And the "move fast, break stuff" start-up mentality stats to get undermined by the responsibility a company has to its staff as well as its customers.
But 2017 was also a pivotal year for BrewDog, because it's when they first took in investment from something other than their own customers. In this case, it was US private equity firm TSG.
TSG pumped £213m in for a 22.3% stake, valuing BrewDog at more than £1 billion. As part of the deal, Watt and Dickie got £50m each, while still retaining management roles and a major stake.
But the deal also meant they suddenly had a big, corporate entity on the board for the first time - and there was real scrutiny on the business.
Just a year after investing TSG criticised Watt for his aggressive spending that they said he was doing this to try to create a growth story that matched his unrealistic valuation.
And the fact that its growth was unrealistic was important for more reason than one - because TSG were entitled to a specific return each year, and falling short of their targets essentially entitled it to further increase its influence over the business.
And things really started to unravel at this point, didn’t they?
Yes, all of that private equity money didn’t just bring internal scrutiny - it also recast the consumers’ image of the brand.
It was no longer a small craft brewer - it was a large, profitable business with a deep-pocketed corporate backer. Suddenly many, including some of BrewDog's own fans, started to become a lot more critical of what they were doing.
And the fact that they built their brand on being in opposition to big business, and having very progressive ideals, added even more pressure.
In 2022, BrewDog launched an ad campaign saying they were the anti-sponsor of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, which they said was them making a stand against the country’s human rights violations.
But people were quick to point out that BrewDog were guilty of hypocrisy, having only recently done a deal with a state-backed distributor to make the beer available in Qatar. They also continued to show the tournament in their pubs - meaning they weren’t even trying to properly boycott the event they were so critical of.
Other stunts - like the claim that Watt and Dickie had legally changed their names to 'Elvis' as part of their dispute with the Presley estate, or that they’d sent Vladimir Putin some pro-LGBTQ beer lines - also turned out to be untrue.
But far more importantly, in the early 2020s, reports began to emerge of a toxic work culture.
Staff at one stage wrote an open letter, accusing Watt of being at the centre of this, and a later BBC Disclosures investigation unearthed claims of Watt’s inappropriate behaviour towards female staff, and suggestions that the company had broken import laws.
A subsequent complaint to regulator Ofcom about the broadcast was rejected.
Unfortunately, accusations of toxic work culture and inappropriate behaviour by management are common in the start-up scene, and they often get overlooked. But they are far more likely to become a major problem when it’s happening at a billion pounds multinational.
And so, after years of manufacturing controversy to help grow the business, BrewDog started to face report after report that undermined its right-on, punk image - seriously damaging the brand it had cultivated.
So what’s happened to the business since then?
The reputational damage meant it went into Covid already weakened - and lockdowns and restrictions saw revenues at its pubs serious hampered.
And while it managed to trade out of the pandemic, the brand has never really recovered from those twin shocks.
Both Watt and Dickie stepped away from their management roles but remained shareholders - and really the firm has been hobbling along in recent years, with even more damage being taken to the image it had built.
In 2024 it announced it would no longer pay new employees the living wage, again damaging its progressive brand, then last year it announced the closure of some pubs - including its first in Aberdeenshire in Scotland.
After that it brought in consultants, who ended up becoming administrators - and they started looking for a buyers.
At the start of this month it was announced that some of the UK and Irish operation have been acquired by Tilray - a US drinks and medicinal cannabis company.
They’re taking the brand and brewing business and a handful of the pubs - including the one in Dublin - but 38 other UK pubs were left behind, with hundreds of jobs likely to go there.
In LinkedIn post, James Watt said he was "heartbroken" by the turn of events, and admitted to making many mistakes during his time in charge.
"With the benefit of hindsight there are also so many other things I would have done differently. At times we expanded too fast and diversified too broadly. During certain periods I did not control spend well enough across the business and furthermore I feel that I did not respond to certain crises that we faced (and we faced many) in a way that was authentic and true to who I am. Those decisions sit with me," he wrote.
More recently, Tilray has also acquired the Australian business - including its bars and breweries there.
The future of the US operation is still up in the air - but whatever happens to it, it represents a sizable fall from grace.
The UK business was sold for £33m - a far cry from the £1bn plus valuation that it hit less than a decade ago.
And because TSG had preference shares - they're first in line in terms of who gets that money - while other creditors are scrambling to try and recoup some of their losses.
Meanwhile the Equity Punks - the customers who bought into BrewDog in the early days to help fund its growth - will almost certainly see their investment completely wiped out.
