One of BrewDog’s co-founders, Martin Dickie, has left the company, announcing that he was stepping away from the company for personal reasons.
Dickie (right) and Watt at the start of their campaign to plant a ‘lost forest’
He and James Watt created the business in Aberdeen in 2007, declaring themselves craft beer punks and coming up with a stream of increasingly bizarre promotional stunts to grow their audience.
From driving a tank down Camden High Street to presenting bottled beer inserted within a taxidermied dead squirrel, BrewDog’s marketing was far from orthodox.
But the stunts — and, it has to be said, a range of beers that were at times excellent — propelled the business forward. Equity For Punks crowdfunding campaigns developed an army of BrewDog superfans who also benefited from their investments.
BrewDog bars sprang up all over the UK, then worldwide, with hotels added to the estate, too. The company was heralded as a living wage pioneer, although last year it backtracked to offering the minimum wage. A green gas plant was commissioned to power the Ellon brewery, but a scheme to plant thousand of saplings along the east coast of Scotland literally withered.
However, the big turning point the company’s fortunes can be traced back to a BBC Scotland documentary which aired in January 2022. It looked into claims of a toxic toxic attitudes and a culture of fear at the company, highlighted the previous year in an open letter from workers. But it went on to claim that James Watt behaved inappropriately towards certai members of staff.
Lawyers for Watt claimed that allegations against him were false, but this was rejected by Ofcom, who said that Watt and the company had not been unfairly treated in the documentary.
Last month, the company announced that it was closing 10 UK bars following a strategic review. Then this week it was revealed that draught BrewDog beers had disappeared from some 1,860 UK pubs in the last two years.
Addressing the Equity For Punks forum in June, chief executive James Taylor admitted that BrewDog’s current financials do not make great reading, but stressed that he thought things would look up in the second half of the year.
Dickie has recently started a medical cannabis company. He will be retaining his BrewDog shares.
“After over two decades in the brewing and distilling arena, sadly, for personal reasons, it’s time for me to leave the industry that I love deeply and hopefully had a positive impact in,” he said.
“Leaving Brewdog isn’t easy, but I’m ready to spend less time travelling and spend some more time at home with my young family.”
