Brewdog has never been about subtlety. Since founding the company in Aberdeenshire in 2007, Martin Dickie and James Watt had seemed to enjoy courting controversy and leaning into the For Punks mantra that has been ascribed to everything associated with the Brewdog brand. Fifteen years later, the enfants terribles of the UK craft beer revolution had taken their operations from a derelict industrial unit in Fraserburgh to a global empire with four breweries and more than 120 bars across 57 countries.

In January 2020, Forbes reported that the company had a valuation of “around $2 billion”; six years later, the company would be sold in a pre-pack administration to a US-based beverage and cannabis company, Tilray Brands, for just £33m.

By the time of that sale, neither Watt nor Dickie worked at the company they had created.

“What Brewdog was doing initially was not much different to what other adventurous breweries were doing at the time, which was trying to emulate the success of craft beer in America,” explains beer writer and chairman of judges for the International Beer Challenge Jeff Evans.

“Where Brewdog really succeeded was in marketing. They were able to put their name out there – and, to be fair, the idea of craft beer too – through the outlandish publicity activity, which attracted a lot of attention.

“Coining the punk terminology was a clever idea and attracted young drinkers who previously weren’t so interested in beer. This largely accounts for the early, runaway success, in my view, but they also alienated a chunk of the market from the start with their relentless provocation and increasingly tasteless stunts.”

It was the early marketing stunts that thrust Brewdog into the mainstream. The fledgling brewery entered an abv arms race with German brewery Schorschbräu, which eventually saw Brewdog release The End of History, a 55% abv beer packaged in taxidermy roadkill and retailing for £500 a bottle. Later, the pair of founders drove a tank down Camden High Street to announce the launch of the first Brewdog bar in London and another stunt saw Watt and Dickie filming themselves blowing up bottles of Heineken with rockets. It was later revealed that Watt had invested half a million pounds into the Dutch brewing giant.

In 2015, Watt and Dickie celebrated the launch of the fourth round of Brewdog’s Equity For Punks crowdfunding scheme by dropping share prospectuses over London attached to stuffed “fat cats”.

Minor investors

The thing that set them apart was the Equity for Punks thing,” says drinks writer Mandy Naglich.

“That was really interesting, especially in the US because we didn’t have a lot of breweries doing that, and that’s what makes people so infuriated now is that they’ve hurt this massive swath of minor investors.”

It’s now that the Equity For Punks initiative, once a symbol of the business’s anti-corporate, community-owned spirit, is the centre of so much controversy. Following the acquisition by Tilray, it’s unlikely that the 200,000-plus investors will see a return on the £100m that was invested in the company.

“The Equity For Punks investors will not get anything back as they were all shareholders in Brewdog,” says Nick Stockley, partner at Mayo Wynne Baxter legal practice.

“Shareholders sit right at the bottom of the pile in a company insolvency, meaning they are only paid after everyone else. In this case, it seems a virtual certainty that other creditors who rank above shareholders will not be paid anything either.”

That’s the danger of creating a platform for community ownership. When the business is growing, the fans feel part of an exciting movement, but when the business struggles, it can feel personal.

“They were quick to take advantage of the emerging idea of crowdfunding with their Equity for Punks campaign that allowed them to expand very rapidly,” says Evans. “Other breweries followed them down this route and, sadly, not many have provided good returns for the investors in the long term, as those who chipped in to fund Brewdog’s development are now finding out.”

Another casualty of the collapse has been the brand’s on-trade arm. Brewdog pubs have been closing with some regularity for the past couple of years. The Tilray purchase, which included the company’s brewery and 11 bars, saw the immediate closure of dozens of bars and mass redundancies.

“The acquisition led to 484 job losses and 38 bar closures, even though 733 roles were saved in the process,” says Francesca Wild, senior associate solicitor at Morr & Co LLP.

“This development comes after years of scrutiny over workplace culture and operational challenges at Brewdog, meaning the human impact of these redundancies was always likely to face heightened attention. In these moments, employees look for clarity, empathy and reassurance, even when commercial realities are difficult.

“Large‑scale job losses of this kind trigger collective consultation obligations, requiring employers to share information, consult meaningfully with employee representatives and notify the authorities where required.

“Failure to follow these processes can leave organisations exposed to protective awards, a risk that becomes even more significant from April 2026, when the maximum protective award doubles from 90 to 180 days’ pay under the Employment Rights Act changes, as well as unfair dismissal claims.

It’s the employees and Equity Punks that are central to a post Watt made on Linkedin following the sale of the company.

“I am heartbroken for all of the hard-working and passionate team members who have lost their jobs,” he writes. “I am heartbroken for all of our brilliant equity punks who did not get the return on their investment they wanted. And heartbroken to have dedicated the best 20 years of my life to something that ultimately did not have the ending we all wished for.

“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… I would have loved to save every single job and every single equity punk investment. Ultimately, I couldn’t. That will stay with me.”

The tragedy of Brewdog is built into what made the company so successful. This was a brewery for its people and with the closure of its venues and seeming collapse of its fan-investment programme the brewery has hurt the ones it loved most.

Now, Brewdog has become something that would’ve seemed impossible at the height of its pomp – a cautionary tale.