Poodog

[Sebastian Cobb]

It's not exactly a secret that Brewdog were a bunch of posing dickheads and living in Aberdeen I'd heard a fair share of rumours from people on the ground about their dickheadery but this is fairly damning:

https://twitter.com/PunksWPurpose/status/1402724680637747200

[Fambo Number Mive]

To add insult to injury
@BrewDog
CEO has now sent an email round all staff encouraging them to sign a counter letter dismissing the deeply-held fears of current and former staff. Deplorable stuff from
@BrewDogJames

https://twitter.com/FairHospitality/status/1402918707043749888


The counter letter starts with

"Dear Punks with Purpose.

Wow"

[Sebastian Cobb]

When they were still up and coming, before they had their first bar on Marischal St, I was at the annual Aberdeen beer festival in Pittodrie when a mate asked one of the volunteers about them. The guy clearly loathed them and told us they were essentially blacklisted from the place because one year they invited them to supply some beer for the festival, which they did, but then sent an invoice after the fact, wankers.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Craft beer giants Brewdog have been forced to payout £12,000 to a former worker after they sacked him because he was about to be declared blind.

The billion-pound firm has been accused of "astonishing" ignorance in the way they handled the case, making "blanket assumptions" on employee James Ross' condition and paying "lip-service" to equality laws.

Mr Ross, who suffers from eye condition Stargardt disease, was working in the company's Aberdeenshire brewery when he told bosses his eyesight had deteriorated and he was awaiting tests.

Despite reports from the RNIB and a specialist in visual impairment saying the 47-year-old could continue to work if some adjustments were made, Brewdog took the decision to dismiss him.

Mr Ross, from Fraserburgh, has now won his case for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination at an employment tribunal...

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16418616.brewdog-payout-12-000-sacking-brewery-worker-faced-turning-blind/

[Consignia]

Bah, I was just reading about this about to create a thread entitled: Brewdog and the Dweebs[nb]Not calling the complainants Dweebs, just how the alpha twats in charge might characterise them[/nb].

It is indeed no shock that the corporate company that markets itself as punk but is anything but, is less than savoury.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

"We hear you loud and clear"

Remember that dog that ate the toddler shit?

[Butchers Blind]

 Never had any Brewdog brew. Is it up to scratch?

[Consignia]

I'd describe most of them as "OK". I'd have punk IPA over a lager, but I wouldn't order it willingly most of the time. There are a couple of nice ones, but mostly not the stuff they pump out into the super markets, and the good ones in their bars are ridiculously priced.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Punk IPA is probably their best and the rest of them just taste like less good versions of it. It's ok occasionally but I wouldn't drink it religiously.

[Consignia]

I kind of like the Layer Cake Stout they've got out at the moment, which isn't like Punk IPA at all. I'd agree, that your Jack Hammers, Hazy Janes, Dead Ponys, etc. are all from the same barrel.

[mippy]

Aldi Anti-Establishment IPA for me.

"Equity for punks" is hilarious, though.

[Blinder Data]

Finally a PR battle that Brewdog is certain to lose. Taken long enough.

[non capisco]

The only good thing I'd have said for Brewdog is their alcohol free versions are decent taste facsimiles of the booze equivalents. But there are plenty of decent freely available no/low alcohol beer alternatives now, so fuck 'em.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Brewdog were reported to have threatened legal action against a pub and a bar using the word "punk":

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/28/brewdog-lawsuit-bar-punk-brewer-pub
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/26/brewdog-lone-wolf-birmingham-pub-change-name

Never been in a Brewdog and I never will.

[dr beat]

The only good thing I'd have said for Brewdog is their alcohol free versions are decent taste facsimiles of the booze equivalents. But there are plenty of decent freely available no/low alcohol beer alternatives now, so fuck 'em.

Let's set Bummerdog on Brewdog.

[Ferris]

Onto the boycott list they go!

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

They're absolute cunts. Problems run deeper than what an apology fixes. Arrogance and megalomania at the top of the business sets the culture. This is the end product of that.

Claiming to be listening and learning... Yet the same kind of mistakes keep happening.

[Harry Badger]

I thought beer was bad for driving awareness!

[The Culture Bunker]

I had some of that Punkdog stuff ages ago and thought "it's ok" but not really worth the £5 for 3x330ml cans that they ask for in Tesco. Never been in one of their bars either - I think there's two in Manchester - but reading the above letter makes me glad they've never had much of my cash.

I did try some of the Aldi knock-off version not so long ago and thought it was alright, with the benefit of being cheaper.

[mippy]

They had a shop near my office (really odd place to have one) that sold their beers plus other indies. Went in there a couple of times and never paid any attention to their own product - by that point even in the mid 10s it was feeling like something you could get anywhere.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Is this the next stage of the #metoo movement?

[wooders1978]

Their cider is bloody nice - their beer I can take or leave, over hopped nonsense

Reading the original letter I am confused on some things,  it doesn't really sound any different to any ambitious corporation to me, the exact things they are whining about happens where I work now and before - of course they aren't going to market themselves to consumers as big corp fatcats, all the other stuff internally is pretty much generic HR "we *really* care about you work units!" crap, it seems a bit niaive to be calling them out for not really being like how their marketing team present the company - add to that why did it open with the bit about "believing women" when it just seems to be a general gripe about a toxic management style that is affecting everyone?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Is this the next stage of the #metoo movement?

Actually quite possibly based on this spreadsheet compiled by someone on reddit and cross-posted to another forum I go on:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gdYk56hhAyLCW74LInzRdQ6t35wFCUz4INAeBMX8eYI/htmlview?fbclid=IwAR0ba4AryYzT0G0EHnS8kA8XbSl_TtcKfw9_7Jg20iZCJwZGIaf2HkQDhdo

It alternates between 'jesus fucking christ' and common or garden legend-gary-esque sexist banter (which is obvs still not on).

[willbo]

I just 30 mins ago walked past my local one and saw the advert in the window, "we have all craft beer and pay a living wage", and I felt a swell of respect at how much better than Spoons they must be

[Sebastian Cobb]

Are there any ethical pub chains? It seems to be an industry that is eating itself from the top-down.

My old local was leased from Punch Taverns and they seemed like a shower of bastards. A couple of pals worked for Mitchells and Butler pubs which are a bit of a different deal with 'bar managers' instead and they seemed like pricks as well.

[Paul Calf]

Wasn't this Bald Sex Pest's favourite cruising ground?

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't try and 'pull' people in pubs, but it strikes me as the kind of place where you'd have very little luck if you tried as it seems like the sort of place where people go in established groups and stick to them. IIRC although there are stools at the bar, they don't really encourage people to sit at them, almost as if the chairs were slung out as an afterthought.

Another laughable facile thing, in Scotland at least was their propensity to have bare brickwork on the inside... in a country where bricks aren't generally used and buildings are typically made out of some form of stone block.

[BritishHobo]

Their response letter seems astonishingly like it'll be more damaging than the actual accusations. I mean, the tone of it all, the patronising "your letter made us proud of how ballsy you all are", the counterintuitive angle of going "you're right, we fucking hate it as well sometimes, but we like it other times, so even stevens". It reads like they're genuinely expecting the ex-employees to blush and go 'well, when you put it like that...' Essentially it comes off as just another piece of FIERCE and PUNK branding/PR speak, like you might see it in an advert at a bus stop. We actually think it's PRETTY AWESOME that you were all BADASS enough to write this letter.

I struggle to believe anyone can have been so oblivious to the nature of social media outrage to actually think this was a good response. They would have actually come off better if they had just tweeted "These are disgruntled ex-employees and we deny the allegations.", which is saying something.

I like Brewdog a lot, have been getting into them a lot more since moving somewhere where I work extremely close to one of their bars. Why is everything I love run by bad knobheads?

I think I'll miss their rum the most, Five Hundred Cuts. Very nice. IT'S A SHAME IT'S ACTUALLY MADE BY FIVE HUNDRED CUNTS (ALLEGEDLY)

[BlodwynPig]

Rubbish, as anti-punk as a company can be. Their hostelries were hipster hell until all males became hipsters a few years ago.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Got a proper off telling from a beer fan for ordering a Brew Dog one time, I thought it was just because of the cringy "punk" branding but this thread explains it.

I've only have 'em a couple of times after that. One was alright but it tasted more like an upmarket alcopop.