Cool brand outside, not that cool inside - Floor Staff/Kitchen Staff BrewDog Employee Review

2.0
Dec 30, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

They don't pay the minimum salary, which is good. They also train you on beer cultures and pay for the first stage of the Cicerone Scheme (Certified Beer Server), which is amazing if you are interested in beer.

Cons

- Management cares more about being cool than about sorting out real problems in the pub. Good vibes and cool outfits are not gonna fix that leaking pipe, guys. - In the branch where I worked, there were issues such as harassment or people drinking alcohol on work hours that were well known by everybody and no manager moved a finger to solve them. They were pretty serious issues that contributed to creating a really bad environment. - If the pub was full and you wanted to rest during your break, your only option was to sit on the floor, on the tiny space available between the office and the bin bags from the kitchen. Now imagine if you have decided to use your break to eat something. - I have seen perfectly responsible people being pressured to leave the job because a specific person didn't like something absurd and personal about them on one particular day that he was visiting. But I have also seen problem people with no management skills/experience being promoted because they were close to this person. So no, this is not a good place to build a career if that is what you are looking for. - Brewdog is very proud of its Unicorn Fund (where they share 10% of the benefits with their employees). This would be amazing if it wasn't because somehow, they have their ways to avoid to pay it. The venue where I worked used to make 30k easily, in a normal/busy day, the Christmas period was a huge boost for the sales and we knew that the pub didn´t pay any rent... However, nobody received any benefits at all. Nobody was informed about this situation in advance and, when asked about it, the management team avoided the subject. It might be true that there were no benefits, but the way it all was managed was dark, and the lack of information and communication, really frustrating. - Every payday someone was missing hours. In some moment it became normal to have newbies that were missing payslips until 1-1.5 months after they started working and nobody seemed to care much along the management team. In general, I think Brewdog has a good will to make things differently, and the values they defend as a company are great, but in the particular case of the venue where I worked it all got lost somewhere on the way.

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BrewDog Response
7y
Hi, thanks for taking the time to write to us to give us your thoughts. There’s a whole bunch of red flags raised by your review which we would really appreciate being able to act on and either fix the issues or give you a bit more context behind what’s going on – so this is the kind of things where it would be really valuable if you felt able to either talk to the People team or your Area Manager, if you don’t feel comfortable talking to your GM. We take the kinds of problems you’ve raised really seriously and have so many examples of where we’ve successfully fixed them – but only when the team involved have been really upfront with us about what’s going on. There are a couple of points that we are able to address here which we can reassure you on: Even where a site has been purchased rather than leased, it has to break even in terms of ongoing site investment, operating costs and overheads to be profitable for the Unicorn Fund. We’re certainly not “finding ways to avoid paying” – 32 out of 39 bars achieved profitability and received Unicorn Fund for 2018. However, your management team absolutely should have been able to explain to you why your site wasn’t profitable and what you could do to help, and we’re really sorry that this hasn’t been the case. Our People and Payroll teams are always willing to help try to resolve queries around pay – we know how critical this is for people so if you reach out to us directly, we’ll do everything we can to help. Like you’ve pointed out yourself – sometimes issues arise in specific areas or sites and we need to be able to act on and fix these problems – but we can only do that if people let us know what the issues are. So please, if you feel able to, speak to your operations team or the People team!

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