A misleading organization that cares about little more than money, at the expense of employees and customers alike - Anonymous employee BrewDog Employee Review

Something is amiss at Brewdog USA. Within a few days of my initial training, it was abundantly clear that very few people within the organization were qualified for the positions to which they had been appointed. The most forgiving explanation for this is that the company is absurdly cheap and doesn’t want to pay any skilled people with experience. Case in point: this is the second largest brewery in Central Ohio, behind only Anheuser-Busch, with over 50,000 square feet. The refrigerated storage warehouse lies on the complete opposite end of the facility to the bar. However, Brewdog USA did not, at the time of this writing, own a single forklift or employ even one forklift operator. Why? Because that is a skilled position requiring a certified/licensed operator, and would screw with the bottomline (which seems to be to make as much money as cheaply as possible), regardless of impact on or safety of employees/customers. So bartenders have to drag a pallet jack clear across this gargantuan warehouse, load it with kegs, and then haul them back by hand and foot. It is preposterous. On the more sinister side of the coin, Brewdog is willfully negligent. There is plenty of evidence to support this take. In my time with the company, numerous employees consistently reported countless safety concerns. Within all areas of the organization: production, office, “retail” (bars). All went ignored. At all levels within the organization. It is unclear whether the inexperienced office and management staff are just taking marching orders from Brewdog UK and are powerless to act, or whether they just don’t give a damn as long as their own coffers are getting filled. Brewdog has been blasted for their attempts to honor women, in particular their “Pink IPA” beer, which was just re-branded Punk IPA with a girly name, color and theme. The backlash to that effort also pointed out that there weren’t enough females within the organization. I found this to be untrue. The company, at least stateside, was predominantly female, outside of the production crew. But is this because the company is forward-thinking, or because they can pay young females way less than they can men of equivalent age? Additionally, they claim to support the Living Wage Pledge, that is, to pay their employees a living wage, which numerous sources, statisticians, data scientists, etc., have proven to be around $15/hr pretty much everywhere in the country. However, Brewdog pays the standard wage to bartenders, servers and kitchen staff. They use rigged metrics to suggest these wages are living wages. If you are paying the same rate as every other place, you aren't paying a living wage. Quit lying. Despite a lot of talk about employees being “family” and turnover being “low”/”non existent”, handfuls of people were outright fired during my tenure, some with little justifiable reason, and scores of others quit because the conditions were so unsatisfactory and unacceptable, myself included. One particular firing was one of a handful of individuals within the organization who had any actual experience in their position. This individual was the only true professional present. Their dismissal signaled very bad things to come. Since my departure, I have run into a number of other individuals who either left the company due to the abysmal working conditions, or who had partners that did. It’s common for restaurant managers to have to put in long, unrewarding hours, but the GMs at Brewdog may as well live in the restaurants, stripped from their families to ensure the ship doesn’t sink. (Make no mistake, Brewdog is actually a restaurant chain, not a legitimate brewery. The on-site breweries are merely a means to an end - a loophole so the company can self-distribute its beers and avoid the US 3-tiered distribution system wherever possible.) The company spouts off about corporate buyouts and breweries “selling out”, but last year sold a 22% stake in the company for ~$230M to the owner of Pabst. There is simply nothing “punk” about this organization. They do love to use that as an excuse for their terrible business practices though, like cobbling passingly safe structures together at the last minute, letting customers into live construction sites to turn a profit on an unfinished product. In 2018, how does a business open up without being ADA compliant? Is that even legal? I’m not sure, but Brewdog isn’t. Not at any of its locations, as far as I can tell. They love to brag about their rooftop at their Franklinton, Columbus location. Unfortunately no one with a physical disability will ever be able to enjoy it. See, Brewdog was unwilling to spend the money required to outfit the building properly, something other, smaller breweries in the region have done and continue to do. Long story short, when you get a deep inside look at this organization, something is clearly off, and you get the unnerving sense that it’s a sham, a scam, and a fraud. Their mission, repeated ad nauseum, is to “make people as passionate about craft beer as (they) are”. It is evident that the only thing they are more passionate about is money.