Brewdog, the Scotland-based brewery that has exploded into an international business in the last 15 years, is never far from the headlines. It held a competition to brew the world’s strongest beer and created another named Speedball after the drug cocktail of cocaine and heroin. The company has been happy to not so much court controversy as to seek it out.
Playing to the gallery is always a high-risk approach. Take, for example, Brewdog’s opposition to the World Cup being hosted in Qatar in late 2022. The beer company promised that various profits would go to human-rights charities but was criticised when it transpired that they were selling their produce in Doha.
The latest fuss is overblown, however. The company will no longer pay the ‘real living wage’ – a voluntary pledge, cooked up from a charity staffed by smiley types who wouldn’t blink if all their private-sector ‘partners’ went bust tomorrow and had to be nationalised in the name of love and cuddles and fairness.
The
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