Dog Bless America – BrewDog to Open US Brewery and Bar Chain
The explosions, the hop cannons, the language…
Given how many cues it has taken from America’s beer scene, it would be weird if BrewDog didn’t have plans to take its beer and considerable brand there. Still, the plans formally announced at its 2015 AGM (and hinted at numerous times beforehand) indicate a bold undertaking indeed.
A site for a new brewery stateside has been confirmed: Columbus, Ohio. It’s an area relatively unsaturated by the American craft beer scene, with just a handful of small breweries, but one that places BrewDog strategically between the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest areas.
More importantly, BrewDog see the site as its first stronghold in the creation of an American operation that will be a 100% subsidiary of BrewDog plc in the UK. BrewDog USA will be part-funded by an all-new Equity for Punks shareholder scheme for the US market, and intends to open several new bars across the States.
As a shareholder myself, I watched these plans unfold at the AGM with perhaps an even more critical eye than many. With so much more work to be done to boost the profile and quality of its beer in the UK, why launch a whole new company overseas? How would BrewDog get around the American three-tier system that prevents breweries from owning other parts of the supply chain, including bars?
There have been rumours that these new bars will brew on the premises, and as brewpubs of that size they would be exempt from the regulations. Furthermore, changes to the rules regarding the system in some states may give BrewDog room to manoeuvre. But the question remains: how can it sustain the momentum to run multiple companies, each with such huge ambitions?
Of course, this question has been asked of BrewDog several times before – on an almost yearly basis. The company’s growth continues to astonish, and it has only been able to achieve this by hiring incredibly capable people and working tirelessly to push its agenda.
The planned American operation is, naturally, just one of many objectives for BrewDog this year. New bars and new bar concepts, a hotel, a sour beer facility, expanding its current brewery and starting a distillery all feature on the horizon. As its influence and reach increases, it faces ever more criticism that it has outgrown its punk ethos and risks becoming part of the establishment.
If this is the case, the company doesn’t seem to show any sign of caring. For craft beer to continue to charge ahead with its prodigious growth and reinvention of the British beer market, there will need to be figures and companies willing to constantly forge ahead with ideas, technology and education.
Critics of BrewDog are only now coming to accept that this Scottish powerhouse is a driving force of the British craft beer business. America had best prepare itself.
Chris Hall, co-editor: Beer & Craft: Britain’s Best Bars and Breweries (@ChrisHallBeer)