Brewdog to no longer pay ‘real’ living wage in scramble to save costs
Brewdog will no longer be paying staff the ‘real’ living wage in a scramble to shore up extra costs.
The Punk IPA brewer said from April it will now pay the government’s national wage rate of £11.44 per hour.
In a letter issued to staff, leaked on the online social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Brewdog described the move as “important” and “necessary” as it warned about its trading loss last year.
An expert read: “Even with this strong performance over Christmas, as a wider business there is no hiding from the fact that in 2023, we made a trading loss…
“Despite many efforts in the past 12 months to reduce our spending, we still need to find more ways to get this business back to profitability and the financial stability that is needed. Inevitably, this does mean making some hard decisions.”
From 14 April 2024, the craft beer maker will be using the new national living wage, which will rise by nearly 10 per cent.
If the company opted to continue to pay staff the real living wage, which is based on the cost of living, their pay would have risen to £12 per hour.
Staff in London will not be impacted by the change and they will remain on an £11.95 per hour pay.
A Brewdog spokesperson told City A.M that it has “always been fully committed to doing the best we can for our people.”
“Last year we gave over £350,000 to our bars team via our unique profit share programme. “
They added: “Our team also benefits from a unique bonus scheme which sees all crew members receive an additional £1 an hour for the month for surpassing customer service standards.”
Brewdog, and its chief James Watt, have previously made headlines for its workplace practices.
Its reputation was tarnished by a series of accusations made by former staff against Brewdog and the boss.
In January 2021, Watt was forced to apologise to former employees after an open letter went viral on Twitter, in which 61 former workers alleged the company cultivated a “toxic” culture that left staff suffering from mental illness.
The founder told City PM last April that the firm “definitely had some challenges and there are definitely some things that we could have done better”.
News of the wage change comes days after Watt told fans about plans to bring the business story to big screens.
The 40-year-old businessman told followers on LinkedIn he had developed a movie script which would tell the story of him and his co-founder Martin Dickie.
A statement he posted on LinkedIn said: “It has been so exciting to work with such talented people on the script of this amazing new movie: Underdogs: The Rise Of BrewDog.
“Since Martin [Dickie] & I started BrewDog, both just aged 24, the journey has been remarkable – high highs, low lows, failures, successes and a healthy dose of controversy along the way.”
City A.M. has contacted Brewdog for a comment.