Brewdog Waterloo bar not going anywhere as noisy-neighbours Spoons moves in
Brewdog has said it’s not going anywhere after Sir Tim Martin’s JD Wetherspoon pub chain said it is moving in to Waterloo station – next door.
The chain said its bar in the London transport hub was performing well, and it wouldn’t be perturbed by the move from the pub chain.
Brewdog’s Waterloo bar opened in August 2022 at the 27,500 sq ft site, which at the time was its largest bar in the world. It sprawls across two floors and overlooks the platforms exiting one of the UK’s busiest stations.
This comes after Spoons announced its new pub will be called the Lion and the Unicorn and is set to open this summer. The cheap and cheerful outfit said it will invest £2.5m in the pub’s development, creating 120 full- and part-time jobs.
Martin’s chain said it will be on the upper ground floor of the Sidings, with the repurposing being done by placemaking expert LCR.
The Sidings is an area of the station once used as the Eurostar terminal, which has now been turned into a retail space.
The Sidings is also home to Brewdog bar, which has a large bar area near the rear of the site.
In recent years, a string of other chains have opened in-and-around the station, including Urban Pubs & Bars which opened The Victory, as well as another Brewdog pub, the Waterloo Arms.
Brewdog said its watering hole in the Sidings is successful and popular, as well as ‘family-friendly’, while it also serves food.
The chain added that £80,000 of profits from the site were also shared with staff, through a profit-share scheme, it is understood.
Brewdog declined to comment.
This comes after its chief executive James Watt hit back at “ridiculous levels of criticism” his company faced following the news that it would no longer be paying staff the ‘real’ living wage.
Brewdog’s Watt had previously made headlines for workplace practices. 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”.