In the amber glow of Bertie’s Whisky Bar in the Royal Deeside village of Braemar, a night of exceptional hedonism was getting under way.
It is perhaps Scotland’s most expensive licensed establishment – a ‘whisky library’ of to-die-for single malts curated by experts and quaffed by those for whom three-figure price tags for a single 25ml dram hold little fear.
On this particular night – December 30 last year – the party of 15 trooping into Bertie’s in the ultra-fashionable Fife Arms Hotel pushed the boat out further than most.
Forget three figures. Ten unpeated Laphroaigs dating back to the 1940s were ordered at £4,000 a pop. A further 15 tots of 50-year-old Balvenie were added to the tab – swelling it by £67,500.
Total damage for the 101 whiskies ordered during the course of the evening? An eyewatering £158,914 – not including a tip.
Word travels fast in a close-knit community like Braemar, where everybody knows everybody, and the identity of the party’s ringleader did not remain a mystery for long.
BrewDog co-founder James Watt with his Made in Chelsea star wife Georgia Toffolo
It was, say impeccably placed sources in the village, BrewDog founder James Watt kicking back on his stag night weeks before his wedding to Made in Chelsea star Georgia Toffolo. Indeed, they honeymooned at the Fife Arms too.
While there is no confirmation on who paid the bill, it is certainly well within the 42-year-old’s financial reach. Together, he and his new bride are worth a staggering £425million.
His fortune came from the meteoric rise of the Aberdeenshire-based craft beer empire which began life in his garage in 2007 and rose to national renown on a raft of publicity stunts masterminded by Watt himself.
He once rode a tank through the city of London; his naked image was projected on to the Houses of Parliament.
Thus far, he has claimed no credit for the whisky bill stunt, which made headlines across the country.
None of the party present that night has broken cover and, while not prepared to be quoted, Watt said through an intermediary the supposition that he was involved was ‘nonsense’.
‘People here know it was him,’ insists one Braemar source.
The difference with this stunt, perhaps, is it was not about selling hipster beer but splurging extravagantly on whisky beyond the means of almost every drinker in the land.
Many commentators were appalled at the decadence. ‘More money than sense’ was the typical social media reaction. And Watt, if indeed he was the ringleader here, was already attracting a deal of negative publicity. Seven months earlier, he had abruptly stood down as CEO of the company with which his name had become synonymous.
The move followed a string of allegations about his management style, the company’s treatment of staff in general and claims – denied by Watt – that he made women workers in particular feel ‘uncomfortable’.
It seemed to amount to an ‘image problem’ from which BrewDog was keen to move on. Just over a year on from his departure from the top job, that process is looking like an uphill struggle.
Last month, the company announced it was closing ten of its bars across the UK, including the first one which Watt opened in Aberdeen’s Gallowgate.
This month, more bad news. Some 1,860 British pubs have stopped stocking BrewDog beers in the past two years.
A typical BrewDog pub. The Company’s founder James Watt and 15 of his friends pushed the boat out on his stag night at Bertie’s Whisky Bar in the Royal Deeside village of Braemar
Its flagship brand, Punk IPA, has suffered a 52 per cent decline in distribution. And this on top of combined losses for the years 2022 and 2023 of almost £90million.
Has the fizz, then, gone right
out of BrewDog? And, if so, does the co-founder who steered it
single-mindedly through years of dizzying growth remain part of the problem? At the time he relinquished his CEO role, Watt was said to be moving into a newly-
created position – ‘captain and co-founder’ of the brand.
Now senior management report that he has no involvement in day-to-day decisions. They describe him as a non-executive director and shareholder who will, nevertheless, ‘always be part of the BrewDog story’.
That story was a simple one to tell while Watt was still at the helm – a fisherman’s son and his friend Martin Dickie co-piloting their start-up by catching the craft beer tidal wave at the perfect moment and, in short order, becoming major players in the industry, opening bars across the globe and getting their beer taps into thousands more of them.
But, as the BrewDog and James Watt narratives diverge, the story becomes more complicated.
His remains the name most associated with the brand. It was his energetic – some would say manic – promotion style which thrust the stiffly priced products into the public consciousness.
Indeed, despite pursuing other business interests, Watt still talks about BrewDog constantly on social media platforms and, it seems, is the loudest voice doing so. Meanwhile, back at head office in Aberdeenshire, new CEO James Taylor attempts to steer the ship in a new direction. ‘Fresh’ is one of his watchwords.
It is almost as if BrewDog is caught between two spokesmen.
Watt, ever eager to burnish his managerial credentials, posted on LinkedIn a fortnight ago about the time he took his top team at BrewDog to the Arctic Circle to swim with killer whales. ‘We were cold to the core,’ he wrote. ‘Exhausted. Arctic winds howled through us.
‘But those three remarkable yet highly uncomfortable days bonded our team, galvanised us, and built a story we’d carry forward.’
The Fife Arms Hotel, home to perhaps Scotland’s most expensive licensed establishment
A few months earlier, one of his posts began: ‘I am the worst boss in the world.’
It went on to list multiple reasons why he was a great guy to work for at BrewDog – including his introduction of ‘Pawternity leave’, a week off work for any staff member getting a new dog.
In spite of all this, he claimed, his portrayal in the media made him sound like he was ‘hands down the worst boss in history, the Darth Vader of CEOs’.
While that may be hyperbolic, his difficulty is many former BrewDog staff were far from happy with his leadership style and spoke up about it. And he offered an apology of sorts.
Later, when further allegations about him surfaced on the BBC, BrewDog complained to regulator Ofcom, which found in the broadcaster’s favour. Weeks after that, Watt stood down.
As BrewDog now faces deeply challenging trading conditions, some might wonder whether its former boss’s ego is a help or hindrance to the cause.
It was in 2021 that a group calling itself Punks With Purpose, comprising dozens of ex-staff members, penned an open letter claiming that BrewDog’s success story masked a ‘rotten culture’ which had left them ‘burnt out, afraid and miserable’.
In an attack clearly aimed at Watt, they wrote: ‘By placing
personalities at the centre of your messaging, you have inflated egos and fostered a culture within craft beer that deifies founders, and gives weight to sexist and misogynistic brewers who claim to be standing up for free speech.
‘You have become a lightning rod for some of the worst attitudes present on both the internet, and in real life.’
Watt took some of the criticism on board. ‘I fully accept that I’ve been too intense, too demanding as a manager,’ he said at one point. ‘At times I miss the social cues that would enable me to kind of review that situation and then maybe don’t course correct. I can understand why people felt the way they did in regards to my leadership style.’
Worse was to come. In 2022 a BBC Disclosure programme included allegations from 12 former BrewDog USA staff that Watt behaved inappropriately and abused his power in the workplace.
There were claims that female bartenders were advised on how to avoid unwelcome attention from him and that managers would try to ensure certain women were off when he visited.
One claimed she felt ‘powerless’ to prevent unwelcome attention from Watt while others said he took female customers on late night
private brewery tours, leaving staff feeling uncomfortable.
On the programme, his lawyer denied all the allegations from former employees, but the brewer went to Ofcom claiming the BBC had treated Watt unfairly and breached his privacy rights.
The regulator later dismissed the complaint.
In January 2024, there was more heat on BrewDog after it announced it would no longer hire new staff on the real living wage, instead paying the lower legal minimum wage.
This from a company whose two founders were already minted as multimillionaires following a controversial decision to sell a stake of the company to American private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners in 2017.
For years Watt had been a prominent critic of corporate fat cats. BrewDog’s supposed ethos was as anti-establishment in business as the punk movement was in music.
The company, which played on its punk credentials repeatedly in marketing, whose flagship beer was Punk IPA, was The Sex Pistols of the brewing industry. Wasn’t this a massive sell-out, wondered critics?
All in all, then, a troubled end to Watt’s tenure at the helm of BrewDog. And, within months of stepping down, more heartache. His father, lobster fisherman Jim – his ‘hero’ and ‘best friend’ – died in August 2024 of pancreatic cancer.
The one ray of sunshine was his budding romance with Ms Toffolo who found fame on Made in
Chelsea and won the 2017 edition of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!
Now married, their respective Instagram accounts are online monuments to influencers in love, living the high life, sharing photographic evidence.
The story back at BrewDog HQ makes quite the contrast.
New CEO Mr Taylor, a former fashion industry executive, travels from his home in Yorkshire every week to his desk in Ellon, Aberdeenshire.
Matters crossing it lately include claims from the Unite union that its treatment of the staff affected by the ten bar closures is ‘potentially unlawful’.
He has been attempting to shore up confidence in the brand amid a deluge of recent press reports which inspire anything but.
One bar chain, which removed BrewDog’s products in 2023, questioned whether the brewer was even relevant any more.
‘It was a fairly easy decision for us,’ said Loungers chief executive Alex Reilley this week on parting ways with the brand.
Speaking to the Mail, Mr Taylor said many of the staff in the closed down bars had been reallocated to others. Those who weren’t were ‘treated absolutely rightly and fairly’, he said.
While the figures for the first half of the year were ‘not where we’d like them to be’ he added the business was now in growth and experiencing momentum.
And what of the punk ethos about which the former CEO made such great play? Are market conditions forcing a move into the mainstream?
‘Is the business growing up? Yes it is,’ he says. ‘That DNA of punk will never go from the business… but are we looking to grow up a business and have a more broad appeal? Yes of course, we are.’
It is a curious balancing act. The brewer’s most notable successes, clearly, were achieved by a predecessor. Yet, after the tumult of the last few years, that predecessor is at least part of the perceived image problem.
Asked about Watt’s current role, he says: ‘James sits on the board as a non-executive director of our business.
‘He is not involved in the day to day running of the business. James has lots of other ventures.’
And what about that night at The Fife Arms? Was Mr Taylor one of the lucky 15?
He laughs: ‘No of course not. I was not there. You’ll have to ask James. I have no idea whether James had a stag do, what it was like or who was there.’
Nor, he adds, was he at the wedding. It seems the man who once ruled the empire and the man running it now move in rather different circles…
j.brocklebank@dailymail.co.uk
