ABERDEENSHIRE craft-beer maker BrewDog has walked away from three new bar openings, delaying its expansion in London, Dublin and Paris.
In a note to shareholders the firm, which earlier this year was valued at £1 billion after receiving a cash injection from American private equity house TSG Consumer Partners, has decided not to open a bar in London’s trendy Dalston area as it “couldn’t nail down terms with the landlord that worked for us”.
Similarly, its Dublin plan has been out on ice because “we had a licence partner lined up but it fell through” while Paris is not going ahead because the company “lost the bid on the Halle de Rouvray site”.
The firm, which had a total of 47 bars at the end of 2016, now has 45, 31 of which it manages directly. Its bars in Hong Kong and Finnish city Turku, which opened in 2016 and 2015 respectively, have closed since the start of the year.
Despite that, the firm said it remains committed to further expansion, with a bar due to open in Oxford in September and further openings across America and Europe expected in due course.
The company said sales across its 29 UK bars grew by almost 12 per cent in the first six months of this year, with total sales up nearly 70 per cent from £31 million in the first half of 2016 to £53m this year.
The firm turned over £71.9m in 2016 as a whole.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here