The Scottish brewers are now on the fourth wave of fundraising and recently gave investors the chance to buy bonds as well as equity.
Co-founder James Watt said: “We’ve not just broken a record, we’ve smashed through it with a monster truck. According to a MarketWatch* BrewDog is surpassing the current highest equity crowdfunded project in the world to date – which totalled $6,000,000 raised – by over 50%. We now have an incredible 35,000 Equity Punks who love beer and support and influence everything we do – we’re absolutely buzzing about this milestone.”
“We turned traditional business on its head when we first introduced the Equity for Punks business model, and it’s worked. We’ve been the fastest growing food & drinks company in the UK over the last four years, and we’ve managed to scale purely via this mechanic. Equity for Punks is all about shortening the distance between us and the people who drink our beer, and enabling us to keep putting passion in people’s beer glasses without resorting to begging funding from big monolithic banks who don’t care about the beer. £10m is phenomenal. But we’re not stopping there.”
Watt told M&C Report that its Brighton branch had been the company’s most successful launch to date.
The brewers say the money raised will fund its push for new sites around the world, including new concept Dog Eat Dog in Islington, DogHouse in Glasgow and Brewdog Soho. The funds will also go towards the launch of a craft distillery, sour beer facility and a craft beer hotel.
BrewDog recently came under fire for a video promoting Equity for Punks, which showed founders James Watt and Martin Dickie pose as women and homeless people. Critics labelled the video ‘offensive.’