When Brewdog met St Andrews Brewing Co....and Innis and Gunn ran away.

Is all well in the Beer Garden? St Andrews Brewing Co, currently on Crowdcube with over £500k completed of their £400k campaign, are now opening another new pub in St Andrews; where they already have one. A few yards down the same street, Innes and Gunn, another Crowdcube alumni, have upped anchor and left their St Andrews pub ambitions in tatters.

An update - 1st March 2019. The big one, the one all the fuss was about on Crowdcube - the Dundee pub, has not opened. A new page on their website now says it will open in Spring 2019 - more than 6 months after the original opening date given to investors by Crowdcube. That is a lot of lost revenue. What caused the delay - hell what delay they reply? It's only supposed to open this Spring. That's if it ever opens at all of course. 

The purchase of the new lease by St Andrews Brewing Co is confirmed in the Dundee Courier here 

This is interesting on a few levels. 

Firstly St Andrews Brewing make absolutely no mention of this new unit in St Andrews in any of their Crowdcube plans - the ones used to entice £500k of investment. But the pitch is live and I'm sure investors would like to know more. In fact this new opening was mentioned in the press in April 2018. There is a very early update on the Crowdcube pitch but the plans for this 'new' unit are not included in any of their financials, PD etc.

Why, for instance, do they believe that a new unit, in such a small town, is a good use of investors new cash, when they already have one just 4 minutes walk away? Surely this is information that should at least be on the updates page (see correction above)-  it is a material fact in the investment decision. This is yet more evidence that investors are not given the full picture. Is this new lease and new expenditure on its opening, in the Crowdcube financials? Amusingly, the previous owner of the pub that will be St Andrews Brewing's new pub, has been given a 'senior management' role with the company. Checking on the accounts for Rascals doesnt make for good reading if you  are now investing in this pub - which 600 of you are. But hey, maybe St Andrews Brewing can achieve something with it that the previous manager couldnt - make some money. 

A few yards down the same street, Innes and Gunn, who opened one of their new pubs in a truly awful location, have given up. We knew they would. Innes and Gunn used Crowdcube to raise over £1m in 2016. The St Andrews unit would have cost them plenty to fit out. Since the building was renovated, it has housed a failed restaurant and now a failed pubeatery. St Andrews is not an easy town to operate retail - ask anyone who lives here. Units change hands regularly, apart from a very few stalwarts. Seasonal swings, the Links own retail operation, including large F&B offers and discount hungry students, all make a tricky mix. 

Now to put the final twist on this story. I know, via contacts in Aberdeen, that the greedy Brewdog have been looking to open in town. I also know that they looked at a site that is now to be run by St Andrews Brewery. The rest is as they say, history or is that hearsay. It probably has something to do with money. 

Can you really keep Brewdog out of a town? We think not. There are many locations in St Andrews that the dog could open in, in a swish of its mohawk tail, by offering a healthy premium. So are St Andrews Brewery really going to operate all of them?