Being good is tough.
That is true for all of us as individuals, and even harder perhaps for organisations, particularly firms that have a profit motive at the heart of their existence. The conflict between “doing the right thing” and making money is not unusual, even though we do believe that the procurement with purpose agenda in general should be seen as a source of competitive advantage rather than cost.
I had been planning to write about beer for the last couple of weeks. That followed recently sampling a can of the excellent American Pale Ale from Toast. Toast works “in partnership with exceptional breweries, using their brewery but under our own license and using our own ingredients and recipes”. The founders have made a feature of using surplus bread in the brewing process, reducing waste. It is a delicious beer, not too much citrus as some modern Pale Ales favour but tasty and well balanced. Toast has got their product into several major supermarkets so appear to be doing well.
In 2015, Toast founder Tristram Stuart, a campaigner on environmental and social impacts of food production, met the brewers behind the Brussels Beer Project. They had used bread in their 'Babylone' beer, and with bread wasted at a huge scale (13,000 slices per day from a single sandwich factory), Stuart saw the circular economy solution to reduce waste, engage drinkers and raise funds for charity.
I then noticed that Brewdog was making a similar claim about bread on the packaging for their “Lost Lager”. In fact, Brewdog may well have got the idea from Toast, as the firms first worked together in October 2019, when Toast together with BD's Tower Hill Outpost, brewed a Belgian-style Pumpkin Dubbel using surplus bread and pumpkins leftover from Halloween!
But Brewdog go further with Lost Lager, claiming that this is the first “carbon positive beer”. As well as “brewed with surplus fresh bread”, the can also says the brewer is “using 1/3 less water” and is “powered by Brewdog wind turbines”. There is also the “Lost Forest”, the firm’s re-forestation programme in the Scottish Highlands. All impressive claims from a purpose and sustainability standpoint.
But what does it taste like, I hear you say? It is OK – not as good as the Toast beer though. Generally I am a big fan of Brewdog’s beers, Punk IPA and Hazy Jane in particular, and their bars. The firm has grown very rapidly from its humble start in Scotland in 2007 and now there are breweries in Aberdeenshire, Berlin, Brisbane and Columbus, Ohio. There are also more than 100 Brewdog bars dotted across the world, with beer-themed hotels the latest idea. Private equity bought into the firm, to finance the rapid expansion, although the founders are still around.
But the lager is nothing special really, although lager is not my favourite henerally in any case. A little insipid, Lost Lager it is better than Carling or Fosters and on a par with Red Stripe and Amstel rather than being in the top tier. But it has been selling at a very competitive price so hey, its fine on a hot summer’s evening.
The firm has over the years cleverly positoined itself as a radical upstart, challenging the big corporate brewers with a “punk” attitude. Posters on the Tube in London showed a rating of 97/100 for Punk IPA on a the RateBeer consumer website and a rating for Budweiser of 0/100, with the question, “Wassup Bud?” parodying their rival’s slogan. They’ve kept that up even as they have become a far-from-tiny start-up themselves. Along with the rebel stance, the founders developed a Brewdog “community”, including selling shares to their fans, and that sense of purpose has also formed part of their positioning.
However, last week the firm hit the headlines for the wrong reasons. An open letter on Twitter from 60 ex-employees claimed that the culture in the business was - well, pretty horrible, really. The business was built on a cult of personality around the founders, James Watt and Martin Dickie, was the claim (which seems irrefutable) and blame was allocated to Watt in particular. There were accusations of bullying, and a fear of speaking openly amongst staff. The company is now at risk of losing its B corp status, given to firms with strong social, environmental and transparency credentials.
As the BBC reported, in the letter “the signatories said a "significant number" of former staff had "suffered mental illness as a result of working at Brewdog". A co-founder of Brewdog has promised to listen and learn from savage criticism of the beer company by 60 ex-staff”. James Watt told the BBC claims of a "culture of fear" and "toxic attitude" were tough to hear but he seemed repentant and said they would help make him a better chief executive. Of course, the dividing line between a boss who is demanding, somewhat authoritarian and expects a lot from staff to one who is bully and makes unreasonable demands of people is a pretty fine one.
But our point really is this. How do we judge firms in terms of the purpose big picture? If Brewdog was a supplier to your firm, how do you weigh up the positives around sustainable behaviour but maybe also offset that with some of these human behavioural issues? Should they matter when we consider a firm’s wider contribution to the world? What about the public sector and looking for social value via procurement ? Do you take negatives into account when evaluating potential suppliers as well as the positive proposals they might make in bids and tenders?
These are interesting questions – and as the concepts of sustainable, purposeful and responsible business develop and evolve, we will no doubt have to think further about the answers!