According to SIBA the number of breweries has declined by100 or so over the last year down to 1,715. The reasons are well known enough. The cost of living crisis continues, as do pandemic debts and business rates remain largely unreformed. You might (if you were an employer) mention increased NI and Living Wage rates and I might say as a trade unionist that if a business is not profitable enough to absorb such costs, it might question if its really a going concern. After all an increase in the living wage increases money in people’s pocket (as it were) perhaps giving them a little more to spend in a bar or taproom.
Anyway while all these are issues accountants Hacker Young have a different thought. They have looked at the breweries that have become insolvent (and filed as such) in the last year including Hackney and Fourpure and identified 43 of them.
According to Hacker Young the ‘craft beer boom’ was one of the most exciting recent developments in hospitality. It attracted ‘too many entrepreneurs’ who then struggled to turn a profit.
Its not that there were too many breweries as such, or even lack of demand for the beer. The problem was that in order to develop the breweries needed investment and it did not provide the expected returns.
As often profit trumped people, including those who worked at the insolvent breweries.
The picture shows Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak at Fourpure in 2021. It then had a tap room in Bermondsey which shut in 2024. The brand is currently owned by private equity hospitality group Keystone and if the beers are being brewed, its at Black Sheep, Masham
(based on a report in the Times 26th May 2025)
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