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BrewDog shuts Mumbai bars
UK-based beer giant BrewDog has called time on its two flagship bars in Mumbai despite announcing plans last year for 100 more sites in India.
The brewing multinational has closed its bar in Bandra West, one of the city’s coastal suburb which is home to many Bollywood stars, and its bar in the commercial district of Lower Parel.
BrewDog logos have been stripped off the locked-up properties, checks by the Financial Times have found.
The Scottish brewer first expanded into India in 2021, and now has just two bars open in the country following the recent closures, which occurred over the summer.
Prior to the closures BrewDog had struggled with inconsistent beer supplies to Mumbai. Pratekk Chturvedi, BrewDog India COO and a director of Aloha International Brewpub which operates the BrewDog India franchise, told the Financial Times that the brewer was facing issues with the local government department which regulates and taxes alcohol in Maharashtra.
Chturvedi said the landlords had wanted the bars to close and that the franchise operator had filed legal cases to reclaim “business losses that we are facing”. BrewDog declined to comment.
Closures in Mumbai come as a setback to BrewDog’s overseas expansion plans, which have been focused on Asian markets.
In May BrewDog announced a partnership with Atalanta Hospitality to expand into Thailand, with plans to open several bars in Bangkok.
And last year the company teamed up with Budweiser China to open a site in Hong Kong’s Lan Kwai Fong neighbourhood.
Last year it also announced plans to open 100 bars in India over the next decade; plans for which the recent Mumbai closures will be a significant blow.
However, Chturvedi stressed that the set backs are only temporary.
“Mumbai was an extremely important market for us, it is ground zero, it is where we began,” he said. “I am fairly certain that in the coming time, maybe in the next, say, three to four quarters, we will find a new location and start up in [Mumbai] again.”
He noted that BrewDog’s Indian arm was still operationally profitable, calling India a “booming craft beer market” as well as a “very lucrative, very profitable” one.
BrewDog India will focus on the north of the country for its expansion, and already has two bars in Gurugram and Amritsar.
“We are looking at aggressive expansion in the coming year . . . we are looking at one opening every quarter,” Chturvedi said. BrewDog plans to open a new bar in Chandigarh in the coming weeks.
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