BrewDog’s POP Soda has been dropped by Tesco, the soft drink brand’s only retailer, after less than a year on the market.
All six SKUs disappeared from the grocery giant last month, Assosia data shows, with a spokesman for the brewer confirming Tesco had delisted POP.
The brand debuted as a quartet of variants – Hazy Lemon, Jagged Grapefruit, Dark Cherry and Citizen Cola – in February 2022, through an exclusive tie-up with Tesco. At the time of the launch, BrewDog said it would put all POP’s profits “towards funding solutions to tackle the climate crisis”.
The brand went on to make £981.7k in its first seven months [NielsenIQ 52 w/e 10 September 2022].
The Grocer has approached Tesco for comment.
It comes after a tumultuous year for BrewDog, whose alleged toxic working culture was the subject of a BBC documentary in January 2022.
In a LinkedIn post responding to the documentary, CEO James Watt called it a “malicious caricature” of the business, and lodged a complaint with the broadcaster and Ofcom.
The controversy didn’t stop there. In November, BrewDog’s ‘anti-sponsor’ campaign against the World Cup being in Qatar brought allegations of hypocrisy, after it emerged the business had signed a deal to distribute beer in Qatar.
A month later, the brewer lost its B Corp status. It had “decided to step aside from our B Corp certification for the time being”, Watt claimed at the time.
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