Four former BrewDog Indy employees allege they were terminated because of their gender

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Four servers at BrewDog Indy located in Fountain Square, allege they were fired on the basis of gender, earlier this month. Three women and one nonbinary person were fired by their male general manager who cited a “change in culture” as the reasoning, according to the former employees.

Brewdog had been closed since December because of COVID-19 restrictions, and plans to reopen were set in motion in March. On March 8, the four were told the entire serving staff would be laid off, however, they later discovered that only the four of them were fired and none of the male serving staff were fired.

Jordan, one of the employees fired by BrewDog, said they never experienced any discrimination before the restuarant temporarily closed in December. “It was an inclusive environment when we worked under two women, our general manager and head chef, until they were fired without explanation in January,” they said. 

In response to the allegation and tweets made by Jordan and the others, Jason Block, CEO of BrewDog, “We are investigating this,” Block said. “What is claimed is completely at odds with our values.”

Block later claimed in a statement that the four were fired “because of prior performance issues.” 

On March 10 the four former employees Erica, Kyrrha, Leah, and Jordan released a joint statement via social media combatting the claims made by Block and other BrewDog higher ups that the decision was performance-based. 

“None of us were ever written up, given a documented verbal warning, or had any issues at all with our performance during our many months working at BrewDog,” they said. 

In their statement, the four asked for documented evidence that there were performance issues among them and that it was the cause for firing. 

The four also provided their own evidence disputing the claims. According to them, Erica won a customer review competition in October for receiving the most five-star reviews and Leah was a close second place.

Additionally, their former general manager, unnamed, supports their claims. “Our former general manager, also a woman recently fired by corporate, supports claims that she never had to provide any disciplinary action for performance,” the four said in their statement. 

Brewdog still maintains that the firing was performance based. We reached out to Kevin Groover, assistant general manager of BrewDog Indy, for comment on the allegations and received no response.

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