Adult Beverage Trends for 2019

Adult Beverage Trends for 2019

In the spirit of the season we hope you enjoyed your holidays happily and safely and that the New Year presents you with good fortune.  As we usually offer with every initial entry of the year a review of hospitality trends we’ll continue here and to provide some balance we’ll discuss predictions and trends for the adult beverage category.  Some of what we provide will be from industry observers and we’ll through in dash or sprinkle of our own experiences all of which we hope will spark interest and thought of how to approach these new challenges and opportunities.

If you work within the adult beverage industry you might want to pay close attention to what’s coming down the pike, upcoming generations are either drinking less OR not drinking beverage alcohol at all (CS News).  A recent research study identified “Gen Z” (currently 16 – 24 years old) as self-reporting that 64% of them expect to drink less than Gen X or baby boomers.  This is also reflected in the upsurge of non-alcoholic venues appearing on the landscape (Refinery29.com) featuring “mock-tails” that sell for $10 $12 apiece and no one even flinches at the fact there’s no alcohol in them.  When you add the fact that Millennials are also drinking less, but drinking better, it accounts for the drop in volume across the entire category.  Not to “pile on” but I recently had a discussion with a 25 plus year veteran of the draft category and they shared for the past ten (10) years they have seen declines in premium domestic beer sales, not an easy thing to say but honest and aware something has to pop!

This leads us to one manner to address this challenge, especially for beer, with Nielsen adding to their measurement of beer sales volumes in ten markets across the U.S. (Brewbound.com).  With the expansion of their data set (four new markets) they have increased the ability to better understand the historical actions of beer sales and volumes.  Most industry observers would say that’s a great tool to have in your box; however, there doesn’t appear to be anything “predictive” in the same toolbox. We’re not here to knock on Nielsen, they provide a great deal of valuable information for business decisions, but again where’s the information on the leading edge of market change source?  If a market survey identifies that IPA’s aren’t selling in a specific area you could state, “There’s opportunity for IPA sales in Market-X”, the flip side of that is there may be no demand for the product as well.  Although it may be considered anecdotal we query as many industry operators as possible since they’re on the front lines of dealing with the consumer.  In a recent discussion with local craft brewers it was suggested that although a beer is locally brewed it still requires two very important factors, it has to be/taste good and among the taproom’s offerings there needs to be adequate variety.  So offering craft beer and being local isn’t always going to produce a success, operators must be cognizant of consumer drivers.

Moving onto wine and spirits in the New Year and the outlook for both overall is good as compared to the challenges of their beer-brethren. Taken with a grain of salt, wine continues to enjoy consumer attention much due to the variety of drinking occasions and availability of wines of value from Italy and Spain (Forbes.com).  Continuing on the success of wine-based brunch-style drinks using the ever popular Prosecco, operators are also re-inventing the Bloody Mary bar.  The white spirits should continue with consumer demand since they’re so malleable to flavor infusions or mixing with house-crafted tonics, bitters and other botanicals such as cannabis?  This leads to the new acceptance of crafted gins that allow experimentation with a variety of herbs, florals and even spices for an extra kick!  It appears from our observations if operators want to capture more of the shrinking adult beverage sales volumes they’ll need to embrace some new ideas and offer new beverage options to guests who are still drinking alcohol.  If you recognize a need to update your beverage alcohol program we encourage you to reach out so we may share our vision of the industry, contact us at www.themenuspring.com.