The rise of at-home consumption of spirits during COVID-19 is being hailed as the biggest alcohol trend of 2020.
According to Nielsen, the "homebody mentality" created during pandemic restrictions is continuing to drive off-premise spirit sales, which surged 26.2% for the week ending August 22 in the US. American and Irish whiskey sales rose 27.8% and 27.6%, respectively, while tequila sales spiked 59.1% and RTD sales gained 101%.
GlobalData’s latest report, ‘Coronavirus (COVID-19) Case Study: Alcoholic Beverage Innovation’, notes that the scale and impact of the global health crisis has changed consumers’ consumption habits.
Mitsue Konishi, Senior Innovation Analyst at GlobalData, said: “As more people avoid bars and clubs, alcoholic beverage manufacturers need to consider consumers’ ‘New Socializing’ occasions such as home drinking in product development. One key consideration will be catering to premium and budget-friendly alcoholic innovations to allow consumers to capture the bar-quality drinking experience at home."
“I almost call it a phenomena that has happened in the US, the amount of home consumption of spirits," Brown-Forman President and CEO Lawson Whiting told Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade.
"What you have is the dynamic where the bars and restaurants close and global travel retail — which is a big segment for us at close to 25% to 30% of the business — goes not all the way to zero, but close to it. So the grocery channel, the liquor store channel and all those locations are absolutely booming now as consumers love to throw the home parties. It has worked out well for us.”
Whiting added during an analyst call: "I think as long as people are largely unable to spend on travel and other forms of entertainment, we think that the spirits' strong growth will continue predominantly in the off-premise."
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