Total off-premise sales for the week ended June 6 continued to grow at a strong pace, up 24.1%, despite the fact that many states have reopened the on-premise. However, growth for the spirits category did slow a bit while beer/FMB/cider category accelerated, according to Nielsen. For the period, spirits sales grew +30.2% (vs +32.4% last week), followed by wine at +23.8% (vs +24.4% last week), and beer/FMB/cider growth of +22.1% (vs +18.3% last week).
Additionally, for the majority of the lockdown time period (14 weeks to June 6) the total alcohol beverage category has hit the 22% growth rate threshold Nielsen estimates is necessary to offset on-premise losses. For the 14-week period, category growth rates were lead by spirits (+31.6%), followed by wine (+25.8%), and beer/FMB/cider (+17.3%).
“It’s likely that we will start to see deceleration of the substantial off-premise gains that we had seen over the last 3 months going forward, but it’s still a long road back to pre-COVID times,” Danny Brager, Nielsen’s Senior Vice-President, Beverage Alcohol Practice.
Source: Nielsen, June 2020