Beverage Dynamics is the largest national business magazine devoted exclusively to the needs of off-premise beverage alcohol retailers, from single liquor stores to big box chains, through coverage of the latest trends in wine, beer and spirits.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/379477
30 Beverage Dynamics • September/October 2014 www.beveragedynamics.com T here's nothing like a little doom-and-gloom to sell newspa- pers—or, in today's world, to garner internet clicks. In the past year, many writers tasked with covering the beer in- dustry have seized on two trends and hyped the bad news potential of both. In one case, this has meant taking dispiriting news and declaring that really dreadful news is just around the corner. Sales for Big Beer— the dominant American brands—are slipping, and light beer styles, which picked up the slack when full-calorie beers began to wane, are now losing market share as well. But it seems premature to declare Big Beer "broken" or in terminal decline. Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors together still own three quarters of the American market, and their international reach is vast. Diversifi cation and globalization may be the way ahead, but it's a reasonable bet that, ten years from now, American pale lager will still be the dominant national style here at home. In the other case, writers have looked at the persistently positive growth of craft beer and predicted darkly that it will all go south any day now, despite annual growth of 18%. Articles speculate about there being too many craft breweries, about the risk of a craft beer "bubble" that's bound to burst, or the specter of customers so over- whelmed by beer selection that they bail on the whole category. Yes, there are over 3,000 small breweries and counting in the U.S., but the small scale of most of them suggests that there's still room for plenty more. Most will remain small, and only a few will grow into the next generation of regional breweries, but the taste for more fl avorful beers is unlikely to go into reverse. What's clear is that this is a time of change, but it's evolution, not revolution. The beer fi eld is more varied than ever before, and consumers more restless and less loyal. It's not clear who is leading whom: the consumers who demand ever more variety, or the brew- ers who present ever more options. NUMBERS IN REVIEW Although beer remains the most popular alcoholic beverage among Americans, its dominance has eroded over the past decade. Where Gallup fi gures throughout the nineties showed nearly half of Ameri- can drinkers preferring beer, more recent surveys have seen beer fall to a low of 36% in 2011 and 2013, before returning this summer to 41%, a healthy 10-point margin over wine, sits closest challenger. Of concern, however, is the fairly steady slippage in beer volumes year by year. In 2013, total beer consumption was down by 1.6% over the previous year, and domestic volumes dropped by 1.9%, according Beverage Information Group. The beer industry is nowhere near the monolith it once was. Its various segments—differentiated by price, style, scale, image or place of origin—have fared differently. The three major categories (light beer, super premium and premium, and popular) have all lost market share, with light beer losing 4.1% of its volume in 2013 and the other categories losing 2.2% and 2.7%, respectively. The much smaller malt liquor category fell by 3.2% Imports as a category were nearly unchanged in 2013 from the year before. Repeating the trends of recent years, the fl avored malt Reports of imminent demise are greatly exaggerated BY JULIE JOHNSON T DON'T COUNT BEER OUT YET Beer: State-of-the-Industry Report