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/485350
54 Beverage Dynamics • March/April 2015 www.beveragedynamics.com P erhaps the most changeable of spirit categories, the U.S. cordial and liqueur mar- ket overall saw a fi ne year in 2013 (the last year for which complete fi gures are available), up by more than fi ve percent, according to the Beverage Information & Insights Group. Yet, you couldn't tell it by looking at the numbers of some of the major and best-known brands, many of which have had a multi-year run of poor performances. The majority of growth is coming from emerging brands like RumChata (up 41.5 per- cent), Fireball (up 140 percent), Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey (up 25 percent), Kinky (up 51.4 percent), Wild Turkey American Honey (up 17.1 percent), and Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon- shine fl avors (up 146.2 percent). Meanwhile, traditional brands Southern Comfort (down 3.9 percent), Kahlua (down 5.9 percent), and Jagermeister (down 10.4 percent) suffered. In addition, full lines of cordials, including leader DeKuyper (down 4.8 percent), Hiram Walker (down 6 percent) and Bols (down 2.5 percent) also wavered. It's a sign of how quickly American consumers have turned to fl avored brown spirits. "The fl avored whiskies are taking a big piece of the liqueur business, with a lot of the volume coming from schnapps and shooter type items, like Jagermeister," says Brian Bow- den, vice president of spirits, beer and tobacco for the 150-unit California chain, Beverages & More. "The Fireballs and cinnamon whiskies of the world are taking share straight from them as they penetrate the market." The emergence of sweetened and fl avored whiskies has changed not only the dynamics BY JACK ROBERTIELLO The sweet category is undergoing a sea change P for brands sold for the shot occasion. Other, classic cordials have seemed to lose steam as mixability and cocktail culture increas- ingly matter to consumers. "The older and more traditional brands at the higher end over the last couple of years started to decrease and we saw it a lot more last year," Bowden says. Re- placed in popularity by diverse brands such as St. Germain and Luxardo Mara- schino for their mixability, and Viniq, the shimmering moscato/vodka liqueur from E&J Gallo, for its fanciful allure, many classic brands are losing traction at differ- ent levels of appeal. (Buoyed by the re- gional success of Viniq, Gallo announced a national roll-out in February.) It's a trend that most major cordial pro- ducers are experiencing and dealing with, as fl avor-seeking consumers turn away from both fl avored vodkas and traditional cordials and explore new items, especially fl avored whiskies. RISING FAST The speed with which some brands have succeeded has caught the industry by surprise. RumChata founder Tom Maas says things could have gone even better for the 460,000 case cream brand in the last two years. "We need to get our shelf space ex- panded to avoid the out of stocks we continue to suffer because the brand is growing so fast," he says. "We are contin- ually seeing stores with empty shelves. It takes time for stores to allocate the earned share of shelf to RumChata because of the rapid growth. When we outsell the cream Cordial Volatility