News

Belly up to the bar: Alcohol sales expected to improve modestly in 2015

December 4, 2014

Drink sales in bars and restaurants are projected to grow modestly in 2015, according to new research from Technomic. The market research firm says conditions at major chain restaurants that serve alcohol are slowly improving, and greater consumer confidence will lead to a more positive trend than seen in 2014.

Technomic's BarTAB Report and Adult Beverage Insights Group expect consumer expenditures on alcohol away from home to rise 2.7 percent next year, a slightly greater increase than is expected for alcohol expenditures at retail.    

"Conditions are improving, and with lower gas prices and better consumer confidence, we're continuing to see positive movement in consumer spending away from home," VP David Henkes said in a news release. "However, there's still a lot of lost ground to make up relative to how the industry was performing prior to the recession."

In looking at specific adult beverage categories in on-premise channels, Technomic finds the largest category – beer -- challenged in terms of volume. BarTAB Report outlines sales growth of 2.3 percent for beer in 2015, lower than the projections for wine and spirits.

"Craft beer, cider and imports are generally doing well at the bar, but domestic beer, which accounts for nearly half of on-premise beer sales, continues to lose share," said Technomic's Director of Research Eric Schmidt.

Wine is expected to achieve the highest sales growth rate of the three adult beverage categories, with spirits a close second.

Despite the positive projection, alcohol sales are still expected to lag broader restaurant and bar sales, due to fairly flat volume. The bar and club segment – which generates two-fifths of alcohol sales – is expected to underperform.

"Dollar growth is driven largely by price increases and gains in certain categories such as craft beer and whiskeys including bourbon, Irish and single malt Scotch," Henkes said.