Canada: Beer sales growth rate decreases as part of global shift
Alcohol sales have been holding steady in Canada for the past few years, with a total volume of 3,098 million litres sold over the past fiscal year— the equivalent to 507.1 standard drinks per legal drinker — up slightly from the 3,074 million litres sold the year before, CBC reported on June 14.
However, while wine sales grew 4.6 per cent last year, increasing in every province and territory, and liquor sales were up 4.4 per cent, beer was basically flat, growing less than a per cent and cementing a decade-long trend.
And even as the craft beer craze saw the number of breweries in Canada hit an all-time high in 2018, overall production fell by 3.4 per cent.
This is part of a global shift.
In the U.S., alcohol consumption dropped for the third straight year in 2018, mostly because fewer people are drinking beer. For example, sales of Bud Light, America's biggest beer, dropped 17 per cent between 2012 and 2017. And beer's share of the U.S. alcohol market has dropped from 48.2 per cent in 2010 to 45.6 per cent in 2017.
As with so many things, young people are being blamed.
Millennials — who apparently care about fitness and dislike arriving at work all bleary-eyed and pasty-mouthed — drink far less than older generations. And Gen Z, the cohort just now coming of legal age, consumes 20 per cent less booze than the 30-somethings.
This change has spurred some desperate measures among brewers.
Big global beverage makers like AB InBev have been pushing low-calorie beers and shrinking the size of bottles. And in Germany, some brewers are giving up on the alcohol altogether, with almost 500 brands of non-alcoholic beer now on the market.
Technology is also being marshalled for the fight. Researchers in Indiana have developed an induction heating system to allow for faster and more controlled beer pasteurization, promising improved taste, quality and shelf life.
And Miller Lite has just unveiled a limited-edition "Cantroller" — a 10-button video game remote built into a full beer can.
Promotional gimmicks are on the rise. A brewery in Tokyo has started offering monthly subscriptions that allow beer drinkers to try a glass of draft each day at a specified bar. And beer yoga is now a big thing, combining stretch sessions with a pint and some quiet talk about "mindful drinking."
Of course, not all brewers are hurting.
The lust for hard-to-get craft beers is fueling resale websites where rare bottles are being scalped for hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars.
Any flavour of beer you have ever thought of — and many you never wanted — is now available, from peanut butter to bull testicles (a product that started out as an April Fool's joke and, finding willing customers, became real).
On June 13, the U.K. branch of cereal-maker Kellogg's announced that it has teamed up with a brewery to turn rejected Rice Krispies and Coco Pops into a pale ale and a stout. An American craft brewer already makes a marshmallow-flavoured beer that is clearly meant to evoke a bowl full of Lucky Charms, complete with a "It's Magically Ridiculous" tagline.
Meanwhile, traditional beers and beer-drinking are already being relegated to history.
The city of Oxford, U.K., is considering a proposal to erect a blue plaque in an alleyway near the pub where Bob Hawke, the late former Australian prime minister, set a world record in 1954 by skolling a yard of ale — the equivalent of 1.4 litres — in just 11 seconds when he was a Rhodes scholar.
The feat was immortalized in the Guinness Book of Records, and is said to have happened in the same bar where Bill Clinton failed to inhale a joint when he was a Rhodes scholar.
14 June, 2019
