At the UBS Consumer and Retail Virtual Conference, UBS’s Pilar Rocafort (Consumer and Luxury Specialty Sales), Nik Oliver (Senior European Analyst for Tobacco and Beverages), and Sean King (Senior US Consumer Analyst – Beverages) spoke with Harry Schuhmacher, Editor & Publisher of Beer Business Daily, Craft Business Daily and Wine & Spirits Daily on his outlook for beverages in the US.

Summer 2021 could look like the Roaring 20s

Schuhmacher suspects a strong positive correlation between vaccine rollout and on premise beer, wine and spirits sales as Americans return to bars and restaurants with great fury throughout the 2021 summer months.

But what about 2022? The pandemic may have further changed behavioral patterns and strengthened a trend that was occurring even pre-pandemic. Schuhmacher thinks that after cabin fever is assuaged, consumers will continue to get takeout, buy groceries and bring beverages home.

The hard seltzer craze is on track to continue

Beverage companies small, medium, large (and even those that don’t yet exist) are grasping the hard seltzer trend. The pace of investment in the hard seltzer category is “growing even faster than light beer did in the late 70s and early 80s, which is the last time we’ve seen anything comparable,” according to Schuhmacher. He notes that this growth is almost case-for-case at the expense of light lagers thus far.

Will we see “seltzer fatigue”? Schuhmacher doesn’t think so. The growth of the category has been driven by younger drinkers, who actually drink less per capita than older drinkers, “so there’s a lot of run room,” with the older demographic into the future.

And what about non-alcoholic beer?

Contrary to trends in Europe, Schuhmacher isn’t expecting an uptick in non-alcoholic beer consumption by Americans. Why not? He thinks a bevy of non-alcoholic beverage alternatives to beer –and that Americans just don’t like the taste of beer as much as Europeans – will continue to keep this category at bay.

About Harry Schuhmacher

Harry Schuhmacher is Editor & Publisher of Beer Business Daily, Craft Business Daily and Wine & Spirits Daily – all read on every continent except Antarctica. Harry has worked in the beer business for over 30 years in a variety of positions, and has published Beer Business Daily for over twenty years. In addition, he is the producer of the Beer Industry Summit and the Wine & Spirits Summit. He is often quoted as a beer industry expert in national publications such as Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.

Harry lives in a restored brewery in San Antonio, Texas. He enjoys reading, dive bars, and drinking beer in beer-clean glasses.

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