Beer brewers revise playbooks to win back lost customers(1)
Beer sales have been hurt by changing tastes and the growing appeal of wine and liquor in recent years, with U.S. shipments down 1.4% last year.
As beer sales continue to fall, brewers are hoping to recapture straying customers by introducing craft beers and other variations on the classic beverage. Above, bartenders serve beer stored in a wall of ice at the Super Bowl Village in Indianapolis. (Michael Conroy, Associated Press / February 5, 2012)
Super Bowl Sunday promises to be another epic day in the annals of gluttony, with Americans consuming 1.3 billion chicken wings, 2,000 tons of popcorn and enough avocados to cover the floor of the Indianapolis stadium 28 feet deep.
But there will probably be a bit less beer to wash it all down because of changing tastes and the growing appeal of wine and cocktails as alternatives.
Beer sales have been on the decline in the U.S., with shipments dipping 1.4% last year to 210 million barrels, an eight-year low, according to trade publication Beer Marketer's Insights. Anheuser-Busch, whose brands include Budweiser and Bud Light, slipped below the 100 million-barrel benchmark for the first time in a decade.
Brewers are fighting back, introducing craft beers and other spins on the classic beverage in a bid to recapture straying customers. Anheuser-Busch InBev, which is spending at least $30 million on Super Bowl ads, will devote two of its six game-time spots to one of those products, its new higher-alcohol Bud Light Platinum.
That brew's 6% alcohol content reflects Americans' growing thirst for drinks with more kick and perceived sophistication. Sales of both wine and hard liquor such as vodka, bourbon and whiskey are up 4% or more over the last year, helped in part by images in popular media.
The television shows "Mad Men" and "Pan Am" celebrate the cocktail culture of the 1960s, while the recreational drinking on MTV's popular "Jersey Shore" tends to involve fruity hard-liquor concoctions such as "Ron Ron Juice" (vodka, cranberry juice, chunks of watermelon and maraschino cherries).
The club scene in Hollywood, Las Vegas, New York and elsewhere has turned a bottle of Grey Goose vodka delivered in an ice bucket into a premium experience. The lifestyle it evokes has become more visible worldwide through gossip shows and celebrity shilling, including Kim Kardashian stumping for Midori liqueur and supermodel Marisa Miller touting Captain Morgan rum.
"Wine and spirits have a more romantic appeal to consumers and are seen as an affordable luxury," said Adam Rogers, an analyst with the Beverage Information Group. "The major beer brands seem to have reached their apex, and there's nowhere for them to go but down."
When younger people do reach for a beer, it's often a craft beer and not something you can find on every supermarket shelf. Consider Brendan Deiz, 25, among the recently converted.
"Beer was always something you had to choke down to go to a party," said the Pasadena high school teacher. "The first time I ever drank to enjoy it was the first time I had a microbrew."
Scott Gordon, 43, of La Cañada Flintridge, used to occasionally have a Corona but hasn't drunk a beer in years. He now prefers vodka and gin, and revels in "the whole artisanal thing."
He enjoys visiting watering holes such as the Varnish in downtown Los Angeles, where a bartender recently served him a drink that goes back to at least the 1930s, a Poet's Dream, and then listed the ingredients: Plymouth gin, Benedictine, dry vermouth and orange bitters.
