Boozin’ Blog

There is a belief out there that beer is recession proof. Proponents of this idea point to the smaller recession in recent decades where sales of beer improved while the rest of the economy retracted. The idea is that as money gets tighter people want to continue to drink - or drink more - and the cheapest way to do so is to buy cheap beer. Nothing like a sixer of Stag to forget your shrinking 401(k), right?

But this monster of a recession that we’re in now has all of us rethinking that meme. Is beer really recession proof or is it just recession resistant? Every couple of weeks a new report or study comes out conflicting the previous studies - beer is improving, beer isn’t improving, this or that segment of beer is improving while the other isn’t. It’s basically a lot of economic mumbo-jumbo where statistics can be and are used to explain any particular position.

I’ve tended to take a bigger picture approach to this. Before the recession beer sales were generally stagnant or in some years even in decline. Wine and spirits were giving beer the sort of competition here in the US that it simply wasn’t used to. After ruling the liquor industry for so long beer was starting to have self-esteem issues.

But within that trend there was a dynamic that I, as a good beer lover and tireless promoter, found particularly heartening. While big beer here in the US struggled to figure out how to increase or even maintain their position, craft and import beers were going gangbusters. Year after year the craft beer segment showed double digit increases in sales. My analysis is that Americans were finally realizing the truth of the old joke: American beer is like having sex in a canoe; it’s fucking close to water.

Given that the fact that we’re getting mixed signals from the beer market now during this recession isn’t really all that earth shattering. Big beer continues to languish while craft beer continues to improve. Some are calling the improvements in craft and “above-premium” beer sales a desire for “affordable luxuries” among American drinkers.

That might be. Or it could be that beer really is recession proof. The trend of shrinking big beer sales and improving craft beer sales has continued unabated despite the recession. This is what it was doing before and this is what it’s doing now. Had the recession not have happened would the beer sales picture be any different? It’s tempting to think that it wouldn’t be.

Share This