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James Simmonds, Partner in our Nottingham office, says that people drinking at home during the height of the pandemic replaced beer with wine or spirits, resulting in a 13% fall in beer sales in 2020. Now pubs have reopened, beer sales have swiftly recovered to 98% of their pre-pandemic 2019 level (see graph below).
Many people feel that beer is better-suited to longer, social drinking sessions. As people were forced to drink at home during the repeated lockdowns, many preferred to drink wine or spirits.
During lockdown, wine sales increased to 112m litres in 2020, up from 84m in 2019, while spirit sales increased to 10.9m litres from 7.4m over the same period. However, they both subsequently suffered from pubs reopening, with a drop in sales equivalent to 5.2 million bottles of wine (3%) and 1.8 million bottles** of spirits (12%) in 2021 compared to 2020.
James Simmonds comments: “The pandemic saw a sudden shift in people’s drinking habits, with a move away from beer. That seems to have been temporary – we are now seeing consumers flooding back to beer.”
“It was a good summer for beer sales, with football’s European Championships providing a welcome sales boost for pubs.”
James Simonds adds that some small breweries may have only held licenses to sell to the pub trade, but not to sell directly to the public. Many breweries potentially struggled to acquire licenses to begin direct sales to the public quickly when the pandemic began, contributing to a downturn in 2020 sales.
Beer sales bounce back strongly in 2021 – beer sales over the last three years
