Beer Drinking in America Falls to the Lowest Level in a Generation
It wasn’t just Bud Light.
The past year saw the lowest level of beer consumed in the U.S. in a generation, according to industry group Beer Marketer’s Insights, as consumers shifted away from traditional favourites to other forms of alcohol—and in a growing number of cases, avoiding alcoholic beverages altogether.
“It was a tough year for beer,” said David Steinman, BMI vice president and executive editor.
For the first time since 1999, he said, beer shipments were on track to fall below 200 million barrels.
Leading the decline, Steinman said, was Anheuser Busch. But while the Bud Light maker caught headlines over a sponsorship agreement with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney that subsequently led to a boycott among some longtime drinkers, the protest does not explain why overall consumption still managed to fall, Steinman said.
Instead, Anheuser-Busch was at the forefront of an acceleration in the long-term decline of so-called domestic-premium brands, which include Bud Light and rivals Miller Light and Coors Light, Steinman said. Anheuser Busch, owned by global conglomerate AB InBev, also suffered from a decline in hard seltzers—a category in which it has long dominated.
The beer industry also now finds itself competing against a surge of new alcohol products, many from nontraditional producers, said Lester Jones, vice president of analytics and chief economist at the National Beer Wholesalers Association.
“For example, some of the world’s largest soft drink and energy companies introduced sugar-forward alcohol beverages to the market, all of which are vying for the same consumer occasions as traditional malt- and hop-forward products,” he said in an email.
