18 January 2023, Austin, Texas: As we start a new year, most of our 2022 numbers have come in which means it’s time for yDrink’s 2022 Review of the Texas On-Premise channel! And what a year!
For the first time in its history, the Texas on-premise channel, which serves mixed drinks (in addition to beer and wine), surpassed $10 billion in consumer sales. These sales were up 30% over 2021, primarily driven by the Spirit category which represented 60% of these consumer dollars. Beer and Wine represented 28% and 12%, respectively for the year.
Part of this growth in 2022 is due to the fact that we are comparing it to 2021, a year in which COVID restrictions and the pandemic still rippled through the year and on consumer behavior which affected on-premise performance. Despite a perceived low bar (2021 still surpassed 2019 records), the real drivers of 2022 success were increased consumption, price increases, and the expansion of total outlets in the channel.
For example, in 2022 approximately 15% more establishments sold mixed drinks in any given month than in 2021 (2000 more locations on average during Q1-Q3 and about 1000 more in Q4). The volume of spirits cases shipped into the on-premise in 2022 grew 18% over 2021 and dollars sold of those spirits when served grew 30%. This rise in consumer dollars, on average, was due to price increases passed on to the consumer from establishments. The average price per bottle of spirits sold into establishments from local distributors actually decreased -2.7% in 2022 v. 2021.
Diving into the Spirits category, our specialty at yDrink, we looked into product trends that accounted for large growth in spirits sales over the past two years. Total cases sold by the network yDrink tracks grew by 700,000 9L cases over the previous year.
Of this increase, the fastest growing category was spirit-based RTDs which grew by 84% over 2021, and accounted for almost 10% of the 700,000 new cases. The number of accounts serving RTDs increased from approximately 4,000 in 2021 to 5,250 in 2022 (31% increase).
If measuring, as we do, RTD by the total volume of the package sold (vs. say the amount of alcohol in the package), RTD has now become a larger category in the channel than Gin.
Gin, however, saw steady and respectable consumer demand which made it the second largest growth category year-over-year at 23%.
The main driver in volume for Spirits on-premise was Tequila which saw a 20% growth in cases sold versus 2021 and represented 33% of the new cases. There was large consumer attraction to the category, particularly in the Blanco sub-category which grew 28% and 155,000 cases. Mezcal which grew 55% over 2021, saw cases increase by 9,000.
That’s our summary for 2022! We look forward to reporting about 2023 this time next year for you!
yDrink, an Austin based company, has been reporting on-premise Texas beverage alcohol data for nearly 20 years. yDrink offers account level data for every outlet in Texas selling spirits conjoined with comprehensive shipment and market data for products and their competitive sets.www.ydrink.net