Non-Alc Beer Trends - Craft Brewers Conference Series (5/5)
This is the fifth and final installment of our Craft Brewers Conference (“CBC”) series, which reviews data I shared in our on Untappd Insights: Consumer, Beer, Brewery, and On-Premise Pricing Trends presentation at CBC in Nashville last month.
This is also the last call to redeem our special CBC offer of a complimentary Brewery Consumer Reports for demoing our Ollie brewery management software platform. Schedule a demo of Ollie here and we’ll provide you with a free Brewery Consumer Report on your brewery.
So, what does our Untappd Insights data reveal about non-alc beer trends in the U.S.?
Firstly, that check-ins to non-alc beers, after increasing sharply from 2019 to 2021, plateaued in 2022. That leveling off has occurred despite continued growth in retail outlet penetration for non-alc brands. Our users checked-in non-alc beers at just shy of 7,000 unique retail outlets in each of 2019 and 2020. Retail outlet growth surged as we emerged from the most severe COVID lockdowns and, in 2022, our users checked-in non-alc beers at over 15,000 retail outlets, a 2.2x+ increase from 2019/2020 retail outlet penetration levels.
We also seem to have reached peak Dry January in 2021, with 17.8% of all 2021 non-alc beer check-ins happening in the year’s first month. That subsided in 2022, with just 14.6% of 2022 non-alc check-ins being logged in January of that year. Despite the drop from 2021 highs, it is clear that the concept of Dry January gained momentum during COVID.
Lastly, the overall rating of non-alc beers checked-in on Untappd continues to increase, from a starting point of 2.92 in 2019 to a full-year average in 2022 of 3.33. I suspect that there are two causes – 1) the quality of non-alc beers brewed by U.S. brewers has continued to improve and 2) U.S. consumers have acquired a taste for non-alc beer.
What else did our data reveal? As anyone close to this industry would know from reading headlines, Athletic Brewing is an absolute rocketship. In 2019, Heineken 0.0 was the most checked-in non-alc beer and Athletic Brewing received just 4,145 check-ins. Fast forward to 2022 and Athletic brands received 37,192 check-ins (a nearly 9x increase from 2019) and its Run Wild IPA, Free Wave Hazy IPA, and Upside Dawn Golden were the three most checked-in non-alc brands, knocking Heineken 0.0 down to fourth.
Thanks for reading our CBC series. We’re off for the rest of this month and will return in July with the Q2 2023 reveal of the Untappd Insights Draft Beer Pricing Index.
Until then, check-in your beers!