Beerboard, the company behind the digital menu displays at retailers such as Buffalo Wild Wings and World of Beer, recently examined on-premise trends using data from more than $1 billion in draft beer sales in 2018.
According to the company — which tracked 45,000 products via its suite of services, such as SmartBar, BeerBoardTV and BeerBoard Menu this year – domestic beer offerings regained 2 percentage points of market share at its clients’ on-premise locations compared to 2017, making up 51.5 percent of transactions this year.
Craft beer market share fell from 35.9 percent to 33.7 percent, while import beer share remained steady at 14.7 percent.
Domestic beers also claimed more than 20 percent of the draft handles, up 3 percent over last year, while craft beer’s tap-handle distribution declined 4 percent, to 62.1 percent.
“Whether it’s a shift in consumer preference or more attention by retailers to better align tap sets with what is actually turning over, there was a shift in tap distribution in 2018,” the company wrote.
Among popular beer styles, IPA growth stagnated, capturing 8.6 percent of all beer sales in 2018 compared to 8.8 percent in 2017.
According to Beerboard, the top five best-selling beer styles in 2018 were light lagers, traditional lagers, IPAs, wheat and hefeweizen offerings, and European lagers.
Light lagers accounted for 45.3 percent of the “pour share,” Beerboard noted, up 2.4 percent compared to last year.
Traditional lager beers, meanwhile, accounted for 19.3 percent of the beer sold on-premise, and Modelo Especial overtook Budweiser as the second-best selling lager brand at Beerboard clients’ locations.
On-premise sales of cider also grew considerably in 2018, up 7.1 percent, according to the company. Meanwhile, sales of “heavy beer” styles such as stouts and porters declined 22.3 percent this year.
“It remains as the #9 overall style and the leader in the group is none other than
Guinness, with a healthy 75.9 percent of the style share,” Beerboard wrote.
Among IPAs, best selling brands included Lagunitas IPA (1), Ballast Point Sculpin IPA (2) – which grew 350 percent in 2018 – and Bell’s Two Hearted (4).