Consumers used the long weekend to sneak in an extra round with friends and family — and many purchased those drinks online.
Sales on alcohol delivery on-demand marketplace Drizly spiked 30% on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, compared to the previous four Sundays in May, the company shared.
The hard seltzer segment reached a 28% share of overall beer category sales during the holiday weekend, an increase of 3% over its overall share for the month.
Boston Beer’s Truly Hard Seltzer leapfrogged Bud Light and Corona to become the second best selling brand in the beer category on Drizly, behind Mark Anthony Brands’ White Claw, which has occupied the top spot throughout 2021.
The Drizly team attributed Truly’s success to its innovation products this year — Truly Iced Tea and Truly Punch — but the brand’s best selling SKU on Drizly over the holiday weekend was its berry-flavored variety pack, which Truly has offered for several years. At off-premise retailers tracked by market research firm IRI, Truly’s top SKU is its lemonade variety pack ($89.6 million year-to-date through April 18), followed by the berry variety pack ($64.8 million year-to-date).
Among spirits-based ready-to-drink canned cocktails, E. & J. Gallo’s High Noon “held strong” as the top RTD offering year-over-year and broke into Drizly’s top 10 spirits brands overall at No. 7, a Drizly spokesperson said. Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Cutwater Spirits and Beam Suntory’s On the Rocks shifted into second and third place, respectively. New entrants into Drizly’s top 10 RTDs over the holiday weekend included Buzzballz and the Long Drink Company.
Online Alcohol Orders Begin to Slow
Alcohol delivery is here to stay but not growing at the triple-digit pace it reached during the spring 2020 quarantine period, Drizly’s BevAlc Insights team shared.
Year-to-date through the end of April, online orders of alcohol grew 87% compared to the same period last year, according to data from market research firm NielsenIQ — a significant increase to be sure, but a far cry from the growth rates the channel saw last year. Before the calendar cycled the elevated sales of March 2020, online orders in January and February 2021 were 175% higher than the same months in 2020.
“Overall, sales have remained strong throughout 2021, despite growing vaccination rates and rollbacks of pandemic restrictions over the past few months,” Drizly head of consumer insights Liz Paquette said in an article from the company’s BevAlc Insights team.
At the time of ride-sharing tech giant Uber’s announcement that it struck a deal to acquire Drizly for $1.1 billion in February, the alcohol delivery marketplace’s sales had increased 350% year-over-year.
Drizly’s average order value declined 13% in March and April 2021 compared to those months in 2020, which included the pandemic-driven, stock-up period and widespread on-premise shutdowns. Despite that decline, Drizly’s average order value is 25% higher than its 2019 average, before the pandemic shifted consumer buying habits toward the off-premise channel and raised consumer awareness of alcohol delivery.
Beyond Drizly, other retailers and service providers in the online beverage alcohol space have also encountered a slowdown as consumers begin to resume pre-pandemic behaviors. The average online alcohol order declined by $14 in March 2021 compared to the same month last year, according to NielsenIQ.
“Dollar growth began to slow a lot starting in March of this year, up only 15% compared to the pantry-loading month of March 2020,” NielsenIQ vice president of beverage alcohol Danelle Kosmal told Drizly. “Even so, online growth continues, driven by the continued increase in the number of buyers who are purchasing alcohol online.”
Online alcohol sales continue to capture more customers, as orders through the overall channel have increased 39% over March 2020, according to NielsenIQ.
Colorado’s Molly’s Spirits (Denver and Greenwood Village) has seen continued growth in its number of orders, though the average spend per order has declined, Molly’s director of marketing Mollie Cook told Drizly. Cook has not noticed a “major shift” in the types of beverage alcohol products ordered, but consumers have embraced RTDs.
“Now people are used to bringing their own single-serve options to get-togethers rather than gathering around a punch bowl,” Cook said.