Robinsons Brewery no and low-alcohol beer sales up 59%
The Stockport-based brewery and pub owner announced that it had seen younger drinkers opt for healthier, low-alcoholic variants of drinks.
Almost a fifth of UK drinkers reported they were cutting down their drinking behaviours to independent charity Drinkaware in 2017, and the no and-low alcoholic product category has grown year on year.
The most popular items sold by Robinsons’ pubs this year so far included Veltins Alkoholfrei, Heineken 0.0 lager, Beck’s Blue Alcohol Free lager, Maisels Weisse Alcohol Free and Lucky Saint 0.5% Unfiltered Lager.
The company has seen growth in the no and low-alcohol beer category since 2015, with a dramatic jump in the first six months of 2019.
Variety of drinks
Market research company Nielsen concluded alcohol-free beer was the fastest-growing trend in the drinks market, with sales increasing by more than a quarter (27%) over the year to September 2018.
Promoting better-known low-alcohol brands alongside a few lesser known brands such as Lucky Saint has been the key to the category boom, the brewery said.
Its introduction of low-alcohol beer Heineken 0.0% on draught, using the new Blade draught system, has also been crucial to this momentum.
Sales of no and low-alcohol beers at its managed pubs were up 209% with all but two sites in treble-digit growth and 75% of its tenanted businesses in category growth, according to Robinsons Brewery marketing director David Bremner.
Bremner explained: “We need to keep this in context, but three of our top 10 packaged beers are now free or low alcohol and they represent over 16% of packaged beer sales, which is way above the industry average.
“This is obviously influenced by the more health-conscious Millennials, but we are finding that groups of core customers are also switching on certain occasions, particularly for draught.”
