Tools to grow the beer category!
The NBWA/Fintech® strategic partnership provides a unique window into the beer industry to help strengthen NBWA, beer distributors, and the three-tier system.
The Data
Fintech Data Solutions (FDS) is a single source database of aggregated sales-to-retailer transactions for both the Off-Premise and On-Premise Channels. A growing economy and market fragmentation make tracking retail beer trends more complicated than ever. FDS brings insights from over 130,000 chain and independent retail accounts covering over $27 billion in alcohol purchase transactions in 2018. These data also include transactions from 3,600 alcohol beverage distributors, including over 600 self-distributing brewers. The database captures brand, package, and volume metrics of a weekly basis and provides the most current and timely industry insights ever available to the industry.
Methodology
We believe that every beer, segment, or package has a place in the marketplace. There is a beer for every occasion and every week. The case volume data in the charts below are presented in an index format. The index is a simple measure of the current week’s volume against the total average weekly volume for the year. The index shows the weeks of the year that a segment and channel combinations are commanding above-average shares of the industry. For example, an Index of 120 for Imports-on-premise during the St Patrick’s Day Holiday (week 11) indicates that imports have a 20 percent greater share of volume than the average week for the year. So, even though a single metric may have a low overall volume share of the total industry, a share index during any given week of the year may be well above average. Please note that the week 52 data of 2018 includes two extra days from Sunday, December 30 and Monday, December 31 of, 2018.
Hard Seltzers, Mexican and Pumpkin Beer
We added another seasonal chart this week in honor of the Fall holidays. The pumpkin beer index below shows a significant slowdown in volumes for this style of beer in 2018. In 2017 the index popped above 200 in week 33, rose to 350 by week 36, and carried a relatively high index through week 48. In 2018, the high index only reached 190 in week 37 and had not climbed above 200 this year. Hard Seltzers are running on track with 2017 trends. The Mexican brands are breaking with the trend in the fourth quarter and running stronger (above average) in 2018 relative to 2017.