US. Craft Brewer Sales Growth Accelerating in Latest Scan Data

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Craft brewers had another excellent sales report in Symphony IRI Group scan data of beer sales in supermarkets, drug stores and convenience stores. The strong latest results showed faster growth than the year to date, which showed faster growth than the 52-week rolling year.

Craft Volumes

4 Weeks to May 15, 2011–13.8% volume growth; 15.3% dollar growth

Year to Date 2011–12.6% volume growth; 14.3% dollar growth

52 Weeks (May 2010-May 2011)–12.2% volume growth; 13.9% dollar growth

As you can see, the speed of craft is accelerating in these off-premise channels. As restaurants improve economically, their sales mix is also shifting more to craft, as these companies see the benefit to their image, customer appreciation and bottom line.

For other malt beverage segments, we see domestic subpremiums, domestic premiums, domestic superpremiums and malt liquor all down between 1.1% and 5.2% year to date. flavored malt beverages are up 10.9 % on lower pricing than last year. Imports are only up 0.8% in volume year to date in scans; however, Dept. of Commerce data has imports up just under 10%. The scan data and Commerce data should be closer, and I don’t have the middle step of wholesaler depletions between sales we see from scans and shipments into the country.

Craft Pricing

4 Weeks to May 15, 2011–up 42 cents per case

Year to Date 2011–up 47 cents per case

52 Weeks (May 2010-May 2011)–up 47 cents per case.

Pricing trends will be interesting to watch going forward with growing uncertainty in the ingredient supply situation.