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Strong alcohol sales across smaller off-licenses
Smaller booze retailers in the UK saw sales of beers, wines and spirits rise by more than 29% during December, according to a major provider of credit card payment to small businesses – but the spread was uneven across the UK.
Paymentsense, which supplies credit card, e-commerce and EPOS services for around 50,000 small and medium sized businesses, saw strong uplift for alcohol sales in the Christmas trading period. Year-on-year drink sales for December in the UK went up by 8%, the company said, while sales were up 29% between November and December, a rise from last year’s 25% month on month increase.
Guy Moreve, head of marketing at Paymentsense, said the growth could be part of a wider pricing trend based on the the fact that the same merchants were seeing a 4.15% year in year drop in their average transaction value.
“It suggests consumers are responding to competitive pricing by buying more of what they like,” he noted. .
However, Moreve said that the figures were not uniform across the country, and regions such as London and the North West of England sharply contrasted with more promising figures in Scotland and the South West.
“We have seen that regionally the December year-on-year increase in the number of sales is far from even,” he told db, “with Scotland claiming 27%, South West England taking 25% and Yorkshire and The Humber making up 19%. By contrast, North West England shared just 1% of the increase and Greater London actually saw a -1% [decline] relative to other areas.”
However he added that the “overarching picture for alcohol merchants is a positive one”.
The data was collected from across Paymentsense’s retailer, which includes independents, off-licenses and convenience stores, covering all beers, wines and spirit sales, but excluding bars.
The news follows a raft of positive sales from the multiple retailers over the Christmas trading period, in which alcohol sales featured prominently.
Paymentsense was recently named as one of the UK’s fastest growing companies, ranked 70 in the Sunday Times Tech Track list in 2015. Last year it saw sales of £44,852, an increase of nearly 53% over a three year period.