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US on-trade “roars back to life” as 98% of the channel now open for business
The US on-trade has “roared back to life”, and is even seeing growth compared to the same period in 2019, according to the latest stats from CGA.
The latest BeverageTrak data from CGA’s COVID-19 On Premise Impact Report, showed that while trading velocity (ie the speed at which a business makes money) was obviously higher than the same time last year – up 225% compared to 2020 in the week to May 1 – value velocity was also positive compared to the more usual 2019 figures, up 4% versus the same week in 2019.
Matthew Crompton, CGA’s client solutions director, Americas said this was particularly encouraging.
“Naturally, the market is in velocity growth versus the shutdown of 2020 but what perhaps is even more encouraging is that the w/c May 1 is up +4% vs the same time period in 2019,” he said.
Currently all states have restaurants open indoors and 98% of states have bars open indoors, although with some capacity measures still in place.
Crompton noted that although the California market had taken longer than other states to ease restrictions on restaurants and bars, there was evidence that the state was bouncing back, as the US “roared back to life”.
“We are now seeing a real bounce back in the state with it showing the best trends out of all states analyzed versus last year,” he said.
“The country is by and large completely ‘open’ again now – our research shows that there isn’t any states left where you cannot make an indoor On Premise visit of some kind”.
Florida remained one of the strongest states compared to last year, despite a flat few weeks, with Illinois and California sales picking up in the last two weeks, along with New York.
CGA said they anticipated further positive news moving forward, especially given events and occasions at this time of year, such as Mother’s Day, particularly for fine dining.
“Consumers want to get back to celebrating as they used to in the on-premise,” Crompton said, adding that research showed that 15% of all consumers are now willing to spend more in fine dining establishments than they were pre-Covid.
“As we see shifts in operations of beverage suppliers from planning stage to execution, understanding the true intricacies of tracking performance by channel and by region has never been more important.”