Quarterly results showing a sudden drop in sales suggest the popularity of RTDs may be starting to wane.

By far the biggest success story from the last year has been the stratospheric ascent of the ready-to-drink (RTD) category. Seemingly every brand and his wife has brought out a convenience product, from canned wines and gin in a tin to an array of hard seltzers in every conceivable flavour. Celebrities, never ones to miss a trick, have been snapping up stakes in RTD companies such as Ellie Goulding acquiring a ‘significant’ chunk of plant-based seltzer brand Served. Last year, UK sales alone rose by 23% in the category, with UK consumers quaffing £412 million worth of the stuff.

However, a report by CNBC suggests that the golden era of RTDs may be coming to an end, revealing that the CEO of Boston Beers, which owns one of the world’s two biggest hard seltzer brands, has spoken of plummeting sales.

According to David Burwick, demand for Boston Beer’s ‘Truly Hard Seltzer’ brand has been “lower-than-anticipated,” over the last few months.

Shares of his company are said to have nosedived last Friday, “closing down 26% at $701 apiece, as Wall Street reacted negatively to the company’s worse-than-expected quarterly results,” CNBC reports.

Boston Beers attributes the sudden drop in sales to the lifting of Covid restrictions and the reopening of the on-trade, all of which has lured consumers into bars and away from drinking RTDs at home, or in the park.

“The trade-off from grocery and liquor store purchases to bars during that period is really what hit us,” Burwick said tellingly on CNBC programme Closing Bell. “And honestly, it hit us hard and fast . . . We don’t look very smart by missing out on that guidance.”

It’s a shock turnaround, given that only last month IWSR drinks market analysis predicted that RTDs would overtake wine in the US by the end of 2021. Experts were confident that demand for canned cocktails wouldn’t fade, even as restaurants and bars reopened, believing that RTDs would simply be added to bar menus in a continuation of the trend.

Goldman Sachs has downgraded Boston Beers as a result of its hard seltzer slowdown, predicting that stock will continue to fall. On the other hand, Credit Suisse has upgraded the company, believing that stocks can rally by 60%. The next few months will be telling. For more detailed analysis on the trend, check out our story: In Focus: Is the hard seltzer boom starting to fizzle out?