Spending On Alcohol Growing At Restaurants

By Cornelius Nunev


Alcohol is a devil to some, but is something individuals have been indulging in for millennia. Americans are spending more on it in restaurants and bars in recent years, though. However, it has nothing to do with increased intake, but rather with higher costs.

A huge markup

According to a recent post on NPR, part of its "What America Spends On" series, Americans are gradually increasing the amount spent on alcoholic drinks in restaurants and bars. The series compares figures from 1982 to today, examining the changes in the 30-year period.

Americans had a ton of things taken away during the Cold War in 1982. At that time, consumers only spent 24 percent of the alcohol budget in dining places and bars. About 76 percent of it went to alcohol from stores.

The price of restaurant and bar alcohol has increased 79 percent during that time while store prices have dropped 39 percent. This is very important because it shows why there was a shift in people spending more in dining places and bars now. Currently, only 60 percent is spent in shops with 40 percent spent in bars and dining places.

Different spending behaviors

The biggest change was what the country indulges in. In 1982, 48.9 percent of spending was on beer, followed by spirits at 34.6 percent and wine at 16.2 percent. However, spirits have fallen to 12.6 percent of spending and wine has ballooned to 39.7 percent of spending on libations for 2012.

Wine in America is all everyone seems to want. In 2011, France only shipped 320.6 million cases of wine while there were 329.7 million cases shipped in America, according to the San Francisco chronicle. Obviously more Americans are drinking American wine now.

In 2010, the American wine industry was a $30 billion industry. In that year, 241.8 million cases were sent from a lot of different vineyards. Millennials are willing to spend more on costly bottles and are drinking more. California by itself produced 61 percent of that wine, which means California is the state where much of the wine comes from.

Beer still the drink of the time

However, the favored drink of the nation is still beer. In 2012, according to NPR, beer still made up 47.7 percent of sales, barely changing from 1982. Overall beer production, according to BusinessInsider, has fallen from just under 204 million gallons in 1990 to just under 192 million in 2011, though that's part of an overall trend of Americans consuming less as a whole.

From 2010 to 2011, there was an 11 percent increase in craft breweries. These breweries are becoming much more well-liked than regular beer corporations right now. In fact, in 2011, there were almost 11.5 million barrels produced making $8.7 billion in revenue. That is a 5.7 percent share of the market. In 2011, there were 1,989 craft breweries with 250 new breweries opening and 37 closing soon.



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