Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Restaurants Charging More For Alcohol And Spending Increased

By Cornelius Nunev


Dining places and bars charge a markup on alcoholic drinks, but people have been spending more on them there than in stores. However, it has anything to do with higher prices, rather than consumption.

Markup schmark-up

When looking at changes in the 30-year period from 1982 to today, NPR found that Americans are beginning to spend more on alcohol in bars and dining places, according to the "What America Spends On" series.

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

Today, spandex is seldom seen and yuppies still drive BMWs. However, we are spending more in dining places and bars, as 40 percent of alcohol spending takes place in those locations, compared to 60 percent in shops. However, much of it is to do with a 79 percent increase in bar and diner prices; store prices dropped 39 percent. If anything, that suggests more volume is bought in stores.

Grape expectations

in 1982, only 16.2 percent of alcohol costs were for wine while 48.9 percent was on beer and 34.6 percent was on wine. That has changed a lot in 2012 when wine spending has increased to 39.7 percent. Spending on spirits decreased to 12.6 percent. That was the biggest change seen in the country.

Wine in America is all anyone 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. Definitely more Americans are drinking American wine now.

The American wine industry was a $30 billion industry as of 2010 and the bulk of it is all within the state of California as fully 61 percent of wine produced in the U.S. was from the Golden State itself. That year, 241.8 million cases went out from various wineries. Millennials, the current crop of 20- and 30-somethings, are not only drinking more, but additionally reaching for pricier bottles.

Beer still the drink of the time

Beer accounted for 47.7 percent of sales in 2012, which was hardly any change from 2012, according to NPR. It is still the drink every person wants in the nation. Overall, Americans are consuming less though, which is why overall beer production decreased from 1990's 204 million gallons to 2011's 192 million gallons, according to BusinessInsider.

Beer drinkers are slowly gravitating toward brews from Main Street rather than Wall Street, as craft breweries are proliferating. In 2011, an 11 percent growth of the number of craft breweries was recorded over 2010. There were 1,989 craft breweries in operation, with 250 new breweries opening and 37 closing. Craft brewers produced almost 11.5 million barrels, a 5.7 percent share of the market, and made $8.7 billion in revenue.



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