Numerous companies in Restaurants, Consumer Staples, and Cannabis are scheduled to present at the ICR Conference on January 10 and 11.
- In Restaurants Darden, Red Robin, Domino's, Dave & Busters, Shake Shak, BurgerFi, Dutch Bros, First Watch Restaurant Group, Krispy Kreme, and Portillo's are scheduled to present.
- In Consumer Staples, Black Rifle Coffee Company, Mission Produce, Real Good Foods, Stryve Foods, SunOpta, Vintage Wine Estates, Winc, and Zevia are scheduled to present.
- In Cannabis Green Thumb Industries, Verano, Curaleaf, Tilray, and Trulieve are scheduled to present.
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U.K. On-premise alcohol sales fall (BUD)
CGA’s Drinks Recovery Tracker reported that average drinks sales in Britain’s pubs, bars, and restaurants fell 25% below 2019 levels for the three-week period ended January 1. Wine sales decreased 31% while spirits declined 21% and beer decreased 26%. Traffic to the establishments fell as the British government implemented Plan B. In the week ended December 18, drink sales declined 28% compared to 2019. In the week ended December 25 sales decreased 32%. The first two weeks of December were down 13% and 14% respectively. Sales declined 23% on Christmas Eve, -19% on Christmas, and -23% on New Year’s Eve. COVID-19 continues to have a larger negative impact on holiday celebrations.
Top concern for grocers (ACI)
In a Supermarket News’ survey of more than 130 grocery retailers, mass retailers including Walmart and Target were cited as the top concern. In last year’s survey online retail was the top concern for 43% of respondents. Grocery stores reacted to the competitive threat in 2021 with further e-commerce rollouts and partnerships with delivery providers. The competitive advantages of mass retailers are lower prices and trip consolidation by customers.
Albertsons will report FQ3 results on Tuesday. Our estimates are above consensus estimates for SSS and EPS. According to the MasterCard Spending Pulse grocery sales increased 8.3% in December. Our top concern is the peak in Omicron cases could represent declining food at home trends.
Dry January (HEIA-AM)
Dry January is a public health campaign to encourage people to avoid drinking alcohol during the month. Search interest for “dry January” had its peak in 2019 as seen in the chart below from Google Trends. Interest in January 2021 lasted slightly longer than the year before. The value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term.
Whether it is due to dry January or something else alcoholic beverage sales trends fall off in January, after the stocking up period during the year-end holidays. January 2020 sales were 18.4% lower than the average of the prior 11 months of the year. January 2021 sales were 17.4% below the average sales of the month as seen in the chart below. According to a consumer survey conducted by Numerator, 19.6% of respondents said they had participated in a dry January in the past. Fewer shoppers visited beverage alcohol stores in January with household penetration falling 5% in January 2020 and 4.1% in January 2021 compared to the average for the year. In the U.K. where the challenge began, 15% of adults are planning to participate this year, up 22% from the prior year. Heineken’s 0.0 Zero-Alcohol beer is the best-selling beer in the category. Sales of no-alcohol beer have been growing at a high rate, over 30% in 2020. However, no-alcohol beer still has less than 0.5% of total beer dollar sales in IRI tracked channels. Europe has a much higher share of no-alcohol beer consumption with nearly 75% of the global total. In Spain, no-alcohol beers are 13% of all beer sales.
