RESEARCH
LOW AND NO ALCOHOL KAM MEDIA
IS LOW AND NO REALLY AN OPPORTUNITY IN CONVENIENCE?
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WITH ROCKETING ALCOHOL SALES, LOW AND NO ALCOHOL SEEMS TO BE AN UNLIKELY ROUTE TO SALES SUCCESS – BUT IT REALLY COULD BE, ARGUES KAM MEDIA’S BLAKE GLADMAN.
n a year where you might assume many will turn to alcohol, the low and no category continues to grow exponentially. Sales of low- and no-alcohol drinks are up 30% yearon-year in the off-trade. According to Nielsen, the category as a whole is now worth £188m at retail. With hospitality closed or limited for much of this year, where are these drinks being consumed? KAM research shows that more than a third of UK adults have consumed a low or no alcoholic drink at home. This nearly doubles when looking at Generation Z and Millennials specifically. Some one-in-10 UK adults have consumed a low and no variant with their lunch at home, and nearly one-infive with their evening meal. It surely can’t be long before they appear as an option on a meal deal. Only 19% of drinkers have purchased a low and no drink from a convenience store compared with 59% from a supermarket. This is a category in which the industry is not only seriously under-indexing sales-wise
but also from a customer satisfaction perspective. Only 36% of customers thought the low and no range was “good or very good” in their local convenience store, compared with 67% at their local supermarket. Retailers are losing sales via other routes to markets too. Direct-toconsumer sales of no- and low-alcohol brands have also exploded, with 0.5% ABV lager Lucky Saint reporting that online sales had increased by 300% in the four weeks leading up to 17 May compared to the same period last year. Convenience has seen a growth in low and no. According to the Retail Data Partnership, unit sales of nonalcoholic beer in UK convenience stores doubled in the last six months of 2019, and distribution trebled, albeit from a very low base. However, the top five SKUs accounted for more than 80% of non-alcoholic beer sales. Retailers and brands who want to maximise this growing category will need to first understand the consumer and customer perspective. This category potentially impacts many
“Only 36% of customers thought the low and no range was ‘good or very good’ in their local convenience store, compared with 67% at their local supermarket.” associated categories, many shopping missions and many consumer occasions. Learning exactly what the customer wants, will be the key to success. KAM is launching a new deep dive into the low and no drinking occasion in January – sign up to access the research and attend the launch event here.
WEDNESDAY 25TH NOVEMBER 2020 / ISSUE 32 / SLRMAG.CO.UK / 25
