CHICAGO—Total alcohol sales in all away-from-home venues are expected to decline 2.5 percent in 2010 with the largest declines occurring in the casual full-service restaurants and high-end white tablecloth restaurants, according to a new report from Technomic.
Technomic estimates that 2009 alcohol sales will end the year down 4.9 percent. The drop in sales is further supported by current data from the Technomic/GuestMetrics partnership which shows check averages are down 6 percent through the third quarter of 2009. On top of declining traffic, overall alcohol sales levels have fallen at a much steeper rate than the decline in food.
“Our outlook for alcohol sales is based upon continued weakness in restaurant traffic and further consumer frugality,” said David Henkes, vice president at Technomic and the director of the firm’s on-premise practice. “The overall share of visits that include alcohol has been on a downward slide for several quarters. While next year won’t be quite as bad, we don’t think we’ll begin to see real growth in consumer spending on alcohol again until 2011.”