Off-premise beer sales are booming, but are Americans actually drinking more booze during the coronavirus pandemic? It’s a tough question to answer definitively, but here are some statistics to consider.
Until last Thursday, when President Donald Trump astonishingly wondered aloud about the ability to inject disinfectants into the human body as a possible coronavirus combatant, I had a pretty regular evening routine going.
Sometime after 5:00 P. M., I’d relocate from my home office to the chaise lounge portion of my couch, crack open a beer, and turn on the daily White House coronavirus briefing while I finished up some work.
I didn’t think of it at the time, but I probably should have created a drinking game to help pass the time.
Everything about those daily conferences was so predictable, including my beer consumption.
By the time Trump left the podium, I was usually a couple beers deep and ready to move on from Briefing Nightmares and into my own version of Kitchen Nightmares (sans Gordon Ramsay of course).
My increased weekday drinking got me thinking: How many other Americans were cracking open a few cold ones as they watched the daily briefings, and were people actually drinking more booze during the lockdown?
Those are tough questions to answer definitively, but here are some statistics to consider.
A recent Morning Consult survey of more than 2,000 U. S. adults found that just 16% were drinking more, while 19% were drinking less “due to social distancing and self-quarantining practices.” A similar poll of more than 12,000 adults, conducted by YouGov, found that 20% of Americans were drinking more, compared to 25% who said they were drinking less.
If we believe those results, it stands to reason that overall consumption would actually be decreasing.
So what are the sales figures telling us?
According to market research firm Nielsen, total off-premise alcohol sales during the seven week period ending April 18 were up 24.
