As consumers gradually emerge from a lingering recessionary spending mind-set and step up their dining-out frequency, many also are loosening up when it comes to ordering drinks — specifically, wine, beer and cocktails.
The sale of alcoholic beverages has largely kept pace with traffic trends, while consumer orders of all other beverages combined have declined over the last five years, according to a new report from market research firm The NPD Group.
And while full-service operators have been concentrating on winning over cost-conscious diners with revamped food menus, they now might want to consider turning their attention to merchandising beer, wine and cocktails, NPD officials suggested.
“Full-service operators have been focusing on the food because that’s how [consumers] decide where to eat; beverages have been lost,” said Warren Solochek, NPD vice president of client development. “If operators focus simply on food, they’re forgetting a very important part of their menu.”
According to NPD’s latest Beverage Alcohol Report, which examines what motivates consumers’ alcoholic-beverage choices at restaurants, 35 percent of diners who visit a full-service operation that serves alcohol will order a drink. With that number holding relatively steady for three years now, the opportunity to increase servings of alcoholic beverages in fine- and casual-dining operations is huge.
In fact, beverage alcohol has performed best at full-service restaurants, NPD found. Visits to these operations declined by 2 percent between 2010 and 2011, but the number of beverage-alcohol servings at those places decreased by only 1 percent for the year ended November 2011 compared with the same period a year earlier, NPD reported.
Despite those losses — which are due largely to weak traffic — some alcoholic-beverage products and categories are growing increasingly popular with full-service restaurant customers.
Beer is consumers’ beverage of choice at full-service places ranging from sports bars to casual-dining restaurants, NPD found. Whether bottled or draft poured, beer is served at 15 percent of all meal and snack occasions at fine- and casual-dining outlets. In the last three years, servings of beer have fluctuated because the younger adults who have historically purchased the beverage more often have been hit hard by the recession and high unemployment. Microbrews — small-batch beers largely produced by regional breweries — have helped maintain beer’s popularity, though.
“The good thing for beer has been a fairly big increase in purchases of microbrews,” Solochek said. “Younger people are looking for new and different kinds of things. [That’s] the appeal of microbrews.”
Whether classics made with consumers’ favorite brands or new creations custom-crafted by a mixologist, cocktails also continue to be popular. Cocktails are served at 10 percent of all meal and snack occasions at fine- and casual-dining outlets. Bourbon and whiskey are among the most popular spirits. Cocktail servings have remained flat the last three years, keeping pace with full-service traffic.
Wine has gained more menu importance of late, thanks to older adults who have taken to ordering beverage alcohol more frequently when they visit fine-dining restaurants. Ordering incidence of wine now exceeds 2007 pre-recession levels.
While food is primarily what lures diners to a particular restaurant, having the right beverages can seal the deal, NPD found.
“The trends show us it’s still important to have something unique on your [alcoholic-beverage] menu,” Solochek said. “People like choice.”
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The promise of higher sales and more-frequent visits has prompted operators in a variety of service segments to more closely examine and differentiate their existing hard beverage offerings.
The food at Union Square Cafe in New York has long been driven by fresh, local and seasonal ingredients, although that approach did not extend to its cocktail menu. In an effort to mirror the kitchen and boost slipping beverage sales, the cafe last year launched a seasonal cocktail-of-the-day program.
“Whether cocktail, soda, beer or wine, we should give the same thought and attention to where it comes from,” said Sam Lipp, managing partner of Union Square Hospitality Group, parent of Union Square Cafe. “We had not given the same attention to our spirits.”
Each day, a new farm-to-table cocktail is featured on the cafe menu, which is printed twice daily. Among the recent concoctions featured were the Pea Shooter, a blend of lemon vodka, chamomile grappa, and English pea and mint purée, and the Rhubarb Rossini, with rhubarb rum, Pampero, Lillet, lemon, cherry brandy, bitters and a splash of Prosecco. Since launching the beverage program last year, Lipp said the restaurant’s liquor sales have risen 15 percent, and beverage sales overall are up 17 percent.
Original-recipe craft cocktails have been a major theme at Mr. Rain’s Fun House, a seasonally focused American bistro in Baltimore. However, when the restaurant opened in 2009, craft cocktails were a relatively new concept, and many cash-conscious diners were reluctant to drop $11 on an unfamiliar drink. To inspire orders, Mr. Rain’s added cocktail flights — three mini craft cocktails for $25 — in 2010. The flights took off and helped to increase cocktail sales between 25 and 35 percent in the last year.
“It really helped to solidify our menu in the city, helped boost sales,” said beverage director Perez Klebahn.
Building on that success, Klebahn is creating bottled cocktails — carbonated versions of existing house-made drinks that are served in a bottle — for the summer. He’s also working on other innovations, including barrel-aged cocktails and breakfast-cereal-infused cream-based cocktails.
At Sizzler, guests usually have steak on their minds, not wine or beer. But the 168-unit steakhouse chain is hoping to change that with a new pairing program.
“Sizzler offers beer and wine, but it’s really never been a focus,” said Katie Cameron, senior director of marketing services for Sizzler USA. “As we revamped the brand, it seemed to make sense to pair our LTOs with beer and wine.”
The new program pairs wines with several of the chain’s limited-time offerings. For example, Salmon Creek Merlot is married to Steak & Shrimp Scampi, and Salmon Creek Chardonnay is suggested as an accompaniment to Steak & California Grilled Malibu Chicken. Rolled out in late April, the program is in test at 110 stores.
The chain, which recently underwent a brand overhaul, also added a beer panel to its new menu and may roll out a beer pairing to go with a summer barbecue LTO.
At least one restaurateur has built an entire concept around consumers’ increasing thirst for microbrews. Idaho’s Brewforia Beer Market is a retail-casual-dining-restaurant hybrid that offers more than 800 different beers from around the world, with a strong focus on American craft beers.
Brewforia, which its owner has dubbed “the Starbucks of beer,” has one unit open in a Boise suburb and a larger second unit under construction nearby. A franchise program is set to launch in the fall.
“The appeal of craft beer for people is being able to try something new,” owner Rick Boyd said. “The other big part of the appeal is the locavore movement. People feel a tremendous amount of pride in buying products made by people in their own town.”
Nation’s Restaurant News has an exclusive agreement to obtain the NPD Group data and research findings that appear on the Consumer Trends page.