“Covid-19 also saw the on-trade industry innovate with new revenue streams, such as delivery and meal kits, showing how a great pre-batch solution can enhance customer experience. Pre-batch cocktails offer many benefits, including speed of service and reduced wastage. “Continuing in 2022, the hospitality industry appears to be suffering a shortage of skilled bartenders and staff from the ongoing effects of Covid-19. “RTD cocktails have taken huge chunks of sales away from wine, beer, and classic spirit and mixer style drinks, and I can see this trend growing as consumers continue to demand more interesting experiences from food and drink,” says Mody. With 20 bottle cocktails, last year his business sold a whopping one million cocktails. One London mixologist willing to go on record is Pritesh Mody, resident cocktail expert for Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch and founder of bespoke bottle cocktail company World of Zing. In talking with some London bartenders, they can 54 | AUTUMN 2022 DISTILLERS JOURNAL While it’s easy to say that Covid brought about this growth, the continued growth has happened because manufactures have considerably upped their game with natural flavours premium spirits. This isn’t happening just in the States but is global, and it’s only going to get bigger thanks to Coca-Cola and Jack Daniels teaming up to put Jack & Coke into a can. NielsenIQ says that this growth continued in 2021 – now past pandemic shut-downs – with continued triple-digit growth. According to NielsenIQ, the RTD segment saw a massive 40 percent increase in sales and its biggest growth in shares of sales year-on-year by a staggering 416 percent in 2020. Carol Pak, who has started Sool canned soju cocktails, says that while working for ZV Ventures, the innovation arm of Anheuser-Busch InBev, she realised that there would be a huge global shift in the beverage environment and she wanted to be part of it. By cold-calling canneries, she finally found one that was ready to take her canned soju cocktail line, Jumo, from concept to reality. While she had numerous ideas, it struck her that what she liked doing most was to spend time with family and friends, and drinking the Korean national spirit, soju. Korean American Grace Choi says that she always knew she wanted to start a brand which celebrated her heritage. This is truly becoming a global trend with producers, for example, going after specific ethnic markets. Now, besides having a full range of spirits, it has nearly 30 RTDĬocktails, using rum, tequila, vodka, gin, and whiskey spirits, with the majority of its range found in vodka and tequila drinks. They offer controlled ABVs and consistently taste delicious.” Cutwater first started making spirits in the back of its brewery. “Canned cocktails are a convenient and quality solution for cocktail lovers,” says Earl Kight, the co-founder and chief sales and marketing officer for San Diego’s Cutwater Spirits. Consumers quickly realised that it was a whole lot easier opening a can than creating a home bar, and spirit manufacturers were happy to oblige. While RTD cocktails have been around since the 1960s in the States, they never made much of a dent in sales until 2019 when, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, people around the world abandoned pubs, bars, and restaurants, and instead started mixing and pouring cocktails at home. That said, other trends such as putting pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, allspice, and ginger) into everything from whisky to Starbucks will never have the same appeal here as in the States where, embarrassingly for the human race, the first Starbucks pumpkin pie spice lattes of the season are reported as news. And indeed, some would say our brewers have yet to realise the full potential of creating a complete craft beer experience for their customers. It took a while here before brewers caught on, but there is no looking back. Craft beer, tap rooms, and food trucks were – and continue to be – big business in the States. Does this always work? As much as we hate to admit it, it does seems to for a good portion of the time. If you’re like many of us, when you want to spot a trend, you take a quick look at what’s happening across the Pond for it will soon be here.
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