Endeavour Drinks has seen sales grow 20 per cent on the same quarter last year.

For its first quarter to 4th October 2020, sales at Endeavour-owned bottleshops BWS and Dan Murphy’s rose to $2.7 billion, up from $2.2 billion in the same period last year.

Parent company Woolworths said that Dan Murphy’s was “continuing to outperform”, and overall sales growth is being driven by an increase in customer transactions, although items per basket are reportedly broadly flat.

It said sales growth was prompted by continued in-home consumption, echoing Coles Liquor, which reported in its own first quarter results last month that it was predicting at-home consumption will be the new normal.

Beer sales benefitted from continued craft beer growth, Endeavour said, and BWS was particularly strong in online sales, albeit from a lower base.

Overall, group sales were up 12.3 per cent on the same quarter last year, rising to $17.9 billion.

New buyers fuelling craft beer rise

As Endeavour and Coles enthuse about the growth of craft beer – which has led to them investing in their own private label brands – global big data and consumer insights specialist IRI has released data which shows that it is new buyers that are fuelling the growth of craft beer in bottleshops.

As part of its LiquorLens and Shopper Panel webinar, which provides customer behaviour insights to retailers and producers, IRI found that craft beer had grown 34.1 per cent at the major retailers, including Dan Murphy’s, BWS, First Choice and Liquorland.

It also revealed that this growth was largely prompted by new customers, who may have previously opted for different categories.

In the rest of the beer world, spend on ‘classic’ brands rose by 4.6 per cent and premium brands rose 6.6 per cent, both driven by greater volumes per shopping trip, whilst contemporary brands rose 13 per cent.

It also addressed the contrasting media reports about whether Australians were, in fact, drinking more in lockdown, saying that retailer sales in litres grew 10.2 per cent in the year to date compared to the same period last year.

However, the average volume per buyer increase is “limited”, it said, compared to what on-premise would have been, only rising by 2.6 litres per person for the year so far.

The IRI analysts said that Australia is purchasing more as a nation, but not individually. This is because Australians who were not purchasing alcohol have started doing so during lockdown, with a rise of 231,000 households buying alcohol at liquor retailers who did not do so before.

When it comes to the individual retailers, it found that customers have the highest loyalty rates to Dan Murphy’s have the highest loyalty and customers to the retailer often spend the most. This is followed by BWS, First Choice, Liquorland and Costco.