IPA beers lose market share on Memorial Day Weekend.

Drizly purchase data shows hard seltzer driving growth of beverage alcohol for the start of the warm weather season. Hard seltzer’s share of purchases in May increased from 25 percent to 28 percent.

Drizly includes hard seltzer in its beer category. This should be music to the ears of Constellation Brands, currently battling Anheuser-Busch in courts over the rights to sell Corona Hard Seltzer in the US. The dispute centers around whether Constellation should be allowed to sell anything other than Corona “beer” per the licensing agreement forged in 2017.

In Drizly’s beer category, Mark Anthony Brand’s White Claw hard seltzer had more sales than any brand. Another hard seltzer, followed by Boston Beer’s Truly, claimed the number 2 spot. Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light beer, and Constellation Brands’ Corona beer were numbers 3 and 4, followed by Molson Coors’ Coors (all brands) and Anheuser-Busch’s Michelob (all brands).

Drizly’s “Beer” Sales on Memorial Day Weekend

  1. White Claw
  2. Truly Hard Seltzer
  3. Bud Light
  4. Corona
  5. Coors
  6. Michelob
  7. Miller Brewing Co.
  8. Modelo
  9. Stella Artois
  10. Heineken

“Hard seltzer was the only beer subcategory that saw gains over Memorial Day weekend versus the month of May overall,” said Liz Paquette, Drizly’s head of consumer insights. She cited new entries in the category as a potential reason more consumers are choosing hard seltzer.

Significant in the report was that light lagers share remained flat at 20 percent of category share, while IPA beers lost share. Previously holding 10 percent of all beer sales on Drizly during Memorial Day weekend (2020), IPA’s captured only 8 percent of purchases.

“Hard seltzer is … continuing to explode,” Paquette told Forbes magazine. “In the hard seltzer space, we have seen growth in expanded flavor offerings like agave-based beverages like Cacti and Lone River Ranch Water,” she continued.

According to the most recent data from the online seller of all things beverage alcohol, hard seltzer continues to skew slightly younger, with 60% of hard seltzer sales to 21 to 34 year-olds. That age group comprises 39% of Drizly share overall.

Aiden Gentson
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