British Columbians are spending less on alcohol purchases despite higher prices at stores, bars and restaurants.
Whether the cause is less disposable income because wages have not kept up with years of inflation, an increasing belief by some that any alcohol consumption is unhealthy, a preference for legal cannabis or a miscellany of other reasons, the trend is clear from government data.
British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch (BCLDB) data for wholesale alcoholic drinks sold to resellers, such as private liquor stores, government-run liquor stores, restaurants, pubs and restaurants, show a decline in sales in each of the past four quarters on a year-over-year basis.
The BCLDB does not release retail sales data for its stores so the wholesale sales data is the best proxy for what consumers are buying from the resellers.
In the four quarters combined, up to September, wholesale buyers purchased $3,480,292,778 worth of alcoholic drinks from the BCLDB, according to its quarterly market reports. That is down 6.24 per cent from the $3,711,850,879 spent in the four quarters up to September 2023.
The BCLDB recently released data for the quarter ended September, and it calculated that wholesale buyers bought $947,096,977 worth of booze in those three months. That is down 3.95 per cent from the $986,075,144 worth of wholesales bought in the same three months in 2023.
This quarterly decline in wholesales followed year-over-year declines of:
- 7.31 per cent in the three months ended in June;
- 3.56 per cent in the three months ended in March; and
- 8.48 per cent in the three months ended in December 2023, according to number crunching BIV did using BCLDB data.
The last time sales increased in a quarter on a year-over-year basis was in the quarter ended September 2023, when sales were up 1.47 per cent.
The BCLDB divides its alcohol sales into four categories: wine, beer, spirits and refreshment beverages. Each of those categories saw year-over-year declines in the three months ended September, and in the three months that ended in June.
Wine was the category with the largest declines in dollars and in percentage terms in the quarter ended September, but it remained the one where more money was spent than any other category.
British Columbian wholesale buyers purchased $288,522,844 worth of wine in the three months ended September. That is down $17,499,086, or 5.72 per cent, from the $306,021,930 spent on wine wholesales in the same three months in 2023.
Beer was the next largest category for wholesale alcohol spending in the quarter ended September. B.C. wholesale buyers purchased $288,222,303 on beer in that quarter, down $10,695,583, or 3.58 per cent, from the $298,917,886 that they spent in the same three months in 2023.
Spirits wholesales in B.C. in the quarter ended September were $227,633,305, down $9,469,418, or 3.99 per cent, from the $237,102,723 wholesale buyers spent on spirits in the same quarter in 2023.
Refreshment beverages were the final category. B.C. wholesale buyers spent $142,718,525 on those drinks, which are mostly coolers and ciders, in the three months ended September. That is down $1,314,080, or 0.91 per cent, from the $144,032,605 that the wholesale buyers spent on those drinks in the same quarter in 2023.
There were some subcategories where there was wholesale sales growth year-over-year in the three months ended September.
Tequila sales, for example, rose 0.86 per cent to $26,002,117. Its sales in the quarter, which included summer months, was far behind the $61,479,798 spent on vodka and the $59,938,328 spent on whiskies.
Quarters that end in December are consistently the ones where consumers spent the most on alcohol.
For example, the BCLDB sold nearly $317 million worth of wine wholesale in October through December last year. That was more than 21.5 per cent above an average of $260.8 million in each of the following three quarters.
