Health-conscious adults, the mass media, and recreational cannabis gave dry January new meaning this year. “January has always been the month with lowest percentage of sales volume for the year, but it has dropped significantly over the last two years,” says Mark O’Callaghan, owner of Exit 9 Wine & Liquor Warehouse in Clifton Park, New York. “During Covid, nobody really partook in dry January. Last year people started getting out of the house and back to the office. This gave them a better opportunity to follow resolutions, whether it’s weight, health, or less drinking. At the beginning of January, you couldn’t turn on the morning news stations without them talking about it.”
Beverage alcohol faces growing competition in states where recreational cannabis is legal. “Last January, we had a soft month and were down 10%, but things got better throughout the year,” O’Callaghan says. “Now we are down another 4% over that this year. I didn’t think we were going to go any lower. It’s estimated one-third of people participating in Dry January have just switched to marijuana.”
Sales of national brands in January remained fairly steady at Exit 9, led by Tito’s ($31.93 a 1.75 liter), High Noon ($19.95 an eight-pack of 12-ounce cans), Josh Cellars ($11.93 to $51.95 a 750-ml.), Kendall Jackson ($12.93 to $33.89 a 750-ml.), and Bota Box ($18.93 a 3-liter box). “The core national brands still lead the pack,” O’Callahan says. “Brown goods and cordials always do a little better in the colder months. Customers are buying their go-to brands.”
O’Callahan plans to introduce four or five single barrel Bourbons in the next couple of weeks. “When we release a single barrel of Bourbon, our core whiskey customers want to come in and try it right away,” he says.
At Julio’s Liquors in Westborough, Massachusetts, owner Ryan Maloney introduced some new single barrel Bourbon releases in January along with a pre-sale of Buffalo Trace’s new Traveller blended whiskey ($35 a 750-ml.). “We sold out of 132 bottles in one day and it’s not even in the store yet,” Maloney says. “January is a relatively slow month. If you attack the month, rather than sit back and give up on it, you do a lot better. It’s not great, but it has been a solid month.”
Maloney also launched a new non-alcoholic retail section at Julio’s. “We consolidated all of the non-alcoholic wine, beer, and spirits together, including the specialty RTDs, in an easy-to-shop area,” he says. “We aren’t just doing this for Dry January. We’re launching the whole section. We made it really simple to shop. We figured it would be easy to launch it during January when everybody is focused on it.”
Maloney notes that even though the NA segment is relatively small, it’s one of the fastest-growing beverage categories. “We were probably 70 to 80 SKUs last year, and now we are close to 150 SKUs,” he says. “Liquor stores are the best place to sell it because we have people coming in and looking for it. We’re used to the flavor profile. We’re used to helping people put cocktails together. We are the educators of the beverage alcohol categories.”
In response to consumer demand, Julio’s NA section segment is receiving a lot of attention. “We are taking customer suggestions and trying different things,” Maloney says. “It’s constantly changing and evolving depending on what customers want and what we find works. You have to cultivate and curate your selection. It changes as people learn the category and try different things. You constantly have to be on top of it. People are getting more sophisticated.”
Top-selling NA brands at Julio’s include St. Agrestis Phony Negroni ($8 a 750-ml.), Yu No NA spirits ($40 a 750-ml.), Ritual NA spirits (all $30 a 750-ml), and Lyre’s NA spirits ($30 a 750-ml.) and RTDs ($4 a 750-ml.), such as American Malt & Cola and Dark ’N Spicy. “The real way to do these alcohol-free spirits is to put them in cocktails,” Maloney says. “It replaces what you are missing—the alcohol part—it gives you the flavor of rum, gin, or whiskey in the cocktail. Most of them are not meant to be consumed straight.”
In New York, meanwhile, beverage alcohol retailers are prohibited from selling NA products. “We have to sell things that are at least 1% alcohol,” O’Callahan says. “We get requests all the time for non-alcoholic wines and spirits. Non-alcoholic whiskies are becoming a big thing. The NA category is low volume, but there is growth.”
This January has magnified the importance of NA products at the retail tier. “Even though you are starting from a small baseline, you have people very interested in it,” Maloney says. “It creates more excitement and brings more customers into the store. It’s not a set-and-forget type situation. It needs love and attention.”