Are youngsters really drinking less alcohol

Some years back I did some work with Dunnhumby – the data gurus behind the Tesco Clubcard – and it was enlightening to see the massive discrepancies between what people believed they had purchased and what the till data showed they had actually bought.

When customers were surveyed, the number of supposed buyers of organic bananas was impressive. But when they were questioned on why they had not bought the organic variety on their last half dozen shopping trips, there was always a reason – they were short of money that week, they were too ripe another week, and they picked up the wrong ones on another occasion. But in their own minds, they were convinced they were good people who did the right thing and always bought organic.

This strikes me as having some correlation with the purchase and consumption of alcohol right now, especially among young people. An ongoing deluge of surveys would have us believe they are all on the path to ultimately drinking zero alcohol. As many as 39% of 18 to 24-year-olds claim not to drink alcohol at all, according to YouGov, and while there is now undoubtedly a greater awareness of alcohol in the context of mental health and wellness, I’d question the validity of the responses from this young cohort to such surveys.

Sir Tim Martin, chairman of JD Wetherspoon, also recently raised the same question: “If you did a survey saying, ‘how often do you get rat arsed?’ I’m not sure you’d get very many honest replies.” I’m not so sure that would have been the actual phraseology used in the surveys, but the bottom line is Sir Tim says he’s experienced little evidence of younger people drinking less. 

This has also been the findings of other operators such as Jonathon Swaine, managing director of pubs at Shepherd Neame, who has suggested at a previous Propel conference that the decline in the consumption of alcohol among younger drinkers is part of a gradual reduction over the past 30-40 years (across all age ranges) but that the current trend is not as marked as commentators would lead us to believe. 

At The Alchemist, for instance, in the early months of this year, cocktails represented 67.5% of all alcohol sales, and of this figure, the no-and-low alcohol versions accounted for 3.7%. This compares with 69.5% and 3.1% for 2023, so there has been very little movement in terms of shifts away from the full-fat versions.

Meanwhile, The Devonshire in Soho has been generating gargantuan levels of column inches (disclosure: I’m a serial offender), and some of the recent ones have been focused on its sales of draught Guinness 0.0. This is widely regarded as about as good as non-alcoholic beer gets right now, but even that is resulting in just a modest one in 25 barrels of the black stuff sold at The Devonshire.  

Maybe it all just makes for feel-good stories that fit the much-desired narrative of people living healthier lifestyles today. Whereas, in reality, on the ground, we are seeing only modest behavioural shifts that fit into the long-term underlying trends that have been in place for many years.

What has helped feed the headlines is the array of non-alcoholic products, including Guinness 0.0, which have hit the market. As a judge for some of the leading beer competitions in the UK, I’ve experienced the explosion in the non-alcoholic category, and the quality of the products available today is on another planet when compared with the arid days of Kaliber and Barbican in the 1980s.

The story of youngsters moving en masse away from alcohol has also been further burnished by the rise of low-alcohol drinks – especially in the beer category. There has been incredible growth in the sales of such products, which sit at less than 3.5% ABV, with a doubling in volumes between 2022 and 2023 after years of flat sales, according to IWSR. 

These figures put the UK at the top of the global table for low-alcohol sales growth, but let’s be clear, this is not about the UK suddenly succumbing to abstemious behaviour. It is predominantly about money. Brewers are reformulating existing beers at a pace to reduce their alcohol levels, and launching new brews below the 3.5% threshold, because the reward is significantly reduced tax burdens. 

The adoption of more sensible attitudes towards the consumption of alcohol should be applauded, and it is a sensible younger generation that is leading the charge, but let’s not overplay the trend. This is far from the revolution that many of the headlines and commentators would have us believe and much more of a gradual evolution. Not as many of them are buying organic bananas as they’d have you believe.

Glynn Davis, editor, Beer Insider

This piece was originally published on Propel Info where Glynn Davis writes a regular Friday opinion piece. Beer Insider would like to thank Propel for allowing the reproduction of this column.