Good news: More Americans drinking alone

And there’s another, perhaps somewhat unsettling, trend pushing up Beam’s bottom line: In the wake of the Great Recession, Americans are increasingly drinking at home. According to Commerce Department data compiled by Bloomberg, U.S. spending on alcoholic beverages for off-premises consumption, adjusted for inflation, has gained nearly 13 percent since June 2009, and hit a record in August 2011.

Now, that’s not necessarily bad news for anybody but bar and restaurant owners. But drinking at home is likely to be less of a social activity than raising a glass in public. And it does invoke the disturbing image of men and women across America passed out over piles of unpaid bills at their dinner tables.

According to analysts at our sister company Bloomberg Industries, at-home alcohol consumption tends to move inversely to consumer confidence, which had a huge decline in August. They also explain that “craft beers and flavored spirit-based beverages are likely to benefit from higher at-home consumption as cash-strapped consumers search out products that they view as affordable luxuries.”