First, I suggest you take a quick read of Bart Watson’s take on the first half sales numbers for 2022. You can click right HERE for that.
Now what leapt out at me wasn’t so much the numbers for on premise or OpenTable reservation data but a term that was new to me, channel shift.
Now it is just a fancy way of saying that people bought beer from different places but it is quite interesting to see how the swirling will they-won’t they of Covid restrictions and lessening thereof has thrown things out of whack.
Pivoting is good and was practically required of breweries but it does making reading the tea leaves much harder. Toss in supply chain snafus and airline flight cancellations and each year becomes an unenviable sorting task for Watson.