From its launch through 2018, when it accounted for just 5% of the market, hard seltzer was pretty much an afterthought in the bev/al marketplace. But it exploded in 2019, surpassing light lagers as the No. 1 seller by 2021 with 23% of share on Drizly.
Until 2019, a few big hard seltzer brands dominated sales: White Claw, Truly, and Bon V!V. But “innovation and new brand and product entry has drastically changed the hard seltzer landscape over the past few years,” says Liz Paquette, Drizly’s head of consumer insights.
Many spirits and wine companies have also launched canned, liquor- or wine-based beverages marketed as hard seltzer, one of the most successful of which has been the uber-popular High Noon, which debuted in 2020 from wine conglomerate E. & J. Gallo. Drizly defines hard seltzers as fermented malt beverages, classifying brands like High Noon (which is vodka-based) as RTD cocktails.
As hard seltzer has taken share from light lager, RTD cocktails may be poised to steal share from hard seltzer — and indeed, they are likely a contributing factor in the category’s slowing growth. Currently, hard seltzer holds four percent of share across all subcategories on Drizly, while RTD cocktails hold two percent.
“Share is still growing but slowing growth shows that saturation may be a possibility in the not so distant future, particularly as ready-to-drink growth skyrockets,” says Paquette. RTD share growth is up 15 times the rate of hard seltzer share growth in 2021 to date, she adds.
According to Drizly’s recently published 2021 consumer report, only 32 percent of respondents correctly identified what hard seltzer is; 54 percent selected responses that were the definition of a ready-to-drink cocktail. “There is a clear blurring of the lines between the two categories as innovation continues, and the majority of consumers do not know the difference,” says Paquette.
Sales on Drizly have been dominated by millennials (ages 26 to 40), who hold 62% share year-to-date. However, this has declined by four percentage points over last year as more Generation Z purchasers hit the legal drinking age; Gen Z (ages 21 to 25) now holds 14% of share on Drizly, up from (9% in 2020. Gen X users (ages 41 to 56) hold 21% of share, while baby boomers (ages 57 and up) hold 3% percent of share.