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TIL World’s biggest beer, wine and spirits producers have collectively lost $830 billion in market value over just four years. Changing drinking habits and rising health concerns have hit earnings across the sector. Millennials and Gen Z are also not much interested in alcohol.

  • MILLENNIALS destroying ANOTHER thing! WHY don’t they just SPEND the Money we DONT give them on these BAD things that will Make them Feel like CRAP while making US Richer?

    -Billionaires!

      • Millenials were also big on the whole craft beer thing (at least in North America, not sure how that trend played out in the rest of the world).

            • 2 hours

              not here, there’s at least one craft brewery in every town.

              also you made it sound like the past tense applied to the millenials themselves :P

        • Craft beer is huge in Australia

          I lived in a part of Sydney famous for having dozens of breweries in a relatively small area

          I could walk easily around some amazing places, and I could take my dogs to almost all of them

      • 1 hour

        I’m an elder millennial and I hardly ever drink, I know a lot of people like me. It’s almost like generalizing is a bad idea.

      • Yup. But millenials are getting to an age where hangovers are just not worth it, and you get gens are not continuing the slack. All my younger friends use all sorts of substances, but rarely alcohol…

  • 2 hours

    Canada’s boycott of big US manufacturers has helped as well.

    • Nah. We stopped buying American, and instead we buy Canada and Scotland and New Zealand alcohol products. It’s not a reduction, just a delicious shift.

      • Are the worlds largest producers of beer wine and spirits mentioned in this article Canadian? Because if not, I don’t see how it’s relevant.

        If they ARE Canadian…really? Are you sure? There’s one that begins with an M thats Canadian. Moltav or something like that. I’d know it if I saw it. Other than that one, I can’t think of any Canadian beer.

        • 2 hours

          Molson

          There’s lots of craft beers on Canada now. At least, that’s most of what I’ve bought lately but I don’t drink very often.

          Shout out to Granville Island Winter Ale. Goddam delicious!

    • Scotland is seeing a huge drop in scotch sales, and France is seeing a huge drop in wine sales. Even though the US producers are seeing a bigger drop due to Canada’s boycott, the rest of the world is also seeing a drop even accounting for the Canadian shift to their products.

      • 1 hour

        I really think it’s the wealth inequality. People can’t afford it.

  • Most of the people I know are cutting back not because of health or habits, just because everything is so crazy expensive now. I feel like booze has been almost completely priced out of its target demographic.

    • Yeah, while I’m happy that this is making my favorite stuff cheaper, it’s still very expensive. Blanton’s was selling for $120/bottle just last year if you could even find it in my area, but I can find it in a regular grocery store for $80 now. EH Taylor went from $100/bottle and hard to find to $60 and all over the place. That’s WAY more affordable but also still really damn expensive compared to Buffalo Trace (all three of these brands are from the same parent company and from roughly the same recipe and source ingredients).

      Scotch is slightly cheaper now, too. Dalmore 15 was selling for $120 last year and is around $100 now. Two years ago, Dalmore King Alexander was $340 but can be found in the grocery store for $280 now.

      What I haven’t seen yet is a drop in price of Burgundy. I can’t afford to pay $300/bottle for a Nuits-Saint-George Gran Cru.

      Even looking away from luxury booze brands, the cost of cocktails is also very high. I have to pay $21 for a cocktail at a moderately priced restaurant in my area.

      • 49 minutes

        Cocktails are a scam. Most places (and even some of the best places) are using cheap base ingredients, and the end results are gimmicky, boring, and lacking in complexity. At best, the median quality cocktail is nice to look at and features an acceptable balance of sweetness and acidity. A fucking glass of cold juice wins on a head-to-head of those metrics almost every time haha.

  • 3 hours

    The legalization of Marujuana, edibles and young people collectively don’t go to bars anymore, I wonder if the amount of drunk driving has declined.

    • I want to say no…but I don’t have any way to know that I’m right. I’d assume the number of young drunk drivers has gone down. And I assume drunk driving will go down drastically once the boomers start their giant death toll numbers. But that’ll be over the next 20 years. My mom is 80. My grandma lived to be 103. The youngest boomers are 60.

      But again, I have zero clue how right I am.

  • I went sober for various reasons years ago. I wish I could say it saved me money though, now I spend my vice money on fancy food instead.

    • is already sitting at your dinner table

      Dinner isn’t for hours, and you haven’t even started yet? That’s cool. I’ll wait.

      I brought a game boy.

  • 2 hours

    My uncle is slowly dying from pancreatic cancer thanks to irregular alcohol consumption. So yeah. Let’s not get pancreatic cancer or other such things. It’s painful. All you gotta do is not drink non foods like alcohol and not breathe non breathable gasses like smoke.

  • I’m all for this. A) It’s healthier for everyone involved. B) It is making prices come down for me to buy all that unhealthy stuff for myself.

  • I’ll see if I can find it, but that “collectively lost $830 billion in market value” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It went down from like 89% to 82% or something. That’s how much those fuckers make.

  • I’ve noticed that it feels like a very large proportion of Gen Z and young millennials vape like their lives depend on it. They can’t go anywhere without a vape in hand and they’re sucking on it every minute or so. I’m curious if the demographic that would be heavy drinkers is now just heavy vapers instead.

    • I was on a public transportation city bus, and this guy just took out a vape, and started smoking. I’m like “There’s no smoking on the bus”, and he just starts laughing and acting like I’m an asshole. Saying vape smoke isn’t unhealthy.

      I’m not a smoker, but my mom was. Guess who got cancer from second hand smoke, because in the 80s, everyone said “second hand smoke idn’t unhealthy”.

      Yeah, but I’M the asshole for not wanting to breathe vape smoke in a place where it’s illegal to vape.