Page 56 - Beverage Master December January 2020

International News
Cannabis Expected to Cannibalize Beer Sales
According to Ipsos-Reid Executive Vice President
Mike Rodenburgh, recent surveys of Cana-dian legal
cannabis consumers found consumption has been
edging upward since legalization, and this has been
linked to a reduction in alcohol intake, especially beer.
Ipsos polling data found 13% of Canadians admitted
to cannabis use before legalization, but in June, the
number was closer to 16%, with frequency of use also
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increasing. While the number of Canadians who con-
sumed alcohol within the previous month remained
at around 50%, Ro-denburgh said the quantity of alco-
hol consumed dropped significantly among cannabis
users.
The biggest impact was on beer consumption. The
average number of servings per month per drinker
went from 20 to 15 among recreational cannabis
users.
“Five fewer beers per month, that’s a big number,”
Rodenburgh said. “What we think is hap-pening is
people are choosing to consume or use cannabis in
some situations when they would normally drink
beer. Or they drink beer and use cannabis at the same
time but drink less beer.”
Other types of alcohol, especially wine, did not suffer
to the same degree.
Rodenburgh said one-fifth of Canadian adults and
90% of current recreational cannabis users are inter-
ested in trying edibles or drinks. The most common
reason is that they have been in a situation where
they would have liked to use cannabis in an environ-
ment where it would be so-cially unacceptable to
smoke it.
Rodenburgh predicted that the marketing challenges
posed by Health Canada’s insistence on plain-Jane
packaging, paired with the limitations of distributing
only through licensed cannabis retailers, would be
limiting factors for growth in cannabis beverage con-
sumption in the near future.
In Ontario, for example, there will be about 75 legal
cannabis retail shops by January, he said, yet there is
enough consumer demand to support closer to 1,000
stores.
“They’ll have about one-tenth the distribution net-
work they’ll need to properly supply the de-mand,”
he said. “Even though there’s a ton of supply, the
distribution channel isn’t developed enough to get
legal product into the hands of consumers who want
to buy it. While that’s changing, it’s not changing fast
enough.”
11/15/19 2:59 PM