2026 RETAILER OF THE YEAR
2026 RETAILER OF THE YEAR
“ Inflation is not helping right now, and that ' s the hard part,” adds Silverstein.“ People are getting squeezed left and right. And when your groceries went from $ 100 to $ 175, you see customers typically start falling back into those more familiar brands.”
As in other markets, cannabis beverages have taken off in Illinois.
“ THC drinks, that has really been on fire,” says Garfield“ And that’ s good and bad. Because it proves a lot of what we ' re seeing in the market, that people are going from liquor to marijuana a little bit. And the other negative is that it ' s potentially going to be illegal at the end of the year.”
Garfield refers to the federal government scheduling the closing of the loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill, which is a grey area that allows THC drinks to exist. Many industry folks remain optimistic that a compromise is possible before the November deadline, as cannabis beverages have become a lucrative industry with a wide demographic.
“ Even in Naperville, I was blown away how much THC drinks we sell there,” says Garfield.“ It’ s middle-aged women buying them, too. That’ s become the main customer base on it.”
Unlike other states, Illinois does not have a hard milligram cap on these products. For the sake of public safety, Garfield’ s self-regulates.
“ We ' ve been trying to really limit to around ten milligrams,” says Garfield.“ Obviously there are some instances where customers requesting more. But for the most part, we ' re trying to stick to a ten-milligram cap.”
As for RTDs, another category that’ s trended in recent years,“ you ' re finally starting to see some headwind,” says Silverstein.
“ There are a lot of brands out there. I think the shakeout is really starting to come to fruition now.”
“ But then there are still these bright spots, right?” he adds.“ Like Sun Cruiser, that has really been something over the last, I ' d say, eight months. That ' s kind of been a surprise. That ' s in a somewhat saturated category, but it is really still growing. I think on the spirit side of the RTD category, it ' s a much harder barrier to entry. I think that the consumers there are looking for something that might be a little bit more tried-and-true than getting as adventurous as some of the stuff coming out.”
THE YEAR AHEAD
Looking at the rest of 2026 and into 2027, Garfield remains optimistic but cautious, given the industry’ s headwinds.
“ Hopefully we could see some more positive moves in the market in regards to the lull that we ' re all dealing with,” says Garfield.“ In regards to our business, I think we ' re really trying to focus in on each location and fine tune them and see where we can change things to generate momentum and keep maintaining our customer accounts, and what we can do to get new, people in and keep them engaged.”
“ In regards to expansion, we ' re not doing anything this year,” he adds.“ Next year, we don ' t know. I think I want to see where the market goes before we start really focusing again hard on expansion. But yeah, I think it ' s really just kind of dialing each store in to do what we can to preserve and grow whatever business we have at those locations. You know, we are in a fortunate position where we do see our numbers outpacing where the market is.” •
14 Beverage Dynamics • 2026 Top 100 Issue www. beveragedynamics. com