As everyone knows, this has been a difficult year for the beverage alcohol industry . Consumer trends have shifted in an unfortunate direction. Sales are down, consumption has receded, and businesses in all three tiers have seen their bottom line suffer. This is not news to anyone by now.
Nor is this oft-repeated phrase: Gen Z doesn’t drink. The latest generation to reach legal drinking age is regularly brought up as a primary factor behind our industry’s ongoing slump. Rather than consume alcohol, people under 30 prefer cannabis, or no- and low-ABV alternatives. Why? They are health conscious, financially tight, socially anxious, and prefer staying home rather than going out to bars and restaurants. Excuses abound for why this generation has turned away from alcohol. However, we ask: How accurate are these assessments? In May, I attended the 2025 Annual Conference for the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association (NABCA), which represents control states. Notably, attendance was down, as alcohol companies and organizations understandably cut back their travel budgets nowadays. But what I really wanted to share were excellent remarks from Melanie Batchelor, Managing Director of Campari America , during a closing panel:
“It’s easy to find a lot of data that [Gen Z] is drinking less and is more conservative ” with alcohol,” she said. “But we don’t know fully yet what trends are cyclical versus what are structural. So we don’t have as much doom and gloom. But there is a consumer shift, but that happens all the time in this industry.”
“Trends come and go,” Batchelor added, “and it’s all about how you adapt.” Accordingly, Campari recently launched in the American market Crodino, a nonalcoholic spritz that has had success in Europe since the 1960s.
Batchelor further recalled a recent trip to Texas, where she attended a college football game. Surrounded by a stadium full of Gen Z, she observed how they were hardly avoiding alcohol. “I urge my colleagues to get out of the office and spend time with the consumer,” she said. Along those lines, Batchelor brought up that another trend among Gen Z is higher-ABV beverages. “We’re not putting all of that generation into one bucket, but recognizing microtrends within them,” she said.
Excellent advice from someone atop the industry: taking a wider and longer view, rather than dismissing Gen Z as a generation that doesn’t drink. I would recommend a similar viewpoint during these tricky times.
Kyle Swartz Editor, Off-Premise