TRIP REPORT

The New Hampshire Liquor Commission received the top honors in our 2025 Control State Best Practices Awards.

NABCA CEO Neal Insley addresses attendees.

Each year, Admin takes place in the chairman’ s home state. Thus, the setting in 2025 was Bethesda, MD, for Chairwoman Kathie Durbin, Director of the Montgomery County Department of Alcohol Beverage Services.

Panels at the multiday event focused from the get-go on the ongoing industry pullback.“ The growth that many experienced in alcohol during Covid has dipped dramatically,” said moderator Maggie Barchine, Director of Communications at NABCA. She led the panel, Navigating Today’ s Economic Landscape.

“ Competition for the consumer spend has gotten more and more difficult... as consumers in markets worldwide say they’ re pulling back on spend on alcohol,” said panelist Marten Ladewijks, President, IWSR Americas. Due to inflation, tariffs and other economic factors,“ there’ s greater pressure on [ consumers’] discretionary wallet. And there’ s different direction of their spending, with pressure from different categories, like cannabis, online gambling, and where they spend their time socially, digitally, where there’ s no alcohol.” Premiumization remains a dominant trend in alcohol, but has seen consumers shift.“ Premium outperforms mainstream, but consumers are switching from categories with higher out-of-pocket costs, like spirits, to categories with lower outof-pocket costs, like RTDs and beer, and then they premiumize within those categories” Ladewijks said.

Globally, RTDs remain the only category in growth mode, he added.“ Consumers increasingly prefer pre-dinner drinks to post-dinner drinks, because pre-dinner drinks are cheaper and easier to control how much you drink,” Ladewijks continued, which again benefits RTDs and beer over spirits and wine. A graph he presented showed that the rise in RTDs correlates with the decline in wine.

Ladewijks predicted that alcohol sales declines will continue for five to six more years, before leveling off in 2030.

The subject of consumers watching their wallets went hand in hand with the ques-

The Montgomery Alcohol Beverage Services with their 2025 Best Practices awards.

tion of why Gen Z reportedly spends less on alcohol than other generations. Many reasons have been proposed: Gen Z is health conscious, never leaves the house, frequently gambles online, regularly consumes cannabis, etcetera. However, several presenters pointed out that the percentage of active alcohol drinkers among Gen Z is similar to other generations, while Gen Z spends a similar amount of their discretionary budget on alcohol. So what gives? The likely answer: Money.

“ A lot of it comes down to money,” said Andy Deloney, DISCUS SVP and Head of State Public Policy, during the panel, Where Have the Sales Gone?“ Gen Z doesn’ t really have the money yet,” because they’ re still so early in the professional careers, where they’ re not yet high earners, and can carry a lot of college debt.( Moreover, a good chunk of them are still teenagers.) www. stateways. com Winter 2025 • StateWays 5