Drinks Trends in 2023

29 December 2022 - Inn Express

Get ahead of your competition by recognising our drinks trends for 2023

Since the dawn of time, many trends witnessed from 'across the pond' in the USA have been used to gauge the drinks trends on these shores. But as a nation, we know what we like! As a country, we now have some of the best hospitality venues in the world. At Inn Express, we are lucky to have some of these as our customers. Due to this considerable variation in the style of venue within the customer base, we have a unique perspective on what the movers and shakers are in the industry, so read more to see what we think are the key trends for 2023.

Premiumisation

Bacardi found that 50% of venues reported customers were opting for premium options when ordering drinks. This is a drinks trend we're sure many businesses can get behind as there's more profit to be made from premium drinks. However, we have to ask, why now? Consumers are looking to improve their experience in any way they can. One way of doing this is ordering 'nicer drinks' or theatrical drinks. People do this for the same reason people drive a nicer or faster car than they probably need, for the image. Get those smoke guns and flame throwers out! It's cocktail time!

Health conscious drinks

There's no time like the present to take care of your health and with new legislation on HFSS products and a widely-shared Government strategy to reduce obesity, there is pressure on operators to provide healthier options. For this reason (and the growth of super-conscious health influencers on social media), more and more drinks are displaying health benefits. Hard seltzers do well (with direct-to-consumer sales) because they're low-calorie. They're essentially alcoholic sparkling waters. Additionally, non-alcoholic beer has skyrocketed because of its health benefits and a reduced number of calories; fewer people want to wake up dehydrated with a banging headache and unable to function properly for days. Hence the rise of their healthier counterpart. One product that has only begun to rise (in our opinion) is Kombucha. This is quite possibly the healthiest option within the soft drinks market currently. Kombucha is a fermented tea that has plenty of health benefits. It contains probiotics and antioxidants, it also kills bacteria with its acetic acid. Drinking Kombucha regularly improves gut health, which ironically is a growing trend within the health and fitness industry, so you can see how the growth of both things lend themselves to each other nicely. I'm sure you've seen the rise of turmeric & ginger drinks; we think they're probably all marketing with a lack of tangible improvement to your health. However, the fact that the sales of these drinks sky rocketed show that health-focused products are a rising trend in the industry.

RTD / Ready to drink

This format has huge growth potential in 2023— they're often eco-friendly and convenient. Despite the growing demand for cocktails in the on-trade, many venues still struggle to find trained staff, so a quality pre-mixed drink ticks all the right boxes. We have an extensive range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic pre-mixed RTDs, including MOTH cocktails, which are full-strength classics made with the best craft spirits. Perfect every time. We also have excellent non-alcoholic options from PUNCHY, which offer low-sugar, low-calorie soft drinks that are all grown up, leading the pack with a little extra to support your immune system. They charge every plastic-free can of Punchy with 50% of your daily vitamin D, so their flavours pair perfectly with a balanced diet.

Top Tip: drop in a shot of your favourite spirit and these make excellent, premium cocktails. Our favourite is a drop of spiced rum over ice & topped up with Punchy Golden Hour. The zesty blood orange & aromatic bitters pair perfectly with the warming spices in the rum.

Taking on the BIG G!

With prices due to surge again in 2023 (see what we did there?) Guinness will be facing some serious challenges for its spaces on bars. It is easily the most iconic example of a drink defining a nation. It's always a lovely sight watching a pint being poured. The way the white, creamy head mixes with the dark stout beneath, watching the bubbles rise to the top.

But even with global dominance and all the theatre surrounding Guinness, the stout and porter category is enormous. There are some damn tasty, great-value alternatives to the "king of stout", or the "black stuff" as the natives call it. Please look at our stout section and give a new beer a whirl, making some much-needed margin.

Cask ale

2022 saw an enormous surge in quality craft sales. The craft of excellent cellar management is an art form. Those who do it right are reaping the rewards and seeing customers return, looking for that unbeatable cask experience. This opinion is concreted further by the numerous modern craft brewers such as Deya, Glasshouse, Full Circle, Wylam and many more that were previously brewing beers in kegs and are now moving into the cask arena. This swing in format is for the reasons we mentioned above, but also, from a sustainable and environmental point of view, cask beer requires less chilling and can be dispensed without any gas pressure. Head to our website for our ever-changing range of craft cask ales.

Sustainability

In today's world, sustainable practices are encouraged. Most people are conscious about where their products come from, how they were made and the effect they will have on the planet. There are plenty of methods drinks companies use to qualify for a 'sustainable' label on their marketing and brand. One of these methods is reusable containers. EcoSpirits are a company that distributes spirits in 4.5-litre containers that are returned and washed so that the bar can reuse them. They take an approach to spirits similar to kegged beer. Glass bottles for spirits create 22,000,000 tonnes of emissions yearly. EcoSpirits combat this figure by saving 550 grams of emissions per bottle by using their reusable containers. With nearly no packaging and a reduced carbon footprint, you can see how this business has taken advantage of this growing drinks trend - with no sign of slowing down in 2023. Purity Brewing Co is an example of a brewery immersed in this trend. For example, they use labelling that is entirely renewable. They have a 95% efficient heating system for their brewing process. But it doesn't stop there; they give their spent yeast and hops to farmers so that only the bare minimum goes to waste. If you compare their beer to any others in the industry, they use 2.8 pints of water to craft one beer; this is a significant improvement compared to the industry average of 8 pints of water per beer produced.

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