Pat Nolan Blog

Irish in America, Guinness’d city by Guinness’d city

Guinness has proved one of the most successful beer brands internationally, not least in the USA.

But some time ago, Boston-based Bevspot, a US bar management software and consultancy company, gathered data on brand demand from customers using its services to order beer, curious to see which were the top ‘Irish’ cities in the US based on the sales performance of Guinness amongst its users.

It aggregated 2016 and early 2017 on-trade beer order data from about 300 of its BevSpot users across 10 major metropolitan areas in the US to find that, in percentage of orders by value, Boston topped the list with the stout being responsible for 3.6% of all brand purchases.

New York followed this with a purchase percentage of 3.4%, ahead of Atlanta on 2.4%.

Then came Los Angeles on 2.1%, Chicago on 2%, Dallas on 1.9%, San Francisco on 1.7%, Washington DC on 1.4%, Houston on 1.1% and finally Miami on 0.3%.

 

Bevspot gathered data on brand demand from customers using its services to order beer, curious to see which were the top ‘Irish’ cities in the US based on the sales performance of Guinness amongst its users.  

Bevspot gathered data on brand demand from customers using its services to order beer, curious to see which were the top ‘Irish’ cities in the US based on the sales performance of Guinness amongst its users.

 

“It’s not really surprising that Boston and New York top the city rankings in Guinness orders given the higher concentrations of people of Irish descent in these northeastern cities,”comments Bevspot’s Reggie Woo, “Guinness’s low performances in Miami and Houston also line up with expectations as they’ve some of the lowest urban concentrations of Irish-Americans in the country.

“It was also shocking to see how highly cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles ranked in Guinness orders, with almost 2.5% and just over 2.0% of beer orders respectively.

“Why is this the case? It might be that the national craft beer movement might not be as influential for our users in Atlanta and LA, allowing mass-market brands like Guinness to retain a significant foothold despite the lack of a local Irish population.

“The need of a well-rounded beer programme for a porter or stout could also explain this as there’s a general lack of craft porters and stouts in these markets to compete with Guinness.”


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