World Cup “no world beater” for on-trade
This year’s World Cup appears to have had less than the anticipated sales surge in Irish pubs.
Certainly in Dublin, on-trade sales were described as “not great and not bad” by LVA Chief Executive Donall O’Keeffe, “While as yet I’ve not seen any sales data for June, it certainly added to trade over June and July” he told Drinks Industry Ireland, “but it was no world-beater and with the early elimination of the England team and Ireland not in it at all….. But having said that, it brought people out at times during that day that we’d not normally see, so it was a welcome add-on without setting the world on fire”.
Beyond Dublin, the situation was little more sanguine with VFI Chief Executive Padraig Cribben stating, "The World Cup didn’t have a particular impact on trade. Ireland wasn’t there and I think some people had a bit of soccer burn out. Anecdotal evidence from our members has suggested that there was very little bounce from the world cup”.
As for the ‘staycationers’ this Summer, VFI President Gerry Mellett had heard little by way of heartening news this Summer.
“In general, things are bad and I’m not looking forward to Winer,” he told Drinks Industry Ireland, “A major PR job will have to be done to continue to highlight the serious plight of the industry.
And any staycationers may have been necessarily good for Dublin which tends to empty out during July and August in particular.
“Trade over the Summer has been in line with expectations,” commented Donall O’Keefe, “which is a four to five per cent volume decline on last year. The year-to-date is running at around five per cent down on beer volume,” he added, “So it still remains a very challenging environment.
“Trade is still losing volume, still shrinking, but the rate has slowed down from the 10 per cent to eight per cent to fiveish…. And the absolute fear that was there has dissipated. There’s some degree of solidity but it remains very difficult.
“Where we’re concerned is that there’re no green shoots yet in the on-trade and we believe that this is likely to remain so over the remainder of the year. A good performance for us would be if the year ends up at 0.5 per cent with this flat economy.”
