The challenge of
“
Dry January
”
, or not drinking a single drop of alcohol in January, seems
to
be gaining more and more followers in France.
In any case, this is what the figures for alcohol sales in supermarkets in January, revealed this week by panelist Circana, suggest.
Volume sales of alcoholic beverages - a category which includes bottles marked
"
alcohol-free
"
- are in fact down 6.4% in volume compared to January 2023.
“This trend can be interpreted as the consequence of Dry January. Alcoholic beverages are doing even worse in January than the rest of the year
,” explained Emily Mayer, consumer expert at Circana, to BFMTV.
However, everything should not be blamed on this fashionable challenge.
The trend is in fact towards a decline in alcohol sales in supermarkets in France.
They fell by 4.3% in total over the year 2023 compared to 2022, Circana calculated.
“This drop can be explained in particular by the context of inflation, because alcohols are expensive products and which quickly increase the price of the shopping cart,”
commented Emily Mayer to BFMTV.
Alcohol is not essential compared to food products like pasta.
So it is more easily abandoned by households who have to make trade-offs in their purchases.”
Also read Tobacco, alcohol, cannabis: adolescents are starting to drop out
Alcohol consumption has been falling for twenty years
However, the effect of inflation is not the only one involved.
The decline in alcohol consumption in France does not date from the start of the inflationary crisis.
For around twenty years, surveys have shown that the French are drinking less and less.
The result of cultural developments and the implementation of public policies, explained Public Health France in its latest study on the subject, published in January.
It showed that the share of daily consumers had increased from 21.5% in 2000 to 8% in 2021, when the proportion of weekly consumers fell from 62.6% to 39%.
Mirroring this, we observed an increase in sales of drinks labeled non-alcoholic in January in supermarkets, of around 5 points compared to January 2023. On the other hand, over the entire year 2023,
“the weight of non-alcoholic drinks stabilizes »
, notes Circana.
Its market share by volume represents only 5.2% of the entire alcoholic category, compared to 5.3% in 2022.
“These poorer performances come from the decline in non-alcoholic beers (-6.9% by volume) , penalized like all beers by unfavorable weather in the heart of summer
,” explains the institute.