Beer

Beer helped fuel rise of RTDs. How can it strike back?

The original RTD was beer but it’s facing an ever-growing range of rivals. Stephen Beaumont sets out how beer can fight back.

The original RTD is beer, a drink facing fierce competition the world over from an ever-burgeoning range of ready-to-drink beverages – and, in some cases, losing market share. How can those in the beer market fight back? 

When beer was alone in its single-serve, straight-from-the-bottle (or can) status, it was identifiably beer. It might have been pale ale or porter, Old World pilsner or New World IPA, but it was unmistakably part of the beer family. And, although wine coolers had their day in the 1970s and 1980s, by and large, when it came to open-and-drink beverage alcohol, beer was it. 

Today, this is the case no longer. Brands from modern multinational breweries are as likely to taste like a soft drink or ersatz cocktail as they are beer. Those styled after the beers of old seem to be getting lighter and lighter in flavour, almost as if the brewers behind them might perhaps believe the general drinking public no longer really enjoys the taste of beer. 

So, having lost their status (or at least been forced to share it) with RTDs and flavoured malt beverages – including hard seltzers, which, it could be easily argued, are two sides of the very same coin – the question arises as to how beer might get it back. 

One option would be to return to its roots. 

Back when beer was the king of the RTD hill, it was identifiably beer. For the past five to ten years, however, beer has often appeared to be trying to be anything but beer and, in so doing, has created a new and much more widely defined marketplace that it must share with beverages like packaged whisk(e)y-and-colas, hard root beers and seltzers. Products adjacent to – but quite unlike – beer. 

Having done this, however inadvertently, beer had no choice but to compete directly with spirits-based RTDs and flavoured malt beverages, even releasing hard seltzers branded as extensions of popular beer lines. While using a popular brand name to extend a successful franchise might have seemed logical on the surface, the end result was to muddle the market and further dilute the public perception of what constitutes a ‘beer’. 

What the brewing industry must do now is hive off those beer-adjacent brand extensions and focus on renewing interest in – and the excitement surrounding – beer. This is not to say the multinationals should follow the lead of craft beer and make everything an IPA – a disingenuous practice that recently reached its zenith with the emergence of the ‘cold IPA’, basically a strong and hoppy pilsner – but rather that they should return their focus to what they do best: making clean, crisp, quaffable lagers and light ales. 

Another element of beer’s decline as the original RTD might be attributed to the general complacency of the global brewing industry. Those who have observed the beer business over the last forty or fifty years will be familiar with its apparent belief that, regardless of what else might happen, consumers will always return to beer. This approach was particularly in evidence during the early years of craft brewing when multinational brewers reacted to double- or even triple-digit craft-beer market growth with a yawn and a dismissive wave. 

This same sort of complacency allowed Mark Anthony Brands and The Boston Beer Co. to launch such landmark brands as Mike’s Hard Lemonade, White Claw, Twisted Tea and Truly, almost entirely without opposition. 

If global beer is going to recapture the single-serve market share it has lost and continues to lose, it will need to do more than imitate emerging market leaders and increase prices to maintain profit margins. 

Beer has been rather lacking in true, visionary innovation over the past few decades, preferring to add bells and whistles to their packaging rather than offer anything honestly brewhouse inspired. If consumers are going to be steered away from RTDs and brought back to beer, breweries are going to need to be bold in the innovation behind the taste and character of their beers and announce new products with the sort of advertising campaigns that used to mark milestones in popular culture. 

Aggressive, creative promotion and product innovation are the keys here, perhaps paired with a renewed emphasis on beer as the tasty, flavourful beverage it has always been and continues to be. It might not be enough to win back all the ready-to-drink defectors, especially with the foreboding force of Coca-Cola now entering the RTD sphere, but it could go a long way towards restoring faith in the industry and righting its course for the future. 

Main image: Thanh Serious on Unsplash