No Blip in Beer Sales for Anheuser-Busch

NEWTON, MA--(Marketwire - Mar 7, 2013) - "Legal claims by individuals in three states in late February that some AB-Inbev products did not live up to stated alcohol-by-volume levels have had no impact on sales of Anheuser-Busch beers in the nation's restaurants, bars and nightclubs to date," said Chuck Ellis, President of Restaurant Sciences LLC (Newton, MA), an independent firm that closely tracks food and beverage product sales throughout the foodservice industry in North America. "The chart attached shows no effects of the public dispute."

The first such claim was made in California on February 26th. Additional claims were made in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Restaurant Sciences tracked US sales of AB-Inbev brand beers versus all other beer brands sold in restaurants and bars from February 20^th (the week prior), through March 5^th (the week after). The data shows that AB-Inbev Specified Beers steadily hovered around 20 percent of the relative on-premise market share. The data carries a relative standard error of 2.3 percent.

"The legal process around these claims has just commenced, so it is still early to make any definitive statement about the on-premise effects for AB-Inbev and its competitors. We also do not yet know whether there has been any impact in the retail channels," said Ellis. "But, we can say with high confidence that AB-Inbev has weathered the initial impact of the story quite well in its on-premise channels, where over 50 percent of consumer dollars are spent on beer each year in the United States."

About Restaurant Sciences

Restaurant Sciences is the premier provider of syndicated data and insights on food and beverage consumption in restaurants, bars, nightclubs and other foodservice establishments. The company delivers market share, market basket, competitive analysis, pricing, promotional, trend, segmentation and custom analytics to food and beverage manufacturers and distributors, as well as the broader industry they serve. Restaurant Sciences transforms over $1 Billion per month in guest check-level sales information into detailed data and insights across all segments of the foodservice landscape in the United States and Canada. Insights are delivered online through their business intelligence tool or through custom analytics. Visit www.restaurantsciences.com.