As a child I could never really understand the saying: “You can’t have your cake and eat it.” Of course you can. In fact, the only way you can eat cake is to have it in the first place. It wasn’t until I came across the older version of the phrase – “to eat your cake and still have it” (as widely used in 16th-century…

Nielsen client delivery team leader Rob Hallworth looks at the prospects for the off-trade as sporting fixtures return. If you cast your mind back to July 2018, the sun was shining, the World Cup was in full flow and England made it to their first semi-final for 28 years, all of which contributed to a significant rise in beer sales. In the four weeks to…

Nielsen client delivery team leader Rob Hallworth delves into how shoping behaviour has changed throughout lockdown. After a pretty turbulent 2020, alcohol growth in the off-trade has settled down over the past couple of months as consumers become more used to living in a state of lockdown and new consumption patterns are established. Is this the calm before the storm? I hesitate to use the…

Recent events concerning the Brains brewery in Cardiff have been painful to watch. I grew up in South Wales and the name was etched into my consciousness even before I began to appreciate beer. It was intrinsic to the character of my capital city, as much a part of the heritage and culture as the castle and Cardiff Arms Park. Much has changed in both…

A year ago, on March 12 2020, my company hosted our last tasting of the year. The theme, chosen in December, was ‘Party Fizz for Spring’. Four days later, the streets were empty. The weekly Theatre of Wine tastings were the fulcrum of a working week, gathering staff and customers around a shared table, free of Coravins or Enomatics, to pull corks, twist Stelvins, and…

It’s fair to say Christmas was different in 2020. With the hospitality industry all but closed last year, it was the biggest ever Christmas for supermarkets as consumers spent £11.8 billion on groceries in the four weeks to December 26. With tight restrictions and many on-trade venues shuttered, the off-trade saw an increase in BWS sales of more than £941 million (19%)…

One of the defining characteristics of the craft beer revolution has been a relentless emphasis on flavour. For decades, the international beer market was built on consistency, predictability and restraint – a don’t-scare-the-horses approach to brewing that raised multi-billion pound profits and is still, of course, the dominant part of the industry today. But a new area of the market has opened up…