Food and Drink Sales performance 2022- drinks the star performer

Italians, confined to their homes due to Covid, have found comfort in food but also in drinks. Mostly alcoholic. This was recently revealed by Nielsen’s analysis of the evolution of the shopping cart (online and offline) recorded between January and March of this year, which shows that beverages are the best performer across the board grossing 315 million euros more than in 2020, posting growth of 13.6% for the quarter.

Not only was the increase in expenditure of beverages about four times greater than that of consumer goods in general (+ 3.5%, equal to 5 billion euros), but this was spread over various categories of products. In fact, seven of the top 15 categories with the greatest growth in sales were of beverages – six of them involving alcoholic products.

Beers took first place in the rankings in 2021 with 70 million euros of additional sales made between January and March. In second place were the Italian Doc and Docg wines, increasing sales value by 60 million euros, and in fifth place are the dry Charmat sparkling wines (38 million euros).

The only soft drinks in the top 15 categories were colas, which increased sales by € 16 million in the same period. The space that beverages are conquering in household spending budgets is also confirmed by their absence among the top down categories, i.e. those that have been most affected by the new spending trends.

Another sector to grow was fish-based second courses which grew by almost 50 million euros and fish specialities such as sushi which grew 35 million euros. Furthermore natural frozen fish products grossed 21 million euros more than the previous year while the fishmonger sector grew by a third in sales. Overall Italians increased their budget for the purchase of fish, molluscs and crustaceans by 120 million euros.

Apart from increases in sales of vitamins and supplements, other categories also returned large increases year on year such as cold cuts (with over 35 million euros sales increase), ground coffee (+ €20 million) and sweet snacks (+ €16 million).