We have drunk more beer in the past six months than in the same period in 2019, before all the corona misery started and the catering industry had to be regularly locked. Nowadays, more beer is also consumed at home, according to figures from Nederlandse Brouwers.
Total beer consumption, including the non-alcoholic variants, was 1.5 percent higher in the first half of the year than in the first six months of 2019 and almost 13 percent higher than last year. At home we drank 3.5 percent more beer than before the pandemic, in the pub 0.5 percent more.
“These are nice pluses, which could perhaps be even higher if we were not dealing with staff shortages in the catering industry,” says a spokesperson for the umbrella organization of brewers. As a result, some cafes and terraces are not open every day. “At the brewers it is also all hands on deck to be able to deliver the beer.”
The effects of increased prices are not yet reflected in consumption. “Like the rest of the world, we have to deal with higher energy costs. This has repercussions on production and transport, among other things,” says the spokesperson for Nederlandse Brouwers.
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