There was a time when alcohol in independent convenience followed a very clear pecking order.
Beer ruled the fridge. Spirits owned the shelf. And anything pre-mixed, flavoured, or ready-to-drink tended to get written off as a sideshow.
Early alcopops didn’t help (yes you, Hooper’s Hooch). They were often short-lived, heavily branded, and widely seen as gimmicky products aimed at younger shoppers rather than serious, repeat sales.
That belief stuck.
Even today, RTDs (ready to drink) are still talked about as a novelty category – interesting, perhaps, but not something that really moves the needle in independent convenience.
However, the times they are a changin’, as our data clearly shows...
Looking specifically at the first half of 2025 within independent convenience, the headline trend feels familiar enough.
Beer and spirits are both down year-on-year, in both units and value. That decline is consistent across the estate and broadly aligns with wider industry commentary on alcohol performance in convenience retail.
This is usually the point where people stop looking – and it’s exactly where they miss what’s actually happening on the shop floor.
Because while attention stays fixed on declining categories, RTDs have been moving in the opposite direction.
Not loudly. Not in a way that screams “trend”. But consistently, store by store.
This is what unknown unknowns look like in independent convenience.
RTDs are still smaller than beer or spirits in independent convenience. But size isn’t the point. Momentum is.
Looking at January to July 2025 in independent convenience, RTDs show clear, measurable growth:
That gap between unit and value growth matters.
When value grows faster than units, it usually signals premiumisation. Shoppers aren’t just buying more RTDs – they’re buying better RTDs.
Recognised brands. Familiar flavour profiles. Products that feel like a deliberate choice rather than an impulse add-on.
This aligns with broader convenience shopper behaviour highlighted by the Association of Convenience Stores, which consistently shows that convenience shoppers prioritise familiarity and relevance over experimentation when purchasing alcohol.
RTDs didn’t suddenly “take off” in 2025. They’ve been building quietly, and most brands wouldn’t spot it without granular, store-level EPOS visibility.
Brand movement makes the shift impossible to ignore
Market share often lags behind reality. Brand movement doesn’t.
In independent convenience in 2025:
Those are not marginal shifts. They’re signals of sustained traction across the independent estate.
Even more telling are the new launches that have already broken into the Top 50 brands this year. Bacardi & Cola (launched in March last year) and Ka (launched in June) have both achieved early scale in a channel where most new products fail quietly.
That level of performance requires more than a good idea. It requires understanding where distribution actually pays off, where shoppers respond, and how independent convenience behaves differently from grocery.
RTDs haven’t overturned beer and spirits overnight. They haven’t done it with a single headline-grabbing moment either. Their growth has accumulated quietly, in ways that are easy to overlook if you’re relying on assumptions or incomplete views of the channel.
Stores are different. Shoppers are different. And the rules are different. It rewards familiarity, relevance, and adaptability – often faster than brands expect.
The winners are rarely the brands reacting once a trend becomes obvious. They’re the ones that spot movement early and focus effort where it actually pays off.
That’s the reality of unknown unknowns in independent convenience. They’re only invisible until you have the right data to see them.
