There are two diverging narratives in the hard cider market, and both have data to back them up.
One account states that hard cider sales are down. NielsenIQ reports cider sales in grocery stores and other chain retail have declined during summer selling period (May 2-Sept. 11) for two years, dropping -13.6% since 2020 and -3.2% versus 2019.
The other says that cider sales are up. Cider posted the best year-over-year growth of all beer subsegments (craft, import, domestic premium, etc.) in Nielsen-tracked stores for the 12-week period ending June 12. And second quarter, off-premise sales for regional cider brands grew +34.5% this year versus 2019.
But the seesaw continues: In the most recent 52-week sales period tracked by market research company IRI, cider is -1.5%, but there are lots of small and regional producers that are well above that line, including Bold Rock (+17.6%), Downeast (+23.6%), Incline (+41.6%), and Blake's (+66.6)%.
There’s a tidy way to reconcile these varying narratives and data points: Regional cider is growing while the category’s anchor, Angry Orchard, is declining. Because of Angry Orchard’s size, when it falls, it drags total cider sales down.
But even that is an oversimplification, because national brands like Angry Orchard are often responsible for gaining tap handles and retail placements for cider where they didn’t exist before. If the category leader—backed with marketing dollars from a national company like Boston Beer—trails off, what does it mean for the rest of the category? Some foresee headwinds, others see opportunity.
So, cider sales are a boom or a bust, depending on which cider brands you focus on.
Boston Beer Company’s Angry Orchard in particular is still the behemoth of U.S. cider, making up about 50% of the U.S. cider market, though that’s down from 60% five years ago, according to the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA). Angry Orchard’s flagship flavor, Crisp Apple, alone makes up 37% of the U.S. cider category in chain retail stores.
Meanwhile, regional ciders—defined for data-collection purposes as any cider brand not owned by a national or international beer company—have been increasing their share of the cider market for four straight years, and have been growing at 20-30% in chain retail each quarter since 2017. In December, regional brands became the majority share of the cider category for the first time ever, growing from a quarter of cider’s off-premise share in the second quarter of 2017.
To further complicate the picture, NBWA chief economist Lester Jones says that hard cider is “a strong on-premise player relative to the total [beer] industry,” meaning it over indexes on draft in bars and restaurants compared to packaged sales in stores. Jones says Angry Orchard is still performing better on draft than in packaged sales, though regional brands such as Austin East Cider, Blake’s, Ace, and Ciderboys are outpacing its growth.
This matters, because Angry Orchard has long been the pioneer in establishing cider tap handles in bars or restaurants where they didn’t previously exist. That smaller brands are now growing more quickly on draft is, to some, proof that Angry Orchard could open the door that other ciders could then walk through.
But if Angry Orchard’s draft dominance declines, it could also spell fewer draft opportunities for overall cider in the future. For a smaller cider brand to take over a placement once held by a larger company, the brand realistically has to have good sales and/or distributor representatives who are pushing that cider to retailers. For small cider producers who don’t have the sales and marketing budgets of a national company behind them, that can be a difficult task. All the while, other alcohol brands are waiting for their own chance on draft, including a growing number of hard seltzers.
“National brands are really important for holding and creating space,” says Michelle McGrath, executive director of the American Cider Association, a trade organization representing cider makers of all sizes. “A lot of them are even really self-aware and transparent about that, that they see themselves as a kind of gateway drug to cider.”
The term “gateway drug” implies that more available national brands are, for many drinkers, the first cider they’ll try. Once they become more interested in the category, those drinkers may then seek out other ciders made by smaller producers. Because of their marketing and distribution power, brands like Angry Orchard or Molson Coors Beverage Company’s Smith & Forge have historically carved out opportunities for cider in a way that smaller brands can’t.
“Angry Orchard got cider [tap] handles where cider handles never existed, and that’s a feat in its own right,” says Caitlin Braam, founder of Yonder Cider, a regional cider brand based in Washington State, and cofounder of The Source Cider, a company that offers fruit juice pressing and custom fermentation. (Braam previously worked as a brand strategist for Angry Orchard.) “Cider didn’t exist in sports bars, and Angry Orchard got those handles. … It’s that entry point.”
Angry Orchard helped grow overall cider at a rate that outpaced craft beer in the early half of the 2010s, fetching cider headlines from Time magazine to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog. A Chicago Tribune article from 2014 cited sources who envisioned hard cider could one day make up 5% of the overall U.S. beer market. Today, it’s still 1% of the beer market, a number that’s remained roughly steady for seven years. (Brewers Association-defined craft beer is roughly 12% of the overall U.S. beer market by volume, and 24% by dollar share.)
Jones expects cider overall to grow more slowly than it did in Angry Orchard’s heyday, even as smaller brands are chipping away at national brands’ share. Given that those brands don’t have the same corporate resources as a company the size of Boston Beer, “it’s a slow process for sure,” he says.
Some see Angry Orchard’s decline as an opportunity for smaller cidermakers to take over those tap handles or retail placements. But the dip in the overall category numbers can also scare retailers, who see cider declining overall and may be wary of adding new brands.
“Most reports paint [cider] with a broad stroke, and that is an inaccurate portrayal of our segment,” McGrath says. She cites the example of Angry Orchard’s Rosé Cider, which saw its dollar sales decline more than -22% in chain retail stores from 2018 to 2019, then another -44% last year, as tracked by IRI. McGrath says retailers saw that downswing and assumed that “the consumer is over rosé cider.” But other brands grew sales of their rosé ciders in chain retail during that same period, including Citizen Cider (+21% in 2020), Blake’s (+38%), Nine Pin (+135%), and Atlanta Hard Cider (+154%).
Eric Phillips, chief commercial office for Schilling Cider in Seattle, has seen this play out on his own sales calls.
“We get national buyers who say ‘Oh cider doesn’t sell’ when we’re a top-10 player in Washington [State],” Schilling says. “You look at the amount of business that Angry Orchard still has and the amount it’s declined, and there’s still a ton of cider opportunities out there.”
Angry Orchard, cider’s leading play, has long created opportunities, and not just in sales. Angry Orchard’s 60-acre orchard and cider house in New York’s Hudson Valley continues to be a locus for cider apple tree research in conjunction with Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Science and other local agricultural organizations.
The cider industry as a whole benefits from the resources of such a large company. But its outsized reputation can also hinder a small category that’s still struggling to introduce itself to retailers.
Angry Orchard’s -16% sales dip, from $294 million IRI-tracked stores in 2015 to $245 million in 2020, meant that some cider drinkers moved on from its products to other regional ciders. Colin Schilling, CEO of Schilling Cider, says regional brands like his can benefit from the door that Angry Orchard opened, if they’re able to make their case to retailers. Schilling sales in IRI-tracked stores have grown from $2.7 million in 2017 to $4.8 million last year.
“A lot of the people who drank Angry Orchard because it was sweet and something new have moved on to Truly and White Claw, but you’ve left this amazing group of people looking for something better and something quality,” Schilling says. “That’s what’s continuing to drive craft cider.”
But there are distinct disadvantages to Angry Orchard’s reduced power in the cider marketplace. Where Angry Orchard might have once anchored an entire cider area in a store’s cooler—organized with a few other brands beside it—that space has likely shifted to flavored malt beverages (FMBs) and hard seltzers. Hard cider has seen its share of beer stay relatively steady for years, trading national brands for smaller ones, while FMBs and hard seltzers have grown their share of beer many times over in the same period. For retailers, the economics favor the faster-growing products.
As a result, some stores display cider with craft beer, while others might group it in with hard seltzers, gluten-free beers, or even wine. Consumers who may never have had a cider before are less likely to pick it out among a sea of other, more familiar options.
“That’s the continuous struggle for cider … it ends up on the beer shelves in a weird place without any labeling or information,” McGrath says. “That’s going to continue to be difficult for cideries.”
While cidermakers would like to see a dedicated cider section, being shelved near premium alcohol products is also appropriate, McGrath says, because cider generally commands a higher price point than beer. It’s more expensive to make, and its higher prices reflect that:
The average retail price for a case equivalent (24 12-oz. servings) of cider for the 52-week period ending Sept. 11 was $41.75, up $1.25 versus the year prior, according to Nielsen data.
That’s 8% higher than the average retail price for a case equivalent of craft beer ($38.40, up 54 cents since the year prior) and 58% higher than overall beer ($26.47, up 87 cents since the year prior).
“I hear so much about premiumization, so my question is more for the retailers: Where do you put your premium products that make you the most money? That's where cider belongs,” McGrath says.
But as a premium product, cider has competition in today’s alcohol marketplace. Kelli McCusker, head of marketing for Angry Orchard, attributes the brand’s sales decline to increased competition from regional ciders, ready-to-drink cocktails (RTDs), and flavored malt beverages (FMBs). RTD cocktails and hard seltzers offer an almost unlimited variety of flavors. For drinkers constantly in pursuit of what’s new, cider could seem like an apple-based monolith.
Seeing drinkers jump between those categories in search of clear, strong flavors, Angry Orchard has debuted a line of fruited hard ciders including Angry Orchard Peach Mango and Angry Orchard Strawberry, which are currently the number one and three fruit ciders nationally in stores tracked by IRI for the 13-week period ending Sept. 19. Angry Orchard’s rotational variety packs are also up +5.4% in the last four weeks in the same stores. Regional cider makers have done the same as Angry Orchard, creating flavored ciders, hopped ciders, and ciders that incorporate other fruits. Among nine pineapple-flavored ciders tracked by IRI, for example, all grew sales between 2019-2020.
To increase cross-category appeal, Schilling has expanded with its Waveline brand of hard lemonades and hard yerba maté, and Yonder in August opened a Seattle taproom jointly with Bale Breaker Brewing Company.
“If people are into beer and that’s what they know they love, why would they go to a cider-only room?” Braam says. “For us, that was really important, to have that variety of beverages.”
She’s been heartened to watch bartenders serve mixed flights of cider and beer. She takes that as an indication that new customers are trying cider, exploring flavors and styles within it, and learning there’s variety within the category. She’s also seen that play out as bars and restaurants have been more willing lately to add second or third cider brands to their menus, not necessarily on draft, but as canned or bottled options behind the bar. It might not deliver the meteoric growth that Angry Orchard was bringing to the category years ago, but it might prove to be more sustainable.
“My hope is that continues to expand to show consumers, bars, and restaurants, that cider is more than one flavor or one brand.”
Words by Kate Bernot