Wrong Take · Oct 19, 2026
Stop treating the on-premise as the first budget you cut
Off-premise wine and spirits volume fell 7.5% over the latest 12 months while on-premise fell 2.4%, according to SipSource data published by WSWA. If your sales days and sample budget are still weighted toward retail, you are spending most of your effort in the channel losing customers fastest.
The conventional move when volumes drop is to protect retail and pull back on restaurants and bars. The argument is a good one. Off-premise is where the cases are. One chain buyer decision can move more volume than a year of restaurant calls. On-premise accounts order a case or two at a time, beverage directors turn over constantly, payment terms stretch, and every placement needs staff training that evaporates when the staff leaves. Cost to serve per case is brutal, and in a contraction, cost to serve is what gets scrutinized.
That logic is sound right up until you look at where demand actually went. SipSource data reported by WSWA shows on-premise wine and spirits volume and revenue each down 2.4% over the latest 12 months. Off-premise volume fell 7.5% and revenue 6.7%. Liquor stores were down 7.3% in revenue and grocery down 6.2%. The gap between channels is roughly five points of volume.
The honest counterargument: on-premise is the smaller pool, and it cannot absorb what off-premise lost. True. You are not replacing retail volume with BTG placements. You are deciding where the next sales day, sample case, and incentive dollar goes, and the data says the restaurant and bar channel is holding the consumer you still have.
The price data points the same direction. SipSource shows 61% of spirits volume sits below $20 and only 6.5% at $50 or higher, with the $20 to $29.99 tier more resilient. In wine, tiers at $16 and up held up better, and the $20 to $29.99 tier posted 0.9% revenue growth over the latest 12 months. Prosecco, Sauvignon Blanc, and Champagne all grew revenue in the latest three-month period.
Here is what I would do this week. Pull your account list and count how many selling days went to on-premise last quarter. Pick ten accounts and build the pitch around your $16 to $30 wine or $20 to $30 spirit, not your flagship. Retail shops: rebuild the by-the-bottle set around those same tiers and the sparkling and Sauvignon Blanc that are moving. Breweries, the SipSource figures cover wine and spirits only, so run the same channel split on your own depletion data before you shift anything.