Low-alcohol, vegan sales up in January

The Dry January and Veganuary campaigns have made a considerable impact in January, latest figures from Kantar show.

Non-alcoholic beer sales went up by 37 percent and adult soft drinks by 3 percent in the month as shoppers increasingly sought alternatives to spirits.

“Of course, not everyone has been abstaining, and more than 15 million households still bought alcohol during the past four weeks,” commented Fraser Mckevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar UK.

January has also seen the number of consumers buying an explicitly labelled plant-based products more than doubling when compared to the previous month.

Sales of meat substitutes such as soya mince or vegetarian burgers and sausages were 14 percent higher than January last year, while sales of lentils were up 6 percent, lettuce 10 percent and aubergine 14 percent.

Veganuary, the global organisation behind the January vegan campaign, has earlier announced that over 400,000 people signed-up for the campaign this year, compared to 250,000 in 2019.

“Health was the most popular reason for people getting involved in Veganuary, cited by 42 percent of participants, followed by environmental concerns (28%) and ethical reasons (27%). Nearly half of people giving up meat and dairy in January did so because they perceive it as a healthy choice,”  Mckevitt added.

The overall supermarket sales were, however, modest, with 0.3 percent growth during the past 12 weeks.