THE DRINKS LIST THAT WINS EVERY GENERATION AT ONCE

Two data releases landed almost together this month and read side by side they offer a genuinely useful map of where Australian drink spending is heading. NielsenIQ’s latest category report confirms that ready to drink beverages have moved firmly from niche to mainstream in on premise venues, while new YouGov BrandIndex data, published through Food & Drink Business, shows just how differently Australians of different ages think about the non-alcoholic brands on the bar and in the fridge. For venue managers building a drinks list, both point to the same practical question… are you stocking for the customer you had five years ago, or the one actually walking through your door tonight.

Ready to drink keeps eating the category

NielsenIQ’s numbers are striking. On premise RTD sales have grown 30.5 per cent over two years, nearly triple the pace of the total liquor market, and the category now accounts for 14 cents of every dollar Australians spend on liquor in venues, drawing share directly from beer, wine and spirits. Off premise, the picture is just as strong, with 3.7 million Australian households now buying RTDs and online sales up 37.4 per cent year on year. “This data confirms what we’re seeing across every state and every channel: RTD isn’t just growing, it’s actively reshaping how Australians choose to drink,” said Ryan Winslade, Client Solutions Director at NielsenIQ Australia. His advice for suppliers doubles as advice for venues: the operators who understand flavour trends, price sensitivity and how customers move through the on-premise purchase path will capture the growth, not just ride alongside it.

Brand loyalty splits sharply by age

The generational data tells its own story about who is actually asking for what. Coca-Cola leads Australia’s overall non-alcoholic beverage consideration ranking at 43.2 per cent, and it leads every generation from Gen Z through to Baby Boomers, peaking at 53.1 per cent among Millennials. Pepsi sits second overall but skews noticeably younger, while Schweppes runs the opposite pattern, considered by only 22.1 per cent of Gen Z but rising to 32.5 per cent among Baby Boomers, making it the top choice among the oldest drinkers surveyed. The sharpest divide belongs to Red Bull, considered by 26.8 per cent of Gen Z and 24.8 per cent of Millennials but just 2.3 per cent of Baby Boomers, an eleven-fold drop that makes it the most youth dependent brand in the entire top ten. Sprite shows a similar, if gentler, decline with age. The data is a reminder that “Consideration” measures what customers would put on their shortlist before they buy, not what they are already drinking, which makes it a genuinely useful early signal for range planning.

Stocking your fridge

Put the two reports together and the message for any Australian bar, pub, club or hotel drinks list is fairly direct. RTD deserves fridge space and menu prominence that matches its growth rate rather than its historical share, particularly given how much of that growth is happening in on premise venues rather than at home. At the same time, a single generic soft drink range no longer serves every generation equally: a venue with a strong younger crowd on Friday nights and an older lunch trade on weekdays may genuinely need a broader, age aware non-alcoholic range across both dayparts rather than one default cola and one default lemonade. None of this requires an overhaul. It requires treating your drinks list the way these two reports treat the market: as something that shifts by year, by occasion and by generation, and is worth re-checking rather than assuming it still matches the customer you built it for.

There is also a simple staff training angle here that many venues overlook. Bar and floor staff are usually the ones fielding the question of what’s new or what’s popular, and a five-minute briefing on which RTD flavours are moving and which non-alcoholic options genuinely resonate with younger versus older guests can lift both average spend and the guest’s sense that the venue actually knows its own drinks list. An Australian pub group running weekly staff briefings on stock movement, rather than relying on suppliers to push new lines, tends to see faster uptake of new RTD releases precisely because the team on the floor can recommend them with confidence rather than reading off a supplier’s tasting note.

Finally, it is worth remembering that consideration data is a leading indicator, not a lagging one. A brand rising in consideration among Gen Z today is a reasonable bet for rising sales in twelve to eighteen months, which gives venues a genuine head start if they are willing to trial smaller batches of emerging RTD flavours and youth skewing non-alcoholic options now, rather than waiting for distributors to confirm the trend with a full range rollout.

 

Sources:

NielsenIQ, “Unlocking Australia’s Ready to Drink Category” — https://nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/report/2026/unlocking-australias-ready-to-drink-category/

Food & Drink Business, “Coca-Cola tops beverage ranks, generational data divided” — https://www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au/news/coca-cola-tops-beverage-ranks-generational-data-divided