In its report, Toast looked at food and drink sales throughout the football season. To assess the sport’s impact on restaurants, they specifically dug into how the sales volume changed on a Sunday compared to the sales volume on other days. This analysis was only conducted in cities that have an NFL team. The sales increase of hard seltzer — 47% — topped the charts for alcohol. Lagers received less than half the bump (23%), and all other beer sales saw an increase of 14%. Many of the usual suspects fell in line behind hard seltzer, with wine (23%), whiskey (20%), and liqueurs (17%) rounding out the top of the list alongside beer and seltzer.
Seltzer’s continued popularity is part of a trend that market analysts believe will grow stronger. According to Grand View Research (GVR), the hard seltzer market was worth nearly $19 billion in 2023. This is still small compared to the beer market, which GVR most recently valued at almost $700 billion. However, the firm projects a nearly 15% annual growth rate for hard seltzer through 2030. If industry trends continue, seltzer cans will only become more and more common at future Super Bowl parties.