August Not as Bad as Thought
Mega-Brand Declines Steady

Dear Client:At least in off-premise chains scanned by IRI, August trends were pretty much in line with the quarterly IRI trends for food-drug-convenience. In other words, it sucked just as bad, but at least it wasn't worse. Given the anecdotal evidence we were getting of a Labor Day meltdown, August wasn't as bad as we thought. However, we do know that on-premise, which is un-scanned, continues to struggle mightily.Beer volumes were down 5.5% for the four weeks ending September 6