(ZeroHedge)—Beer sales over the July 4th holiday weekend came in stronger than previously expected, prompting distributors to raise their outlook for the remainder of the year and fueling renewed optimism around Constellation Brands (STZ). Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) also posted a solid performance during the period, though one brand under its adult beverage umbrella remained a clear laggard. Unsurprisingly, it was Bud Light, still struggling to recover for reasons that need little explanation.
In the latest iteration of Goldman’s Beverage Bytes survey—covering 40 beer distributors and 125,000 retail outlets, or about 25% of all U.S. alcohol-selling locations—analysts led by Bonnie Herzog found that, although expectations were tempered heading into the holiday weekend due to soft scanner data, an uncertain macro environment, and weak Memorial Day trends, favorable summer weather trends across the Lower 48 during the July 4th holiday (which fell on a Friday) helped drive surprisingly strong beer demand.
Herzog said, “As a result, distributors are now incrementally more upbeat about the all-important summer selling season and their growth outlook for the category this year.”
About 60% of respondents said sales were up year-over-year, with STZ and ABI emerging as the top performers. Brands such as Modelo Especial, Pacifico, and Sun Cruiser saw solid momentum, though Corona Extra continued to underperform.
Here are the notable takeaways from the report:
- The promotional environment appeared broadly rational over the 4th of July holiday weekend – as 53% of beer volumes were promoted (in-line with last year) – though ABI was the clear standout in terms of promotional intensity;
- Most distributors indicated that beer category sales accelerated in Q2 vs Q1 – citing improved weather trends and strength for Mich Ultra and Busch Light (among others);
- Most distributors expect the second half of the year to be stronger vs the first half – with distributors now expecting category growth declines this year of only -1.0% (vs -1.9% expected in our Memorial Day survey);
- Volume trends for Modelo Especial & Pacifico were also quite strong over the holiday weekend – something the majority of distributors indicated – however, Corona Extra remains under some pressure; and
- Sun Cruiser remains a standout – and the majority of distributors indicated that volumes were up for the brand over the 4th of July holiday weekend vs last year. However, distributors highlighted the spending on Sun Cruiser is unsustainable and some raised concerns that the category is becoming saturated.
There was a lot to unpack in the holiday volume trends…
Topline Results:
- Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) led all manufacturers, with 52% of distributors reporting higher volumes vs last year—followed by Constellation Brands (STZ) at 33% and Boston Beer (SAM) at 18%.
- Overall beer category performance improved: 40% of distributors reported year-over-year volume gains for July 4th (vs 20% on Memorial Day); 37% still saw declines.
- Hard seltzers remained weak: 64% of distributors reported volume declines, though this was a slight improvement from Memorial Day (70%).
By brand, Herzog noted twice that Bud Light “continues to struggle” and “remains pressured following the Bud Light controversy,” more than two years after the brewer’s woke marketing team—aiming to score DEI points—hired Dylan Mulvaney, a biological male acting as a woman, for what became one of the worst ad promotions ever in corproate America.
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Refresher: This is who nuked the brand.
Brand highlights over the holiday weekend:
ABI (Anheuser-Busch InBev):
- Strongest performer overall.
- Michelob Ultra was a standout, with 93% of distributors seeing y/y gains (56% significantly).
- Bud Light remains a drag—74% reported lower volumes; marketing support remains weak.
Constellation Brands (STZ):
- Strong holiday weekend performance.
- Pacifico led, with 65% of distributors seeing gains.
- Modelo Especial also performed well (52% up), while Corona Extra continues to face challenges (47% down).
Molson Coors (TAP):
- Mixed performance.
- Coors Banquet was a bright spot (73% up).
- Coors Light and Miller Lite both underperformed, with 74% and 78% of distributors, respectively, reporting y/y declines.
Heineken (HEIN):
- Weak showing, with only 14% reporting growth and 46% noting volume declines.
Boston Beer (SAM):
- Modest improvement; Sun Cruiser stood out, with 72% of distributors reporting growth (44% significantly).
- Twisted Tea and Truly showed signs of pressure, with 35% and 76% of distributors respectively reporting declines.
Hard Seltzer Category:
- Remains under pressure. White Claw: 31% up, 41% down.
- High Noon: 40% up, 40% down slightly.
Our takeaway: Bud Light’s struggles continue. Someone ought to write a white paper on why woke marketing nukes brands. Remember Jaguar earlier this year? These marketing teams lined with liberal college elites are completely out of touch with how the real world operates, and oblivious to the fact that the Overton Window has shifted to the center-right. Woke is over (for now).
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.