Spending Patterns, Drinking Trends and Who Gets More Tips

Gary Ross from Union does a deep dive into all kinds of interesting on-trade data

Want to know how drinking patterns change over a Saturday night?

Gary Ross, the Chief Growth Officer of Union, has the answers. Union is a point-of-sale platform created for high-volume bars and restaurants, with a presence in 41 states—which is another way of saying that Gary knows what people are ordering, how trends spread, and even how patterns of spending change over a typical Saturday night.

Gary Ross, Union

Here are 7 takeaways from our podcast conversation:

1. Beer, wine, and spirits sales are mostly static

“What I’ve seen over the years is that, for the large part, these are fairly static at this point,” he says.

But, he says, RTDs keep growing, “and they’re continuing to steal from beer.”

2. There are two types of RTDs

Gary says there are two main types of RTDs: malt-based and spirits-based.

“We’re seeing that the spirit-based RTDs are the ones driving a lot of the growth in the last few years,.”

Here’s what’s interesting—which one people try first typically takes them down a defined…