Meet the 2024 Category Captain for Beer/Malt Beverages: Anheuser-Busch

As the category captain for more than half of all c-stores and category dollars, Anheuser-Busch (AB) guided sets outperformed the market by 0.9 points in 2023. Using AB's comprehensive IGNITE Category Expansion Framework, its convenience store-specific alcohol and segment forecast, and its category-exclusive Shelf IQ platform, AB's teams use real-time insights to ensure that retailers translate the best strategies into optimal in-set executions.

AB's industry-leading category and shopper research focused on five areas in 2023:

Winning with singles: AB worked with retailers to expand space for singles in large stores, focusing on days of supply while still offering the shelf variety these shoppers expect. One retailer activating this strategy increased its singles take rates by nearly 30%.

Building baskets with meals: AB partnered with some of the largest convenience retailers to build fully integrated programs that raise awareness for paired offerings. At one operator, beer and meal bundle programs that included an offer and signage were five times more likely to be converted and drove two times more dollar sales than a bundle program without those elements.

Cave optimization: AB fielded a proprietary, channel-specific study into beer cave merchandising that analyzed more than 200 category shopping trips across seven leading c-store chains. Utilizing this research, AB provided best practices for aesthetics, wayfinding, layout, merchandising and assortment to help its partners unlock the full potential of their caves.

Cold space expansion: This spring, the category teams at AB are partnering with four of the largest small-format retailers to test or expand space reallocations, reducing underproductive categories to expand in beer and hard beverages, with a focus on singles, flavor and days of supply.

Winning with Hispanics: AB took a deep dive into Hispanic consumers, a demographic that already represents 20% of U.S. residents and will make up more than half of new legal-age drinkers over the next 10 years. From its research, AB developed a proprietary Hispanic Alcohol Demand Landscape that segments Hispanic consumers based on their identified preferences across drinking occasions, enabling the company to create the ideal suite of solutions to meet each preference.

All information contained in this profile was supplied by the company.

For the full winners' list for the 2024 Convenience Store News Category Captains, click here.