Not only the working day is moved by many Germans to the home office, but also the evening beer and the occasional glass of wine are drunk at home these days. On social media, on Facetime, in Skype calls or the House Party app, you can often see: the glass of wine, the bottle of beer that our counterpart drinks. Wine shippers report that sales grew by a third in March, with beer stocks rising by more than 10 percent.
Is Germany – despite closed pubs and cancelled folk festivals – getting an alcohol problem in the Corona crisis? Capital editor-in-chief Horst von Buttlar talks about this in the current episode of the podcast “The Hour Zero” with Thorsten Hermelink, the head of Europe’s largest premium wine company Hawesko, which also includes Jacques’ wine depot.
Wine merchant Thorsten Hermelink (left) and Wiesnwirt Michael Käfer
12,000 packages of wine a day
Hermelink reports that his company currently ships 12,000 packages of wine a day. And there could be even more if the employees in the camp did not have to work under difficult conditions due to Corona-related precautions. Hawesko has even stopped marketing measures to ensure that demand does not exceed supply capacity.
Hermelink is unable to say whether the overall alcohol consumption increases or is simply drunk differently – just at home. His feeling: “I think wine consumption may have increased a little bit simply because we have more time.”
While Hermelink is currently recording growth of 50 to 80 percent online, it expects a stable result for the stationary stores of “Jacques’ Wein-Depot” for the full year. In the catering industry, on the other hand, the outlook is bleak.
The second celebrity podcast guest in today’s episode is Michael Käfer. The prominent Wiesn host talks about the cancellation of the Oktoberfest and what delivery trends he observes in his delicatessen trade.
In the new podcast “The Hour Zero – Germany’s Way Out of the Crisis”, Capital Editor-in-Chief Horst von Buttlar talks to people who experience the Corona crisis and its economic consequences up close. All episodes can be found on Audio Now, Apple Podcasts, Deezer, Soundcloud and Spotify. For all other podcast apps, you can use the RSS feed. Take the feed URL and simply add “The Hour Zero” to your podcast subscriptions.
