There is Now Officially a White Claw National Shortage
And people are calling it a ‘national emergency.’
You know how this summer White Claw hard seltzer was everywhere? Well, now it’s on the brink of being nowhere, and people are fuh-reaking out.
White Claw confirmed the shortage on Friday, telling CNN that the company was struggling to keep up with the American public’s insatiable thirst for its product: "We are working around the clock to increase supply given the rapid growth in consumer demand," Sanjiv Gajiwala, White Claw's senior vice president of marketing, said, adding that the company is trying to keep its distributors in stock the best it can. "White Claw has accelerated faster than anyone could have predicted."
The flavored, 5-percent ABV hard seltzer was introduced in 2016 by Mark Anthony Brands, the maker of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and is now the top-selling hard seltzer in an increasingly crowded field, accounting for 55 percent of U.S. hard seltzer sales. This year, it saw dramatic sales growth, climbing 238 percent in July 2019, as compared to July 2018, to reach $327.7 million, according to Nielsen data cited by CNN.
In fact, White Claw, though only three years old, is so popular and so dominant in its category that it has been described as “the Kleenex of spiked seltzer.”
“For many consumers, White Claw grew to become synonymous with the entire hard seltzer category and (at least partially) grew to represent the summer of 2019,” Nielsen spokeswoman Genevieve Aronson told the New York Times. Marketed as a low-cal beverage along the lines of light beer and widely memed (this seminal White Claw-related video by comedian Trevor Wallace has been viewed nearly 2.5 million times), the drink “captured the zeitgeist of American drinkers, as it sits at the nexus of health, wellness and convenience.”
Strong words for a strong drink, but no match for the strong reaction people are having to the beverage’s shortage.
“Everyone stop what they’re doing right now this is an EMERGENCY,” wrote one panic fomenter in a tweet to which another responded that the news of the shortage was “devastating.”
Others labeled the shortage “an epidemic.”
And some people are calling it the Great White Claw Shortage of 2019.
“Someday I'll tell my children about how I survived the #whiteclaw shortage of 2019,” tweeted another, ironically, sure, yet irony and White Claw drinking are not incompatible.
True, there are those who used the shortage to express their disdain: “The White Claw shortage is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” one apparent non-fan opined.
Others took the news calmly and soberly – or, well, at least calmly. “White Claw scarcity means summer's over,” remarked one matter-of-fact fellow.
Awww, now that’s sad.
Photo: GettyImages
Related Links:
