Canned wine brands must focus less on sustainability and more on product quality if they are to convert more shoppers to the format, the CEO of the Canned Wine Group has said.
Speaking to The Grocer as Canned Wine Co prepared to launch its 2025 Organic Grüner and 2022 Oak Aged Garnacha into 200-plus Waitrose stores (rsp: £5.75/250ml), Ben Franks said that while sustainability was a consideration for some shoppers, there were many more for whom quality and taste was a bigger barrier to adopting the can format.
“Some of the [alternative] format wine businesses forget why people enjoy wine,” he said. “A lot of brands focus on the sustainability argument and that’s interesting to some people, but if you look at the statistics it’s only about 15% of people that are buying purely based on sustainability [considerations], so you’re not going to get a huge amount of volume just relying on that story.
“For those that are interested in that story, we’re B Corp certified, we have the second highest [sustainability] rating of any wine, and beyond packaging we’re committed to working with our partner wineries [to reduce emissions].”
But by focusing too heavily on pushing its sustainability credentials, wine in a can had hitherto failed to convince wine connoisseurs of its quality credentials, Franks claimed. “Historically, they would look at the can and go, ‘that’s not going to be good’,” he said.
The Canned Wine Co was therefore positioned as “a can of wine for wine drinkers, rather than [one] trying to bring new people into the wine space”, Frank said.
Canned cocktail comparison
The brand has sought to take inspiration craft beer and canned cocktail brands like Moth to reinforce the premium positioning of its canned wines – which typically cost between £4.50 and £6 per 250ml can – on shelf.
“With Moth, it’s all about a quality cocktail serve, almost bar quality, to get the customer coming back,” Frank said. “We do lots of R&D, we work with top wineries and winemakers, we rest our wine before we can it and ensure it’s the right spec to give really long shelf life.”
To push its quality credentials further, the Canned Wine Co has enlisted leading expert in wine branding and master of wine Neil Tully to design its labels.
“He’s got a great track record in supermarket design for the major retailers,” Frank said. “He’s got that commercial perspective, as well as that design eye to make our cans pop on the shelf.
“We’ve got loads of indicators that it’s a wine product on the front and back label, as well as textures on the can to make it feel premium.”
As well as being listed with Waitrose and Ocado, Canned Wine Group’s wines are sold across the on-trade via a preferred supplier agreement with C&C Group.
The company, founded by Franks and Simon Rollings in 2019, has an annual turnover of around £2m. Sales were expected to reach £8m in the next three years, supported by growth in the off-trade, Franks said.
“Until recently we’ve not really looked too much at retail and DTC,” he said. “But the way you get availability and accessibility is through that supermarket retail presence, so we’re going to so we’re going to lean into that this year as a business.”
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