Cannabis Beverages: What Marketers Should Know About Current Trends (2024)

Cannabis can be a powerful social lubricant. Sure, I like to consume alone from time to time, but — like an alcoholic beverage — I much prefer to enjoy it in the company of others. And when people gather to enjoy each other’s company, it’s de rigueur to have drinks in hand, regardless of whether they contain alcohol or not.

With this in mind, and with recent scientific developments in cannabinoid emulsion technologies and other pharma-based delivery methods, several cannabis brands have already launched beverage lines infused with THC, CBD and beyond. What’s interesting is that many of them haven’t fared as well as expected — with beverages making up about 1% of the overall cannabis market. Yes, the sector of cannabis-infused beverages is growing, but not at the rate those of us in the industry anticipated.

As the Founder and CEO of a cannabis marketing and PR firm, I’m vested in this part of the market and curious to find the answer to: Will Summer 2023 be the season that cannabis consumers finally start embracing drinkable weed?

Changing Consumer Behavior in Cannabis

I get it: Altering your everyday behavior is difficult. Habits leave imprints on the brain that are tough to change. In fact, 45% of everyday behaviors tend to be repeated in the same location — the morning coffee for the commute, the afternoon tea break, the post-work happy-hour beverage are all deeply entrenched in modern society.

Psychological research shows that simply repeating a basic action over and over in the same context leads, through associative learning, to the action being done repeatedly when context cues are presented. So think about modern cannabis consumers: Whether they consume occasionally or seven days a week, they’re not easily won over to new methods of consumption that are not part of their normal routine.

Take my friend, D, for example. She smokes cannabis multiple times a month (preferably joints), and loves the combustion aspect: The flame to the flower to the lungs to the bloodstream. There is an immediacy and familiarity that D enjoys. She scoffs at vapes, edibles just don’t do it, and on a few occasions when I’ve offered her a cannabis beverage, she has laughed me out of the room.

And I understand her perspective. My consumption patterns are also predictable. For me, it’s all edibles and dabs. That said, I’m still relatively new to dabbing and owe my conversion in part to a design-forward devicemy wife and I are proud to display on the coffee table.

The point is: It took a beautiful, groundbreaking piece of technology to alter my all-too-entrenched consumption patterns. So what’s it going to take for consumers to start drinking their weed?

Why Drink Cannabis Beverages?

Despite the difficulties, we know that habits can be changed, but there must be a reason to create that change.

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Here is the industry’s general pitch for why cannabis beverages will eventually be a powerhouse category: Adult consumers across the globe are accustomed to drinking their intoxicants like beer, wine and co*cktails. Talk about a powerful pattern: We are conditioned from a young age that we come home after a long day at the office, make ourselves a drink and allow ourselves to leave behind the day’s stresses and be transported into an altered state — a gateway to relaxation, restoration and rest.

So why should it be any different for weed?

According to BDS Analytics, the cannabis beverage category makes up a tiny share of the legal market, bringing in around 1% of total cannabis sales (and 5% of total cannabis edibles sales) in the first eight months of 2021. But there is substantial growth potential: That figure is still about 94% higher than in the first eight months of 2020, as BDSA points out.

The consumer insights company estimates that the edibles sector will grow from a total of over $180 million in 2021 to almost $500 million by 2026. Compared to category-defining products like gummies and chocolates, there is currently limited shelf-space and availability for cannabis beverages — but I predict more brands will soon enter the beverage space seeking to grab their share of the market, and that the existing brands there will double-down on their commitment to the small-but-growing sector.

Following the Lead of Non-Cannabis Canned Drinks

As with anything in modern cannabis, we should also look to our peers in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) space, where we’re seeing vast category expansion in seltzers of all kinds, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and where we are also seeing red-hot mocktail canned brands emerging with a number-one value prop of their absence of alcohol. Just as the cannabis industry is attempting to change consumer habits, we are also witnessing a tipping point of consumer preferences transforming radically.

And in my opinion, the cannabis beverage market could not be better timed to meet consumers — from the Zoomers to the Zennials — with non-alcoholic cannabis beverages that still make you giggle and give you that relaxed sensation at the end of the day, all without the bummer of a hangover.

I will also admit that in many ways, the cannabis beverage shift is a more complex move than most other categories currently, in part because of that monumental lift of changing human behaviors. We’d be fools to think this will flip like a switch overnight, but I would argue that we would be bigger fools if we didn’t think this product category wouldn’t continue growing year over year to the point that it’s even giving the weed gummy market (currently making up 65% of the cannabis edibles market, according to BDS Analytics) a run for its money.

We would be wise to remember the vast number of canna-curious consumers who continue to gain legal access as more state markets come online. Savvy marketers will likely want to skip the arduous step of retraining consumers away from smoking, vaping and gummies — and instead, introduce the canna-curious to weed beverages as their point of entry to their relationship with the plant.