Cheers: Whiskey sales start comeback in bars, restaurants

Bill Thomas sold off thousands of bottles from his whiskey inventory in 2020 to keep his acclaimed Washington, D.C., whiskey bar afloat when the coronavirus shuttered much of the economy.

By the next year, the whiskey curator known for serving super-premium and hard-to-get brands was replenishing inventories, even as COVID-19 forced him to come to terms with a world of uncertainty.

“There’s more bottles in here today than there were when we sold out when the pandemic hit,” Thomas, owner of Jack Rose Dining Saloon, said by phone this week. “We’ve rebuilt everything.”

Thomas’ restocked supplies reflect the start of a comeback for an important segment of the spirits industry’s business — on-premise sales from U.S. restaurants and bars.

Those on-premise sales volumes — representing about one-fifth of the U.S. spirits market — rose 53% in 2021, following pandemic-related restaurant and bar closures and restrictions nationwide in 2020, the Distilled