Brace yourselves: We’re Running Out of White Claw

Savas Abadsidis September 8, 2019

I haven’t had an IPA since I tried my first Ruby Red Grapefruit White Claw spiked seltzer at my aunt’s Memorial Day BBQ last year.

I loved it at first sip—and at 5% alcohol—and the fact that it tastes like it’s virtually alcohol free—it packs a wallop of a fun buzz.

But according to CNN, “White Claw is a victim of its own success: The hard seltzer brand confirmed a nationwide shortage in the United States, sparked by the drink’s rising popularity.”

“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, told CNN Business. “White Claw has accelerated faster than anyone could have predicted.”
The company didn’t specify when stock will return to normal, but Gajiwala said it has been “allocating product to our distributor partners to keep all markets in stock the best we can and will continue to do so until we get back to our normal safety stock position.”

White Claw has blown up recently, sparking memes and trend pieces. Sales of the drink grew 283% to $327.7 million in July compared to the same period last year. Its sales also accounted for nearly 55% of all hard seltzer sales for the week of July 4, a 200% increase since 2018’s Fourth of July sales, according to data from Nielsen.

The brand is owned by Mark Anthony Brands, makers of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and was launched in 2016. The combination of less sugar, fewer calories, and its innocuous taste soon made it a sensation.

Claw also caught the cultural zeitgeist, spawning thousands of hysterical memes. Particularly popular with gay men, it even got a “Truvada” flavored designed bottle. Truvada is the drug commonly known as PrEP that protects against HIV transmission when having condomless sex.

Distractify was among the first news sites to recognize and report on the Claw cultural phenomena. “White Claw is unofficially the summer drink of 2019. (Even though it’s described as a spiked seltzer that tastes like… nothing.) White Claw has been around since 2016 and is essentially meant for anyone over 21 to drink. Oddly enough, the drink has reached one unexpected demographic: bros. Frat boys have expressed how much they’re into the hard seltzer drink.”

White Claw rose to even bigger fame when YouTuber Trevor Wallace made a video titled “*drinks White Claw once.” It was meant to be a mockery of the fraternity houses that drink hard seltzer but ended up starting a viral trend swarmed with memes associated with the drink.
The video has since received 5.5 million views on Twitter and almost 2 million on YouTube. Here are some of our favorite White Claw memes to get you through your day.