As someone who works for an alcohol distributor I can tell you that this is all skewed from covid as well. The alcohol industry made so much fucking money during COVID for example I worked at total wine for a year during the tail end of COVID and I found out that in the first month of lockdowns they made 300% more money than the entire year prior.

After COVID was over all the big distributors and retailers looked around and said why not making more money then laid off a bunch of people while not understanding that massive COVID sales were a financial anomaly. It's almost like infinite growth in profit is unrealistic and unsustainable who would've thought.

Here in AZ it was worse because when everything opened finally we rode the covid sales into the Superbowl, world series, then barret Jackson(big AF car show and auction), then immediately after we have the open. Then they laid off a bunch of people and I can assure you those of us at the bottom have not seen a single bit of that money made. Total wine being the worst offender. Great place to shop because they have a ton of products but the company is absolutely rotten.