About the BC Beer Sales Dashboard

This collection of data visualizations provides a consolidated view of BC beer sales, compiled from the BC Liquor Market Review published each quarter by the British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch.

Each edition of the Liquor Market Review is published in PDF format and includes the most recent quarterly sales data for the province, plus previous 4 quarters. with limited visualizations. So the advantage here is that I have:

• consolidated data from all quarterly reports since 2015
• provided interactive visualizations with filtering, details when hovering over the charts
• provided year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter comparisons, using calendar yr (rather than fiscal yr) for convenience
• consolidated data into total, category-level, and category-specific breakdowns

Not all of the detail available in the official version of the Liquor Market Review may be captured here. Further, I offer no guarantees as to the accuracy of the data presented here. If in doubt or using this information for important purposes, please refer to the official Liquor Market Review.

Note: This is an unofficial project not affiliated with the BC Liquor Distribution Branch, provided for information to the general public.

Change Log

Latest changes, developments, improvements

2026-01-21

• Multi-year performance summary: improved calculations and display to be based on rolling 12/24/36/48 mth periods from most recent quarter, instead of just calendar yr comparisons.
• Technical: moved Shiny app from shinyapps.io to Posit Connect Cloud for improved deployment and sustainability.
• Technical: Streamlined backend code to improve performance, make it more modular and easier to maintain.
• Technical: Developed lmrtools R package to improve data structure and improve efficiency of data access.

2025-12-18

• DATA UPDATE to: Sep 30, 2025 from latest Liquor Market Review
• Added filters for BC produced beer by category (major, regional, micro).
• Corrected calculations for % of total stacked charts to maintain accuracy when filters applied.
• Improved error handling with user-friendly messaging.
• Various usability enhancements like better vertical spacing for faceted charts, consistent color-coding.

2025-10-28

• Overview: Added breakdowns for BC produced beer by category (major, regional, micro).
• Improved info available when hovering over charts, including formatting for readability.

2025-10-14

Overview: Added 'Annual' or 'Quarterly' time grain setting. Updated all charts to respond to this filter and show data by year or quarter accordingly for broader range of insights from the same page.

Overview: Built out charts for source/origin of beer (BC, Import, Other Canada).

2025-09-25

New OVERVIEW tab added, with key summary charts comparing Net $ Sales and Litre Sales. This provides a high-level snapshot of overall trends, without the need to dig through the more detailed tabs.

2025-09-15

Converted original high-level bar charts to line charts for better trend visualization, especially for YoY and QoQ comparisons.

Added grey lines and bars to highlight comparisons based on partial years, to help with comparisons between full years and partial years, to reduce potential confusnion.

2025-09-06

DATA UPDATE: Updated with latest Liquor Market Review data for quarter ended Jun 30, 2025

2025-06-05

Fixed the way filters work relative to % of total charts, to ensure that the charts show % of total among the filtered data, rather than the total of all data.

2025-06-02

DATA UPDATE: Updated with latest Liquor Market Review data for quarter ended Mar 31, 2025

2025-03

Added new tab for Litre Sales, with same visualizations as Net $ Sales tab, but using litre as the unit of measure. This provides more complete view of beer sales in BC, aligning with the reports in the Liquor Market Review.