Happy hour, once a way for restaurants to fill slow tables before the dinner crowd arrived, has become the new dinner out. Younger drinkers are leading this charge, with 34% of them preferring earlier evenings over late-night outings.
A New Trend
This shift is not just a passing preference, with reservations booked between 4 and 5 p.m. up 13% year over year. A separate dining survey found that more than half of Americans would rather book an early reservation and head home to unwind than close out a bar tab.
Bacardi’s 2026 Cocktail Trends Report has even coined a term for this trend: ‘Afternoon Society.’ The numbers are harder to ignore, with premium-priced aperitifs and bitters in the U.S. growing 18% annually between 2018 and 2023, and 19% growth forecast through 2028.
Spritzes, mini martinis, and dessert-and-drink pairings are dominating afternoon menus because they’re made for exactly this moment: light, pretty, and easy to enjoy without writing off the next morning.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
