Crate Day slowly fades away as binge drinking loses its allure

Friday, 5 December 2025

Crate Day participants in Canterbury take part in a run alongside the Waimakariri River. (File photo)

Allan Pollard is chief executive of The Trusts, which comprises two liquor licensing trusts in West Auckland.

OPINION: As far as summer traditions go, New Zealand’s line-up says a lot about us as a country. The beach swims, days at the bach and BBQs are all about making the most of the land we live in. But what does Crate Day - taking place tomorrow, the first Saturday in December - say about us?

Crate Day once captured something raw and recognisable about Kiwi summers. It’s a tradition that distilled our fondness for humour and recklessness into one afternoon, an oddly revealing mirror of who we were at the time.

It began as a lark. In 2010 radio station The Rock challenged listeners to drink a crate, 12 large bottles of beer, between noon and midnight to mark the first Saturday of summer. It was sold as a bit of craic, measuring mateship with bottles so summer kicked off with a hangover.

A dozen large bottles of beer consumed over 12 hours may have caught the imagination of Kiwi drinkers 15 years ago, but the evidence suggests that time is well gone, writes Allan Pollard.

But like many ideas born in the 2000s, Crate Day is showing its age. The radio station that coined it no longer mentions it. Police and hospitals still brace for it, but with each passing year, the fuss feels fainter. The hangover, it seems, could be fading.

A ritual past its prime

We operate 26 bottle stores across West Auckland under the Liquorland and Super Liquor franchises. Our sales on Crate Day have been on steady decline for years; in 2023 they dropped nearly $9000 from the year prior, and last year went down another $24,000.

That trend is playing out in the products they’re buying. Low ABV beers, zero alcohol gins, and low cal RTDs are crowding into the space where bulk beer once stood. Customers talk about pacing themselves or saving their money for a summer trip instead. The cost-of-living crunch may be a factor, but so is a change in values. People are weighing what they can afford, and what feels good the next morning.

Research doubles down on that. We’re beating other Asia-Pacific countries, with New Zealand sitting second for people drinking less over the year, 38% of us. A growing majority of drinkers have pivoted to low or no-alcohol choices. Over half (55%) of Kiwis tried a low-alcohol beverage in the last year, up from 40% in 2020.

Some of that is due to cost-of-living pressure where the price of a crate now competes with a half tank of gas, but much of what we’re looking at is a cultural and generational shift in attitude. The next generation’s relationship with alcohol looks different. For many, the novelty of overindulgence wore off before they were even old enough to buy a beer.

The aftermath of an impromptu Crate Day party on Queenstown's Village Green in 2016 - the sort of experience which led to regular warnings about the event’s hazards.

Health NZ found that one in five of New Zealanders aged 18-24 now abstain from alcohol altogether, and almost a quarter of adults nationwide report not drinking at all. Hazardous drinking among young adults, once the hallmark of Crate Day, has fallen from 35.8% in 2018/19 to 22.6% in 2023/24.

Among younger customers, the ritual seems to have lost its swagger altogether. Crate Day belongs to an era that prided itself on excess, because the millennial years of cheap rent, cheaper beer and a sense that endurance was something to toast. Gen Z, by contrast, appears to be re-engineering social life around wellness and connection. Their summer soundtrack is still loud, but less defined by the clink of glass.

Outgrowing the era

Every year, Crate Day sparks the familiar debates about whether it should be banned, policed, or reined in. But the more interesting story might be that it’s disappearing on its own. Culture tends to solve what regulation can’t. The generation that made Crate Day famous is ageing out of it, and the one that follows simply doesn’t see the appeal.

From where we stand in the industry, the rise of low and no-alcohol drinks, slowing sales, tighter budgets, and younger people’s changing priorities all point to the reality that we’re moving toward a social identity that doesn't relate to excess consumption in drinking (or much else). By no means is this a pronouncement that Crate Day is dead, more that it’s simply being outgrown.

New Zealand’s drinking identity has always evolved in waves, like what we saw between the returning home from work six o’clock swill to the craft beer revolution to this moment of quiet moderation. I’d posit that what’s happening is a social recalibration. We’re finding new ways to connect, and they don’t hinge on how much we drink.

Crate Day will probably linger for a while longer, but its edges are blunting. How many of our teenagers or Gen Z colleagues are actually getting together with the intention to drink 12 in 12, any more than it just being an excuse to come together? The annual calls for crackdowns may soon be redundant, not because we’ve defeated binge culture, but because the culture itself will soon move on.

In time, the first Saturday of December will still mean summer, still mean company and celebration, but with fewer crates. That will be a hopeful sign that New Zealand’s identity as binge drinkers may well be on its way out.