NAICS 4132Industry group · 4-digitregional market1 market record

Beverage merchant wholesalers

This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in wholesaling alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 793
Under 10 employeesA: 61%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–431840%

5–916220%

10–1914218%

20–498711%

50–99496%

100–199182%

200–499142%

500+30%

Of 793 Canadian establishments with employees, 61% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario24331%

Quebec17222%

British Columbia16220%

Alberta10413%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Wholesale Trade, US · opened 2020

82.8%

1 year

64.3%

3 years

51.2%

5 years

34.4%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 413, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 413 Food, beverage and tobacco merchant wholesalers

Broadline is consolidated. Specialty and ethnic food distribution stays fragmented and regional, run on relationships and cold-chain reliability.

Who sets the price: Large distributors and the grocers they serve.
The software it runs on: Distribution ERP, route accounting, warehouse and lot traceability.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Wine & Spirits Import AgencyExecution decides

binding constraint: distribution

On the survey this is the best-looking wholesale group in the batch: Canadian beverage wholesalers earned a 34.9% gross margin and 8.9% operating profit on $13.3B of revenue in 2024 [A], and 61% of the 793 establishments have fewer than ten people. The enterable form is the import agency — a small firm that represents foreign wineries and distillers in a province and lives on commission. It is cheap to start and needs no warehouse. The cut is that the agent does not control the sale. In most provinces the government liquor board is the wholesaler and the dominant retailer; the agency's whole business is persuading one buyer per province to grant a listing, then keeping sales above the threshold at which that buyer delists it. The principal can also move the brand to a larger agency the moment it succeeds. And the pool being fought over is shrinking: Statistics Canada reports alcohol sales of $25.8B in 2024/25, down 1.6%, with volume down 3.0% to 2,898 million litres; wine fell 2.2% to $7.7B and spirits 3.2% to $6.7B [A]. Imports are 70% of wine sales, so the agency's territory is large — but a falling category makes a monopoly buyer cut its listings, not add them. The survey margin also narrowed, from 11.6% operating profit in 2019 to 8.9%. Soft-drink and water distribution, the other half of this code, runs on bottler territories and was not examined; the software sold into the wider branch is screened separately.

NAICS 41326 vendors named13 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Distribution ERP, route accounting, warehouse and lot traceability.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 2

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Bacardi, Campari and Beam SuntoryPrivate	Beverage merchant wholesalers4132	—	1/2
LCBOPrivate	Beverage merchant wholesalers4132	—	2/2

Who works here

The occupations employed in Wholesale trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 16.6%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 9.2%

Labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities Mostly one sector 8.7%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 8.5%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 7.3%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 6.8%

Supervisors, processing and manufacturing occupations Mostly one sector 6.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.8%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.5%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 5.3%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 10.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 7.9%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 6.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 6.2%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 5.1%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.8%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

2 rows sit directly beneath 4132, and 4 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
41321	Non-alcoholic beverage merchant wholesalers	408	screened at 4132
41322	Alcoholic beverage merchant wholesalers	385	screened at 4132

Alongside it, under 413 Food, beverage and tobacco merchant wholesalers

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
4131	Food merchant wholesalers	6,020	Foodservice Distribution
4133	Cigarette and tobacco product merchant wholesalers	195	Convenience & Tobacco Distributor
4134	Cannabis merchant wholesalers	27	Cannabis Dispensary POS & Inventory Software