US dog treat and chew market revenue

There is a faintly absurd elegance to the notion that Americans buying their dogs more chews and Germans drinking less beer per head are part of the same secret rhythm. The dogs, presumably, are not in Germany. The Germans, presumably, are not in the treat aisle. And yet.

The actual story is in opposite directions: US dog treat revenue has climbed steadily as the pet humanization trend rolled on through the 2010s, while German per-capita beer consumption has been quietly falling for decades as younger Germans drink less and shift to wine, water, and craft alternatives. The correlation is a coincidence of two long secular trends inflecting at the same time for entirely separate cultural reasons.

So the correlation is the tidy mathematics of a rising aisle and a falling glass. Neither is news to anyone in the relevant industry. Both just happen to point at each other.