Dry January:
How One Month Became a Movement
Wellness-focused, “sober-curious” consumers are driving interest in booze-free cocktails, a relative newcomer to the $180 billion beverage industry.
There’s no question that COVID drove us to consume more alcohol. It took a year to realize we can’t drink our way through a pandemic. 2021 was the year of wellness and the rise of the non-alcoholic spirit category. According to Nielsen data, the no- and low-ABV sector has grown 506% since 2015, and annual growth for the category is expected to hit 7.1% by 2025. By category, NA beer and cider grew 31.7%, wine increased 39.4% while zero-ABV spirits saw sales grow 113.4% over the last year.
The products have done especially well in e-commerce, as Nielsen found a 315% increase in online non-alcoholic and low-alcoholic beverage dollar sales in the same time. However, the demand has led to a retail first: stores devoted to non-alcoholic spirits. One is Sipple, the first non-alcoholic bottle shop in Texas that opened in October 2021. New York City’s first booze-free bottle shop, Spirted Away, opened on the city’s lower east side in November 2020. By early 2021, Boisson opened in Brooklyn, sharing the same dedication to exclusively alcohol-free beverages.
