Third Wave Sobriety: Consumer Demand for Inclusive Menus Drives a Global Market
BY GRACE MOEN
Lisa is a Portland, Oregon attorney with a warm, has-it-together quality one might expect from a high-performing, urban-living professional. But in 2019, around the time she and her husband started to conceive, she began questioning her relationship with alcohol. “I was over this work-hard-play-hard thing,” the 35-year-old said. It “was really burning me out.”
Her drinking looked “normal” by social standards, said Lisa. She’d have a glass or two with dinner or meet up with colleagues after work for happy hour. Wine, preferably red, was her drink of choice and it could always be counted on at the legal events she attended. And yet this “drinking as default” social behavior was becoming unsustainable. “Aren't there more nourishing ways to connect?” she wondered.
Lisa is not alone. Sales of non-alcoholic beverages are up, representing billions in annual revenue. Non-alcoholic cocktails are expected to grow by 9.6% per year through 2028 and non-alcoholic beer will grow by 5.17% in 2024 alone. Much of this growth is being fueled by rising popularity in the United States. From grocery stores where big-name beer brands promote their 0.0 ABV IPA and social media where zero-proof spirits are marketed as part of an active and glamorous lifestyle, to alcohol-free bars and bartenders offering elevated alcohol-free beverage menus, the shift is hard to ignore.
Until the growing mainstream popularity of living sans alcohol, the stigma of being branded as an alcoholic or addict has kept many people silent about the role alcohol plays in their lives—regardless of how much or how little they drink. The “dominant narrative,” said Lisa, has been that there are alcoholics and then there is everybody else.
By “everybody else” she means moderate, social, or occasional drinkers, the very folks for whom the status quo beverage market has historically been catered to. If global revenue trends are any indication, then this binary structure is fading and in its place are a range of beverage choices, social norms, and open dialogue.
“I needed to be able to step outside of that [social] conditioning and be like, maybe it's not normal that we just all drink when we hang out,” said Lisa.
At Pacific Standard, a restaurant and bar in Portland, Oregon, where tourists feel like locals and locals feel at home, Jeffrey Morgenthaler is behind the bar, expanding people’s ideas of what ingredients belong in a cocktail.
“You want something dry?” he asks. “You want something with a little bit of herbaceousness? Let’s figure out what that drink is rather than make a Manhattan that contains no alcohol.” While Morgenthaler is renowned for his alcoholic libations, his bar menu does not rely on booze. Some drinks contain alcohol, some contain a little bit of alcohol, and some contain no alcohol.
His personal go-to beverage, according to Julia Bainbridge’s “Good Drinks” is a Grapefruit Radler made with fresh-squeezed grapefruit and lemon juice, simple syrup, and his favorite non-alcoholic lager-style beer, which, perhaps surprisingly for someone with seven James Beard Award nominations, is Busch NA. Booze or no booze, he said, “they're all drinks.”
This flexibility of alcohol content not only offers more options to the folks who seek less alcohol, but also erodes the idea that alcohol is a required cocktail ingredient at all. In the time since Pacific Standard opened in 2022, Portland, Oregon—a town known for craft beers and its proximity to world-class wine country—has also seen the openings of Kann and Sousol, each boasting robust alcohol-free menus designed by sober chef Gregory Gourdet, pop-up alcohol-free bars like Suckerpunch, and the launch of BuzzCutt an app that helps folks identify restaurants and bars that are friendly to the sober or sober-curious.
These are welcome new additions for Lisa, who, after her daughter was born experimented with mindful- or conscious-drinking. She would imbibe in a glass of wine on special occasions, but that still didn’t feel right. “It’s a slippery slope. Should I drink tonight? Should I only have one?” Alcohol continued to dominate her thoughts, so she quit entirely.
In contrast to the prohibition era of the 1920s and 30s which emphasized restriction, today’s modern sobriety movement is characterized by expansion and inclusion. Choices of what to drink and where to drink are gaining momentum, catering to people who don't want to imbibe for whatever reason. This may even become the new normal.
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Lisa’s last name has been redacted for privacy.
This story was originally published in 2021 as part of the author’s graduate studies in journalism at Harvard Universtiy’s Extension School. The story has been updated to reflect the latest markets and data.