What it's like inside the booze-free NYC bars that charge $13 for nonalcoholic cocktails
by Kara Chin, Mark Abadihttps://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php
- New York City is home to “booze-free bars” that charge as much as $US13 for craft nonalcoholic cocktails.
- Americans’ thirst for nonalcoholic drinks is growing, and the trend is extending beyond Dry January.
- Business Insider Today spoke to two New York bar owners who are carving a niche in the sober nightlife scene.
- View more episodes of Business Insider Today on Facebook.
Following is a transcript of an episode of Business Insider Today.
Alcohol is a core part of our social lives.
And from the looks and sound of it, this is a traditional cocktail.
But it doesn’t contain any alcohol.
People’s thirst for nonalcoholic drinks is growing – and it’s a trend that extends beyond Dry January. Today, people are willing to pay $US13 for a nonalcoholic cocktail like this one.
Lorelei Bandrovschi created a “booze-free bar” in 2018 after noticing a serious lack of options in nonalcoholic nightlife.
Lorelei Bandrovschi, founder of Listen Bar:“Listen Bar exists in order to create an option for people who want to go out and they don’t feel like drinking.”
And what started as a five-day pop-up became a roaming monthly affair.
Bandrovschi: “I really wanted to push a different kind of social experience, a different kind of nightlife, a little bit more rowdy, rough around the edges, a little bit more loose.”
“And we’ve had so many different themes, from karaoke to speed dating to pride, you name it.”
Katelyn Krueger, Listen Bar customer: “It’s just, like, a unique event in the city. Like everywhere you go, like if I go to a work event or a date, there’s always alcohol involved. So I’ve brought a date to Listen Bar before just to do something different and not drink on a Tuesday night.”
This sentiment is growing, especially among millennials.
In 2019, 66% of American millennials said they would take steps to reduce their alcohol consumption.
Bandrovschi: “Our customers are really from all over the spectrum. Two-thirds of them are drinkers.”
Some of these customers identify as sober curious – which describes anyone who isn’t fully abstaining but is questioning their drinking habits and cutting back. The term was first coined in 2018 by Ruby Warrington in her book “Sober Curious.”
Bandrovschi: “We want to shift the conversation away from this divide of drinker and sober. Listen Bar is judgment-free. You know, we don’t care if you’re sober or hungover.”
Listen Bar keeps it lively with curated playlists from guest musicians, a tattoo artist, drink specials, and even CBD drops.
To create a booze-free zone, the pop-up transforms existing traditional bars.
Bandrovschi: “We take all of the alcohol off the shelves and you know, if there’s bar taps, we’ll take the regular beer tops off and put our Athletic Brewing beer taps on or a kombucha tap on.”
The cocktails will set you back more than a soda, at around $US11 dollars apiece.
Bandrovschi: “Our drinks are on par with traditional cocktails, both in terms of flavour and in terms of the actual cost to produce.”
Crafted by mixologists, these drinks taste similar to classic cocktails. They’re a combination of common ingredients like fruits and bitters, with nonalcoholic liqueurs, like Seedlip and Kin Euphorics. These young liqueur brands, whose bottles run $US30 to $US40 each, are tapping into a lucrative market – retail sales of nonalcoholic beverages grew by 1.1 billion from 2018 to 2019.
Innovative mixed drinks are also a draw at Getaway, another alcohol-free bar.
Sam Thonis, cofounder and co-owner of Getaway:“We’re not just competing with the nonalcoholic bars. We’re competing with all of New York City.”
Getaway opened last year as the first stand-alone alcohol-free bar in New York City.
Thonis: “Everyone had kind of said, ‘Oh, we’ll do this as part of a, you know, community centre. Or we’ll, you know, we’ll rent out part of a bar for one night a week.’ But no one had really said, like, ‘We’re making a nonalcoholic bar.'”
Getaway has all the elements of a standard bar: loud music, dim lighting, and a bar where customers sip crafted cocktails.
Thonis: “It’s not like we’re offering like an anti-alcoho. We’re not serving a product that is like the opposite of alcohol.”
“You know, our philosophy was like, the drinks that we’re serving should feel like a cocktail.”
Lola Hushin, Getaway bartender: “So we try to incorporate a lot of interesting nonalcoholic bitters, or chilli oil, or cardamom extract, tobacco syrup.”
At $US13, these mixed drinks aren’t cheap. But Sam Thonis says they’re worth the price.
Thonis: We’ve found at least people will pay for those drinks. You know, they appreciate the craft that goes into them. They appreciate the freshness of the ingredients.
It isn’t all about crafting the perfect cocktail though. Thonis created the space with his older brother in mind.
Thonis: “He stopped drinking four years ago, and all of a sudden we realised, like, there weren’t really great options for places for us to go and hang out. It just occurred to me that, you know, if one person wants a place like this, maybe there’s more people who want it.”
Listen Bar will soon join its ranks as a brick-and-mortar business. At the end of the year, it will settle into a permanent New York City location, made possible by crowdfunding.
And one of those early backers was Getaway.
Thonis: “Honestly right now, I just think it’s good that people are interested and there’s more of a market for this.”