The nonalcoholic beverage market has a 10-20% share in Europe, signaling major growth opportunity for U.S. retailers.
I’ve been drinking for about 45 years, beginning around the age of 14 when I made a “cocktail” by mixing a bunch of my father’s booze in a glass, adding juice and sending it down the hatch. Vomited for many hours, passed out on the bathroom floor, woke up feeling like I’d been flattened by a moose.
Couldn’t wait to drink again.
And so it goes for decades. Not the face-planting and stomach-evacuation bit. But drinking most weeks, sometimes enough to feel crummy the next day. During my 50s I began to lose patience with the post-drinking effects. Was that second glass of Loire Valley Chenin Blanc worth it? For much of my life, indeed, it most certainly was. So was the third. And the fourth. But with age, that second glass became increasingly fraught.
Around 2022 the nonalcoholic beverage movement exploded — just in time. I remember Dry January that year garnering loads of press. I wrote about it with keen interest, and began experimenting with products.
Canned mocktails intrigued. Sadly, however, most of them just tasted like soda — achingly sweet, with hints of sour for “balance.” Even the worst margaritas I’d ever sipped — neon chartreuse, plastic cup — drank better. I tried some wines, but they all came across as wan — sad, thin ghosts of white Burgundy shambling through some new and strange beverage purgatory, neither vino nor satisfactorily pleasing as sober alternatives. As a former wine writer, I could almost hear their moans, the rattling of their chains: “Whaaat are we dooooing heeere? Pleeease set us freee, ooold friend.”
Nonalcoholic beer quality lifts category
But then there was nonalcoholic beer. It was good. And today, just as we get ready to complete Dry January for 2026, it’s much better. Cans of hops-and-malt redolent alcohol-free beer fill part of my downstairs refrigerator, butting up against the bottles of amaro, sherry, sake, cava and proper India Pale Ale. I’m a convert, tossing back a six-pack or so every week — sometimes purchased at a natural and organic grocery store. I’ll order it in restaurants, during convivial occasions where not long ago I would never have considered anything other than a beverage that burns when it goes down.
That refrigerator tells the tale. It holds both hooch-free beer and iterations of every other category of alcoholic beverage. I drink them all. But every six months or so, it seems the zero-proof beers gain market share over the saucy bottles. In fact, at this point the no-booze beers broadcast a certain swagger, occupying such premium, and expanding, space amongst their ethanol-flooded fridge-mates.
Nonalcoholic buyers and “zebra striping”
My evolving relationship with booze does not stand apart from the mainstream. According to Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA) statistics, about 93% of buyers also purchase alcoholic beverages. In addition, ANBA data shows that close to half of all on-premise drinkers “zebra stripe,” meaning they order both full-test martinis and clear-headed pints of porter during their time at the bar or restaurant.
The movement has even moved to cruise ships. Carnival Cruise Line announced last year that it offers dedicated nonalcoholic beverage packages for guests.
And what booze-less drinks are the zebra stripers gripping while laughing at happy hour? Beer, mostly. According to the ANBA, beer now accounts for 83% of all nonalcoholic beverage sales, with wine accounting for 11% and spirits 6%. Take a tour of any natural and organic grocery store with a liquor license, and witness the nonalcoholic beer section — big and crowded, and probably quite a bit larger today than it was just two years ago.
It’s not just Americans who are bellying up to the bar for no-hangover beer. In Europe’s far more mature sober marketplace, where market share for nonalcoholic beverages ranges between 10-20% of all adult beverage sales (compared to about 1% in the United States), beer harnesses about three-quarters of those purchases.
NielsenIQ calls the trend represented by my refrigerator as “moderation through repertoire expansion.” Please. In other words, as the quality, distribution and mainstreaming of booze-free alternatives grows, people are drinking less hooch.
Less abstinence, more moderation
“This isn’t an abstinence conversation,” says Marcos Salazar, chief executive officer of the ANBA. “It’s a moderation conversation.” Salazar believes extensive research and development among beverage brands has led not only to higher quality products, but to the aggressive expansion of moderation among adults.
“By the nature of the market, there are more products entering every week — newer, better — and it’s forced everyone else to elevate. The ones that were just so-so aren’t really around anymore,” says Salazar. “People are now expecting great nonalcoholic beverages when they’re out. And when it comes to beer, people will tell you they really can’t tell the difference anymore.”
Brewers have figured out the formula. The brand Athletic dominates today — it takes up the most room in my fridge, and I find it preening on many natural and organic grocery shelves. But mainstream legacy brewers, too, are going all-in on beer without the hard stuff. There’s Guinness 0, Bud Zero, Corona 0.0 and Heineken 0.0, all of them (plus many more conglomerate brands) expanding internationally along with myriad domestic craft brands dipping their toes in the alcohol-free waters.
Just this month, in fact, Shiner Bock launched Shiner Bock Non-Alcoholic. January news also included actor Tom Holland’s nonalcoholic beer brand, BERO securing substantial private-equity backing. Details were not disclosed, but the investment vaulted BERO’s valuation to more than $100 million.
Meanwhile, IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, a London firm considered the gold standard for global alcoholic beverage forecasting, predicted that once all of the data is available for 2025 nonalcoholic beer will have surpassed ale as the No. 2 beer category globally.
Nonalcoholic beats the wide world of ales? I find this staggering.
Low-stakes sociability delivers beer advantages
Quality clearly has driven part of N/A beer’s launch into the brewski big leagues. But I think there’s more to it than Athletic’s ability to pump out winning facsimiles of pilsner.
In short, beer’s many advantages have always risen from a foundation of low-stakes sociability. Outside of some sects of beer geek (Brewus barleyossa), few people savor and evaluate their sips, in the manner of a Mosel Riesling. They drink for refreshment. And most beer is designed for session drinking — standing barefoot in the sand at a beach bar, or playing trivia games at a house party, with a beer in hand, for hours. With friends. It’s not a brooding glass, neat, of Scotch.
That is, beer has never really been sipped for beer’s sake. It’s normally one of many players in a social experience. When beer gets tossed back after an hour of cutting the grass on a sweltering Saturday afternoon, it’s for refreshment. It broadcasts fun-loving hops, malt and effervescence, rather than serious grape varietal and terroir, or liquor’s severe and structured heat.
Beer is easy. Now that the alcohol-free versions have become so grand, I think of it as the gateway for much more moderation on the booze front, at least for me and the many people who, suddenly, find themselves stuffing their refrigerators with 12-packs of nonalcoholic beer, claiming space right there beside the bottle of Prosecco getting chilled for a celebration.
Read more on New Hope Natural Media
