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Five top stories on non-alcoholic beverages in 2023
From canned mocktails to sparkling wine to spot-on IPA, how the NA movement grew fizzy in 2023.
3 Min Read
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Innovation surrounding non-alcoholic adult beverages remained stagnant for decades. The market yielded a handful of good booze-free beer brands over the years, but the world of wine and spirits alternatives was puny. Selections for non-booze drinkers too often revolved around seltzer water, conventional soda and juice.
Not exactly innovation.
What non-booze drinkers lacked were adult beverages that could serve as ceremonial markers between, for example, a day of work and evening. Or for celebrating on a Saturday night. In other words, drinks without hooch that performed the same function as a full-strength Manhattan or glass of Chardonnay for those who imbibe. For most who drink booze, the turn to a pale ale or Pinot Grigio involves a conscious pivot from a day of coffee and kombucha to something else entirely.
But now those who reject booze, or are just working to mitigate its consumption, enjoy a diversity of thrilling adult beverages that indeed divide drinking meant for every age from sipping geared toward adult palates. The growth has been robust enough to spawn a new trade association in Washington, DC, the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA), which sponsored an entire section of Natural Products Expo East in Philadelphia in September devoted to the brands that are developing exciting beverages, from sparkling wine to canned cocktails to IPAs, without the ethanol.
The trend is here to stay. As more and more people experiment with well-crafted adult drinks minus the hangover potential they are embracing the beverages, and adding them to their drinks ‘fridges and carts, and wine racks.
Read on for a selection of New Hope Network stories that covered this effervescing industry in all of its exhilarating ferment.
The Natural List Podcast—the zero-proof is in the pudding: NA is here to stay: Natural List podcast hosts Jessica Rubino and Adrienne Smith sat down with Marcus Salazar, the CEO of the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association, to dive deep into the blossoming trend.
Expo East: 10 brands to meet in the new non-alcoholic beverage pavilion: The ANBA-sponsored pavilion at Expo East created a whole lot of potential customers for the new wave of non-alcoholic-beverage excellence. We previewed 10 of them.
Expo East’s non-alcoholic beverages thrill this booze writer: A New Hope journalist who formerly wrote about booze for different publications sampled the NA pavilion at Expo East—and walked away a convert.
In the Aisle: Non-alcoholic beverages satisfy adult consumers: The buzz about NA drinks is more than just chatter; data backs up the trend’s positive trajectory. This piece explores the movement, and points toward a couple of favorite new brands.
How to merchandise non-alcoholic beverages: Non-alcoholic beverages have been around forever: water, tea, soda and the rest of the things we drink that skip the hooch. But they don’t work as proper NA drinks in this burgeoning category, which fixes on adult flavors. Given the broad range of beverages carried by most retailers, how do they separate the NA drinks from other drinks like kefir that simply lack alcohol?
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