You run a liquor store that’s chock-full of craft beer, wines, and liquor. There’s a grocery store down the street. So, why would someone choose to come into your shop looking for nonalcoholic (NA) drinks? Are people really going to a liquor store looking for “fake” versions of beer, wine, and cocktails?
The answer might surprise you. The nonalcoholic drink market has exploded in the last five years. Even though NA drinks only currently account for about 1% of global alcohol sales, the industry is experiencing staggering growth — and sales are expected to double in the next five years.
Most importantly, just like people go to a liquor store over a grocery store for its better selection of beers, many customers go to liquor stores expecting a better selection of NA alternatives.
So, should your liquor store be taking up valuable shelf space with NA drinks? The short answer is yes. With high profit margins and rising popularity, NA drinks provide an excellent opportunity to boost sales and bring in new customers.
But what should you be stocking? And how much of your shelf space should you dedicate to NA choices?
In this blog, we’ll dive into everything you need to know about selling nonalcoholic drinks at your store, including why it’s worthwhile, popular brands, and tips for maximizing your sales.
In the past, NA alternatives were mostly reserved for a few select customers and for nondrinking events like Dry January. That’s no longer the case.
But why exactly has the adult nonalcoholic beverage industry suddenly exploded? Part of it has to do with changing customer behaviors. Younger generations are simply drinking less than millennials and Gen X. That doesn’t tell the whole story, though.
More people are “sober curious” or simply want healthier alternatives. According to an NIQ report, 93% of nonalcoholic buyers also buy alcohol, and most people consider NA drink options as a subset of alcoholic drinks.
In other words, selling NA drinks isn’t a way to bring in a new and niche subset of customers, but a way of offering a wider selection of popular options to your existing ones.
Here are a few more noteworthy facts about the NA beverage industry:
With high profit margins and growing demand, your NA selection might just be the next big thing for your liquor store business.
Because the process of creating great-tasting NA options is somewhat complex, many NA products aren’t that much cheaper than the real thing. This gives you an exciting opportunity to promote healthier options without sacrificing profitability.
If you aren’t familiar with many NA drinks, here are some popular brands and items to look into.
Many established brands offer well-liked NA options (e.g. Heineken 0.0, Sierra Nevada, and Guinness 0.0).
For NA wines, there are nonalcoholic wines (wine alternatives) and dealcoholized wine. Which is “better” is largely down to personal preference.
There are also some brands making exclusively NA wine, so here’s a mix of brands and popular items to give you an idea of what’s available:
As we mentioned above, NA cocktails (or mocktails) usually have the highest profit margin of NA drinks, probably because it’s easier to mimic the flavors in cocktails compared to beer and wine. Here are some popular zero-proof cocktail brands:
Note: Many NA beers and wines are not truly no alcohol, but are usually below 1% unless they are explicitly labeled “alcohol free”.
Ready to sell some zero-proof options in your liquor store? That’s great — but as a new industry with a less established customer base, it’s not always easy to know where to start.
Here are four tips to make your NA drink sales a smashing success.
Imagine walking into a liquor store and seeing signage that says “clear,” “brown,” and “wine” instead of specific information like “gin”, “whiskey”, and “Italian reds.” It would make you feel like the store owner doesn’t really know or care much about their stock.
That’s a bit how it feels when all NA items are piled into an out-of-the-way corner. It makes the customer do extra work to find what they want and ignores one of NA drinks’ biggest strengths: It’s a great impulse buy.
Many customers who buy nonalcoholic drinks also buy alcohol. This means you need to put the same care into laying out and organizing your NA selection as you do your fully alcoholic options.
Dedicate fridge space for your top-selling NA beers next to your regular selection and some shelf space nearby for other brands. Give mocktails and NA spirits their own sections and group them by “type” (e.g. whiskey mocktails, rum mocktails, etc) or flavor profile.
The same goes for wines. Give them their own section (ideally near your wine section) and organize them by wine variety (e.g. sparkling, reds, whites) or by type (wine alternative or dealcoholized wine).
This makes your NA alternatives more visible to people browsing the store, and shows that you put thought and care into your product choices.
The adult nonalcoholic industry is relatively new, and fresh companies and brands pop up all the time. This can make it hard to know what a “safe” bet is when it comes to stocking your shelves.
Your first port of call is to do some research and talk with your suppliers. Try to work out smaller orders of a variety of brands instead of going all in on one or two. This will give you better data on what your customers prefer.
Then, once you stock your shelves, look at the sales data on your point of sale (POS) system to see what your customers are responding to and what isn’t working. Your NA sales will likely be a bit slower than your overall sales, so it’s important to isolate your sales reports to your different NA categories.
Last, don’t just look at the sales of NA products as a whole. Dive into each category (e.g. NA beers, wines, and mocktails) to see what the bestselling brands and products are in each. These insights will help you build up a strong selection across different NA drink types.
For a long time, nonalcoholic beverages were treated as something to keep hush-hush. They were reserved for recovering alcoholics or people who had to drink them for health reasons. As a result, not many liquor store owners felt the need to promote these options.
This is absolutely not how today’s customers see it. Many people who drink alcohol see NA options as a bonus, and promoting them is a potential way to boost sales.
Use signage to promote your NA options in store and make sure to include new NA brands in your newsletter or social media. If you have a customer’s contact information through your loyalty program, you can segment your NA buyers to send them personalized offers, too.
Because of the crossover appeal, you can also send out discounts and offers for nonalcoholic drinks to customers who drink the alcoholic varieties. For example, you can filter down your customers who bought craft beer in the last 30 days and send them an offer for both a regular six-pack or an NA six-pack of a “healthier alternative.”
But just because some buyers of NA drinks also buy alcohol doesn’t mean all do. While it might be safe to market NA beers and mocktails to someone who drinks, promoting alcoholic options to someone who doesn’t drink might create some animosity in certain customers.
Long story short, it’s fine to mention your alcoholic and NA selection in the same marketing communications, but avoid any type of discount or sale on NA items that bundles it with an alcoholic option.
Some pairings are natural: tequila and margarita mix, gin and tonic, beers and peanuts… and you’ve probably adjusted your store layout or created deals based on that. The same is true for your zero-proof drinks.
Basket analysis is a fancy term for going through the sales history of people who bought NA products, looking at the items they bought, and looking for patterns. You can then use your findings to come up with great promotional ideas or to refine your store layout.
For example, you might find that people who buy NA wines tend to almost always buy two or three bottles. So, you might start running a mix -and match promotion to encourage people to buy an extra bottle, or create deals using higher-end bottles to upsell customers.
Similarly, you might find that people who buy NA beers also buy craft beer. As a result, you might consider rearranging your fridge so the two categories are closer together to encourage impulse buys.
It might sound counterintuitive, but offering a robust selection of nonalcoholic options at your liquor store isn’t a transition into an entirely new business model. Instead, it’s more akin to adding natural wines or Japanese whiskeys to your stock, a chance to expand your selection in new and exciting directions.
More importantly, the adult NA beverage industry is only getting bigger and more popular. The sooner you establish your store as a knowledgeable place to get great NA recommendations, the better off you’ll be.
Having the right liquor store POS system will help you expand into NA sales with confidence. Specialized systems like Bottle POS allow you to create custom notes for your stock (e.g. NA beer, NA white wines). These categories can be pulled into custom reports, allowing you to keep a close eye on your NA sales so you can make smarter stocking decisions.
Plus, our seamless integrations with vendor catalogs allow you to review the latest releases, order them, and add them directly to your inventory system without hassle.
Not sure how to price your NA stock or what kind of profit margins you could make? Try out our suggested pricing tool today to find out.