Recently, I was delighted to join a panel talking about the impact of low & no alcohol drinks within our businesses at the Northern Restaurant and Bar Show in Manchester. I was joined by Jonathan from the Alchemist bar brand and Miley from the Domino Club in Leeds. Firing the questions was Club Soda founder Laura Willoughby.
It was, after, this positive and enjoyable Q&A session it occurred to me I would be writing my ‘opinion piece’ soon and I should dedicate it to the vital part low & no drinks are playing in our business and how this could help other pubs and restaurants who, maybe, need some convincing still.
It will also ensure I avoid ranting about the Government, business rates, the BBA, the price of Star Pubs’ Guinness for lessees, the large brewers continually ‘fleecing’ our pubs with price increases, VAT being too high and the other topics I have covered over the past few years.
I will start quickly with VAT, but only to say, if this Government wants us to be ‘good’ and cut back on our intake of alcohol… sweet irony really because they are the main reason we reach for a bottle of wine or a pint of beer… then why do they tax non-alcoholic drinks with 20% VAT like they do alcoholic drinks. Surely this is a complete contradiction: “please cut back on alcohol and, while you are doing so, we are going to tax the hell out of the non-alcoholic variants you are choosing”. Ridiculous!
Subsidy needed for healthier trend
One difficulty for the trade is that the de-alcoholisation process is costly, especially in wine, which pushes the cost prices up for us all, so some form of subsidy from the Government would be very helpful in a growing and essential category.
So how did it all start here at Cheshire Cat? Well, some time ago as we came out of the pandemic, I caught something on TV that was practically advertising the forthcoming Sober October. On the one hand, these terms really annoy me: Sober October, Dry January, Can’t Remember November and so on but, clearly, they were making a statement. I felt at the time if we simply did nothing more than we were doing, the competition would steal a march on us.
I should point out we weren’t just dusting down the Beck’s Blue every day, we were certainly ahead of the curve with bottled Lucky Saint in all the pubs and Seedlip spirits too, as well as a very good soft drinks range, but we needed to offer more choice.
So, we began to look at other non-alcoholic options such as other beers, spirits and, of course, wines. The latter proves the most difficult category because most of the still wines we taste are pretty poor substitutes for the real thing and are priced very highly for reasons mentioned above. The sparkling wines though are really good. After trials of different beers and the innovative move by Lucky Saint to be the first draught non-alcohol beer maker, we embarked on our first Low & No Drinks List.
Suddenly, sales started to grow and the category moved to a total of £34,000 in a year. By the end of 2023, it had moved to £63,000. This was largely caused by us putting Guinness 0.0 in cans in all our pubs after it relaunched in late 2022.
Low & no bigger than gin
In 2024, we hit the £99,000 mark as our second, more detailed, list launched with sparkling wines such as Zonin and Wild Idol, differentiated spirits such as Everleaf and aperitif alternatives, such as Crodino, and we added an ale called Pussy Cat plus Stowford Press and Chance 0% ciders. The phenomenal sales of Lucky Saint, Guinness 0.0 and Erdinger have continued. Sales for the category jumped again in 2025 to £165,000 – a 66.7% like for like uplift year on year.
To put this into perspective, the low & no category in our pubs is now bigger than gin! All because we have created a list, trained our great teams, engaged with the guest, marketed the lists and given the guest differentiated drinks on the one hand and the ‘household names’ on the other…. all at good value prices. The journey never stops either because we have new drinks coming to the list in April.
So, if you are still pondering and wondering… stop it! It takes no time to do a little research and build your low & no selection, just like you would with your wine or your spirits selection. There are customers waiting and demand is clearly growing. Happy selling!
Before I sign off… just a note to Diageo on Guinness 0.0, at what point is Guinness 0.0 going to be available on draught outside London? How long does a ‘trial’ at the Devonshire take for crying out loud? The north and everywhere else deserves Guinness 0.0 on draught too. London-centric trials are not all they’re craic’d up to be. PLEASE can you sort it out Diageo? My brilliant account manager is running out of reasons why we cannot have Guinness 0.0 on draught… if the Devonshire can have it, surely we can?
And St Pat’s was celebrated with a few pints of 0.0 as well as the real stuff, to be sure…
