Alcohol spend ‘has died down’ – London Business News | Londonlovesbusiness.com

As sales of alcoholic drinks have dropped by 31% in the past year*, the new trend of being sober curious is rising.

Searches for ‘sober curious drinks’ have risen by 200%, with those aged 18-24 (46.9%) pushing the trend as they are most likely to not drink alcohol at all in comparison to their older counterparts, according to research by SumUp.

Payment expert and POS Lite provider SumUp has spoken exclusively to Luke Slater, Beer Connoisseur from The Cask Connoisseur, to reveal why Brits are spending more on nonalcoholic drinks and the most popular nonalcoholic options.

2021 saw the biggest split between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks with 398,000 and 200,000 respectively. However, as the years go on, non-alcoholic drink sales rise slowly as people start to explore the sober curious movement.

Non-alcoholic drink sales increased by 31.5% from 2022 to 2023 according to Luke. In the first half of 2024, sales of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks were very even with 9,000 more non-alcoholic drinks being sold.

Luke Slater tells SumUp that Brits are turning to non-alcoholic drinks more than usual this year when in previous years, it tends to happen after big events such as Christmas or New Year when people are looking to detox.

“After Christmas, there is always a surge in people asking for either non-alcoholic or soft drinks, but this year it seemed to be more than usual.

It has fluctuated throughout the year, things like Wimbledon encourage a glass of Pimms, or the Euros is a high time for people wanting a drink. But excluding these events, it has certainly been a lot quieter this year for alcoholic beverages since April.

Once we’ve got past people doing Dry January, we would naturally see people drinking again in February, but it does seem to have died down recently.

“For our customers, soft drinks and non-alcoholic beers are the most popular. We don’t sell much alcohol-free wine, due to it being quite unpopular and whilst we do sell mocktails, these are far and few between.”