Socializing Sober in Denver Is Expensive

Taking a break from booze would, I thought, have a bunch of benefits, including better health, more alertness in the mornings and, importantly, saving some cash. But it turns out, it can cost just as much money to socialize sober as it does to drink.

Sudhir Kudva, who owns six bars with his investment team, says people are drinking less booze these days, and a recent study by BetColorado.com ranked Colorado the fifth-most-sober-curious state in the U.S. based on Google Trends.

Kudva adds that his staff has adapted by offering entertainment and more non-alcoholic options so people can socialize without having to imbibe. At the 715 Club in Five Points, for example, live music has been added, and the nearby Marigold now has a karaoke night. In this environment, "quite frankly, we just have to be better,” Kudva says.

Many bars are adapting in similar ways. Most places to drink in Denver offer something for the N/A-curious or straight-up sober guests. There are kombuchas and N/A beers (both of which contain less than 1 percent ABV), plus mocktails, good old-fashioned soft drinks, juice and tea. All are designed to give you something yummy and likely fizzy without the buzz.

But it ain't cheap. We found that mocktails usually run $8 to $15, while N/A beers, usually in a twelve-ounce can, fall around the same price as a craft beer. Why the cost without the booze?
Improper City has had an N/A menu since it debuted in 2018. As the space is open all day and located next to a gym in RiNo, it just made sense for the bar/cafe to offer alternatives to alcohol. But general manager Austin Hay says that about two years ago, Improper stepped up its N/A game in response to customer demand, adding more mocktails and a draft beer from the popular booze-free Connecticut brewery Athletic.

Hay says the bar's cost for most N/A products is the same as, if not more than, it is for those with alcohol. For example, Improper City's well whiskey is around $15 per bottle, while its N/A whiskey alternative is $30.

"You can mimic a lot of different spirits," Hay notes, "but [manufacturers] have to infuse them a lot longer and use complex processes." Plus, "the N/As are not mass-produced, which makes them more niche, which makes them more expensive."

Mocktails are typically made with these pricey N/A spirits or other elixirs, not just juice and soda water. And for a bar, the time that goes into creating the mocktails is just as significant as the work that goes into creating a traditional cocktail menu. "We are trying to make a mocktail that feels like a cocktail," Hay says. "We want you to have that experience, and not just a lemonade or a Shirley Temple."
The owner of Fellow Traveler, a two-year-old bar in Englewood with a vegan food menu, echoes that sentiment. "What a lot of people don't realize is that there is a lot of work that goes into making mocktails," says Joe Phillips. "People might wrongly assume it's N/A, it's just juice or something, but there is a lot of work going into making them."

Fellow Traveler serves thoughtful mocktails and N/A beer from Brooklyn Brewery as well as Acid League N/A wine. Phillips doesn’t use N/A spirits because he finds them lacking in flavor. Instead, his staff creatively uses syrups and other ingredients to mock the flavors and mouthfeel found in liquor — like using a touch of ghost pepper in his housemade N/A Malört, because the pepper mocks the back-throat burn that alcohol creates.

At Fellow Traveler, sales of N/A options exceed beer and wine sales (though not cocktails), which Phillips attributes to its vegan customer base. But he’s not sure that market is everywhere. “We knew early on we had to take N/A seriously,” he says. “For a lot of vegans, alcohol just isn’t a part of their world.”

Non-alcoholic beer also takes some serious R&D on the front end. Hay tried thirty beers before settling on Athletic for Improper City, and he's constantly trying new ones as they are introduced. Although N/A beer has a reputation for being bland, the N/A beer industry is growing.

Evan Beggs, head brewer at Ratio Beerworks, says items like a yeast that ferments down, which allows brewers to create N/A brews with less capital costs, are becoming more accessible. Although he hasn't played with N/A brewing yet, he anticipates doing so within the year.

Beggs developed Ratio's Hop Water for dry January, and it remains an option alongside two canned kombuchas and canned N/A beer by Wisconsin's Untitled Art. The carbonated water infused with hops (or a hop extract, as Ratio uses) is becoming more popular in the market. The flavors — which can range from piney to tropical — come from the hops themselves, and the result is a surprisingly light seltzer with natural flavors. The process sounds simple, but it takes time and experimentation. Beggs went through several iterations to perfect Ratio's citrusy Hop Water. And at $4 in the taproom, it's an N/A option that rivals cheaper beers.
Eric Matelski, general manager of Ratio's taproom, says the brewery has seen an increase in N/A patrons, and believes that items like Hop Water and Untitled Art's N/A beer — which he chose specifically because it creates a beer that’s “truer to form" — make sober drinking fun. Because of its N/A options, Ratio was included in the Mocktails and Murals walking tour from Denver Microbrew Tour, which in turn inspired a few other bars in RiNo to add more N/A options, Matelski notes.

Denver Microbrew Tour has seen an uptick in interest for N/A options, but not enough to maintain an ongoing N/A-specific tour outside of dry January. "There's definitely growing interest in [non-alcoholic options]," says the company's founder and owner, Steve Schneiter. "Our approach is going to be inclusion in the standard tour, but not necessarily its own standalone thing."

"It's no longer the days of drinking non-alcoholic beers means you have to drink O'Doul's," says Matelski. The increase in quality and diversity around N/A offerings is an indication of that. "It's a good validation that being sober doesn't have to be boring."

Even the Great American Beer Festival will give a nod to the increased interest in N/A beers this year with three N/A categories: pale N/A beer, amber to dark N/A and specialty N/A. Last year, the festival had just one general non-alcohol category.

Improper City and Ratio both note that having N/A items helps during the typically slow January, and those items continue to sell throughout the year, but N/A sales don't compare to alcohol sales. “It's still a small part, but it's a part of the market that has seen the most consistent growth," Matelski explains.

And the real, hard truth is that restaurants need the markup on drink sales — N/A or not — to survive. "Beverages are super important to the industry," concludes Fellow Traveler's Phillips. "The secret to the restaurant industry, and the only way it works, is beverage sales. ... We have to be selling drinks, whatever they may be, to keep this whole system running."