In late October, The Duke Mansion hosted a Halloween party with all the essentials: music, costumes, food, and drinks, plus one noticeable addition: a dry bar with a variety of zero-proof cocktails, bruts, and craft beer.
This wasn’t a recovery event. Guests were drinkers and nondrinkers. The dry bar was simply a response to a trend that staff at the Myers Park venue had noticed: An increasing number of guests were passing on the booze.
“You’d be surprised how many people are leaning toward it,” says Kelli Taddonio, the mansion’s director of events. “It’s not just those who are pregnant. They could be training for something, or maybe they drank the night before. We host a lot of corporate events where people don’t want to overserve themselves with their bosses in the room. But perception is everything. If they look like they have a beverage in their hand, it avoids that awkward conservation of, ‘Why aren’t you drinking?’”
According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 38% of U.S. adults never drink alcohol, and many more are just occasional drinkers. That might sound like a lot, given some of the statistics that came out of the pandemic. In 2020, alcohol sales increased by 2.9%, the largest annual increase in more than 50 years, and women’s stress-related drinking was up 41%.
But the pandemic accelerated people’s drinking habits in the opposite direction, too. If they only drank socially, they gave it up naturally. Many people emerged from lockdown and decided to dial back their drinking. Others have become “California sober” and reduced or eliminated their alcohol intake and replaced it with substances like CBD to take the edge off.
Casey Dolan began leaning into this trend two years ago, when she moved to Charlotte from upstate New York. She knew her family had a history of alcohol abuse, and she was training for a half-marathon. “A lot of my friends were doing Dry January,” she says, “and it occurred to me that the zero-proof nightlife thing wasn’t a thing here.”
“I still drink occasionally, and I’m very vocal about the fact that I do still drink because I don’t want my customers to see me out and about with a drink and call me out,” says Casey Dolan. “But it’s very rare.”
In January 2023, Dolan founded The Roaring Social, a mobile nonalcoholic bar that serves Charlotte and the Lake Norman area. (When we speak in late October, Dolan is looking for a permanent location to open an NA dessert bar.) At her first event, at The Coterie Wellness Studio, she and her husband set up a table with zero-proof cocktails. “We weren’t expecting much, and we sold so much stuff, and the excitement and energy was unbelievable,” she says. “We thought this might actually be a thing.”
The Roaring Social sells a range of canned beverages like NA craft beers and spiritless whiskey sours and old fashioneds. Other sparkling drinks have kava root, nootropics, and adaptogens that claim to boost your mood and reduce stress. “I actually ask people at my events, especially Gen Z, why they’re not drinking and what they’re doing in place of it,” Dolan says. “At least 90% of those people participate in THC or delta-8 or delta-9. Botanical Brewing’s delta-8 and delta-9 drinks are top sellers.”
The reasoning behind this, she’s found, is a combination of financial stress, mental health, and social media. “Everything you do is posted now, so there’s that fear of embarrassment,” she says. “Plus, drinking costs money … and people don’t want to wake up feeling like crap.”
Like many of her customers, Dolan still drinks occasionally but opts for quality over quantity. She usually chooses a botanical drink that relaxes her without leaving her hungover. “I just don’t feel good when I drink,” she says. “I’m 37 now, and I don’t bounce back the way I used to.”
In Charlotte and across the country, restaurant owners and event planners are realizing that sobriety isn’t just about recovery—and nondrinkers aren’t anomalies. “At this point, with the trend being what it is,” Dolan says, “if you’re not offering zero-proof cocktails, you’re losing customers.”
TAYLOR BOWLER is the lifestyle editor.
Taylor Bowler
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