Most People Who Buy NA Drinks Still Drink Alcohol. That's Kind of the Point.
May 10, 2026
There's a persistent assumption about alcohol-free drinks: that they're for people who don't drink. That the only reason to reach for a non-alcoholic beer or an alcohol-free spirit is because alcohol is off the table entirely.
It's understandable. It's also mostly wrong.
About 71% of people who regularly buy alcohol-free spirits also drink alcohol. They're not substituting. They're alternating — a practice that's picked up a genuinely great name in the beverage world: zebra striping.
What Zebra Striping Actually Is
The concept is simple. You alternate between alcoholic and alcohol-free drinks throughout an evening. One beer, one NA beer. A glass of wine, then a sparkling adaptogen drink. Back and forth, like stripes.
It's not a sobriety strategy. It's a pacing strategy. And people are doing it for reasons that have nothing to do with quitting anything.
Better sleep the next day. Staying sharp enough to drive home. Not feeling wrecked on a Tuesday after a Monday dinner party. Keeping the ritual of a drink in hand without the full commitment of three glasses of wine. Staying present with the people you're with instead of getting progressively less present as the evening goes on.
These are not dramatic lifestyle transformations. They're small, practical decisions that a lot of people are quietly making — and the NA category exists, in large part, to support them.
Why This Matters for How You Think About the Shelf
If you've walked past our NA section and assumed it wasn't for you because you drink, this is the part worth reading.
The drinks we carry aren't positioned as the thing you choose when you can't have the real thing. They're positioned as the thing you choose when you want something interesting that isn't alcoholic — which is a genuinely different framing, and a genuinely different experience.
A can of Athletic Brewing's Run Wild IPA alongside your second beer of the night isn't a compromise. It's a choice that gets you to the end of the evening with your wits intact and your sleep uninterrupted. A glass of Kin Euphorics at hour two of a dinner party, when you'd otherwise be reaching for another pour mostly out of habit, is something worth having on hand.
The category works because it gives you somewhere to go that isn't water.
The Ritual Is the Thing
One of the underappreciated reasons people drink is ritual. The glass in your hand. The pause at the end of the day. The something-to-hold at a party when you're not sure where to stand. The toast at a celebration.
Alcohol-free drinks do all of that. And for the part of the evening where you'd genuinely rather not have another drink — whether that's for sleep, for the drive home, for the meeting at 8am, or just because two was enough — having something that still feels like a considered choice matters more than most people expect until they try it.
That's the real case for zebra striping. Not optimization. Not wellness. Just the option to stay in the Moment you're in, on your own terms.
A Few Good Starting Points
If you want to try alternating and you're not sure what to reach for, here's where we'd point you:
For beer drinkers: Athletic Brewing makes the strongest case for the category. Run Wild IPA and Free Wave Hazy IPA are both genuinely good craft beers that happen to be alcohol-free — not watered-down approximations.
For wine drinkers: Sparkling is usually the easiest on-ramp. French Bloom and Oddbird both hold up well next to a glass of the real thing without feeling like a consolation prize.
For cocktail drinkers: This is where it gets interesting. Ritual's tequila and whiskey alternatives, Seedlip, and Lyre's are all built for mixing — put them in the same glass with the same garnish and the drink still feels intentional.
For something different entirely: Recess, hiyo, and Kin Euphorics aren't trying to be wine or beer. They're their own category — functional, interesting, designed for exactly the moment in an evening when you want something in your hand that's doing something worthwhile.
Come in and we'll help you find your stripe.
