🍸 Alcohol’s decline is a huge opportunity

Happy Trends Tuesday!

Today we’ve got:

• 1 trend alert
• 1 piece of operator wisdom 
• 1 startup you should know about

Let's get to it.

🚨 TREND ALERT

The sober-curious movement continues to swell (we’re looking at you, Huberman) and data suggests that demand for good nonalcoholic drink options will continue to surge.

This is not a juice trend, people are looking for alternatives to alcohol:

Considering the huge variety of alcoholic options, the nonalcoholic space is still early in its growth trajectory. The global ready-to-drink mocktails market alone is estimated to reach $9.43B by 2028 (9.6% CAGR).

Some ways to play it:

• Products (e.g. ready-to-drink mocktails). There are 6.5k US searches/mo. for “mocktails” on Amazon, up 38% MoM, per Jungle Scout.
  
  
• Recipes. This TikTok has over 10m views and “mocktail recipes” just hit its all-time highest Google search volume earlier this year.
  
  
• Kits (or subscription boxes/drink bombs). My Drink Bomb (400k+ Instagram followers) gets 3.5k site visits/mo. — all organic.

🕜 STOP SLACKIN’... GET CRACKIN

🧠 OPERATOR WISDOM

In 2015, Trends member Sam Friedman and his partner Miriam launched MUD — a plant-based, dairy-free ice cream brand — and within 3 years they were shipping to 500 stores across 20+ states.

But in 2020 they had to put the business on hold and focus on getting their fundamentals in order. The good news: it worked and they’ve since relaunched nationwide.

Here are three lessons learned from the turnaround:

1. Don’t hold on to failures. Friedman pitched Sprouts for 5+ years with no reply. Then a new buyer who’d tried MUD years earlier was suddenly in charge, and thrilled to bring them onboard.
   
   
2. Fight for what you need. In the beginning it’s easy to agree to poor terms just to close a deal. Avoid this. It’s worth hearing from Sam directly on this one.
   
   
3. Let existing products inspire new ones. Double down on what you do better than the competition, and use that to launch new product lines. For MUD that meant leaning into dairy-free and launching cookie-dough & brownie desserts.

🔥 STARTUP YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 3 women globally have experienced violence in their lifetime.

Now companies are stepping in to put personal safety back in women’s hands:

• Sisters Amy Ferber and Alison Peters were moved to action after they each had a child become a victim of assault. They launched She’s Birdie to produce personal safety alarms in a variety of bright, candylike colors (so that kids will actually carry them).
  
  
• Similarly, Andi Atteberry created BlingSting to produce stun guns and pepper spray because “[existing products] were uninteresting so we didn’t carry them like we were supposed to”.
  
  
• More businesses have entered this growing space, with the personal alarm market alone expected to reach $250m by 2027 with a compounded annual growth rate of 18%.

Read the full story on The Hustle blog to learn more about She’s Birdie, BlingSting, and four more startups working to make safety devices more accessible for women.

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