This month, many welcomed the new year by joining the annual Dry January craze, pushing alcoholic libations to the back of the cabinet for a month of post-holiday sober solace.

It’s essentially the Super Bowl for non-alcoholic (NA) beverages, a new category that’s emerged amid the rising “sober curious” movement, offering those who choose to skip booze a more sophisticated alternative to soda or juice—from dry aperitifs and mocktails to zero-proof beer and spirits.

• Last Dry January, NA aperitif brand Ghia saw a 40% boost in customers, and the interest actually extended beyond short-lived New Year’s resolutions, with a return rate of 35%, it told Retail Brew.

Growing interest has translated into growing sales: $$ were up 33.2% YoY in October, hitting $331 million, per Nielsen. E-comm sales of non- and low-alcohol beverages alone skyrocketed 315% in the last year.

When you consider that online sales for alcoholic beer, wine, and spirits only rose 26% in the same time frame, it’s no surprise everyone from Budweiser to Diageo to even celebrities like Katy Perry wants in on NA.

• The segment is growing so fast it even has its own association, the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA), which went live last month.

“The tide lifts all boats,” Ghia’s founder, Melanie Masarin, said. But for the brands that have spent years carving out a niche, they’re ready for the next frontier: retail doors.

BYOB

Ghia debuted DTC in June 2020 and has since found a home in NA beverage shops, a rising trend in cities across the country. It’s carried in NYC’s Spirited Away and Boisson and LA’s Soft Spirits.

“On the one hand, it’s like you’re there with all of your competitors, so it’s hard to stand out. But on the other hand, it’s so great that the category is big enough that it justifies having stores like that,” explained Masarin, who was formerly head of retail and offline experiences at Glossier. “The team there [at an NA beverage shop] is really, really well trained on the nuances of this really new category.”

• In Q3 of 2021, Ghia’s wholesale sales grew from $10,000 to $180,000 YoY, it said.

Beyond upscale markets Foxtrot and Erewhon, the brand has focused on more small, curated local shops in cities where it’s done well in DTC, she said, rather than target larger grocers, so it can self-distribute smaller volumes and avoid high merchandising fees needed to stand out on conventional retail stores’ shelves.

“We want to make sure that when people see us in the store, it’s not the first time they’ve seen the brand,” she said. “It’s important for us that the marketing and distribution work hand in hand.”

Zero-proof spirits maker Ritual, meanwhile, is ready to take on grocery.

Click here to read more about Ritual and more NA brands’ search for shelf space.—EC

Last year, brands from Gucci to Taco Bell released their very own NFTs. And when Facebook pivoted to Meta and introduced its second life, brands like Balenciaga and Nike dipped their luxury- and performance-sneaker toes into metaverse fashion. This week, the non-fungible fun continues (sorry), as Gap and Selfridges become the latest retailers to announce forays into digital assets.

Like most brands hopping on the bandwagon, it’s unclear whether they’re betting on the future of crypto or just want to be part of the conversation.

Blockchain bandwagon: Gap’s “gamified” NFT collection drops over the next two weeks, offering digital assets at four “levels” and price points (“common,” “rare,” “epic,” and “one of a kind”) ranging from $8 to $415 leading up to an auction for one-of-a-kinds. This follows recent, similarly hype-driven news of Yeezy Gap’s Balenciaga collaboration. “The launch is a test into the NFT space,” a company spokesperson told Retail Brew. “Gap Inc. is exploring new ways to bring our brands…to new and existing customers in a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, Selfridges is teaming up with fashion house Paco Rabanne to mix experiential IRL pop-ups (remember those?) and in-store art exhibitions with digital goods as an added bonus. Today, the British retailer is releasing archival Paco Rabanne garments alongside a 12-piece collection of “unwearable” NFTs, which will run for between £2,000 and £100,000. Selfridges declined to comment.

Worth the investment? Debatable. “At this stage, it’s too early to tell who’s making a good business decision and who’s not. Right now, everyone wants to get on the bandwagon,” Kearney’s Michael Felice told us. “Many will invest to be part of the race, but without a clear strategy. But if they don’t go in with a clear strategy, then the leap is just boardroom dressing.”—JG

The supply-chain burn being felt by corporations all over the world has forced companies to reevaluate everything. In the land of Oz, that includes how to make sandwiches.

In a statement to The Australian Financial Review, Scott Buckman, Subway Australia’s acting country director, said the sandwich company is considering transporting ingredients via planes instead of the trucks it normally uses.

“If we find there is a supply issue in one state and excess supply in another state, a solution would be to get the excess on a plane and fly it over there to address that,” he told the outlet.

Consider this: Although cash-flush companies like Amazon have turned to chartering planes to curb supply-chain issues, for quick-service restaurants, the prospect of strapping some lettuce into coach (let’s face it, if any produce is going to fly first class, it ain’t a head of lettuce), could seem expensive. “Air-freight costs have risen significantly, in some cases, 20% to 30% since Covid; it is simply prohibitive, except for the most expensive, highest-margin products like smartphones, but most definitely not sandwiches,” Per Hong, senior partner in strategic operations at Kearney, told Retail Brew. “It only makes sense in an emergency, and an airlift-type solution is not sustainable.”

Big picture: The environmental impact of more QSRs electing to ship by air is likely considerable, given that transporting food via planes emits as much as 50 times more greenhouse gases than transporting the same amount by sea, according to Carbon Brief.

“Typically this would be more manageable because very little food is transported by air, only 0.16% of food miles in 2020,” Bradley Wells, analyst at innovation consultancy R/GA, explained. “However if more companies get on board, the overall emissions of food transportation could rise dramatically.”

Still, Subway, which prides itself on sustainable sourcing (and the $5 “footlong”), said it is only considering air freight as a “last resort”: “We’re keeping that open as a real option,” Buckman said. “It’s not an ideal solution, it’s not something we have jumped to do yet, but it’s a thing we are considering.”—JS

Today’s top retail reads.

Order disorder: Retailers are losing track of inventory, meaning more canceled orders. “The pandemic has absolutely put a spotlight on inventory management in a pretty dramatic fashion.” (Forbes)

Leapfrogging Amazon: How three shopping apps in Asia got even bigger than Amazon, thanks to social features. (Modern Retail)

Check, please. With omicron, will restaurant workers finally feel less obliged to work when sick or injured? (NY Mag)

Looking forward: To help you get a handle on retail trends that’ll shape the year ahead, we’ve put together a brand new hub, sponsored by Attentive. Check it out here.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• Inflation rose at a near 40-year high in December
• Starbucks to refocus diversity and inclusion efforts in corporate and manufacturing roles
• New year, new store: IRL retail is off to a solid start

Three of the stories below are real...and one is most definitely not. Can you spot the fake?

1. Campbell’s is rolling out soup-scented candles.
2. Stores across the UK have started selling tearless onions, dubbed “sunions.”
3. Chipotle and Vans are introducing a limited-edition line of sneakers that smell like burritos.
4. New Yorkers are selling prepaid Michelin-star restaurant reservations on Reddit.

Keep reading for the answer.