Dry January is back. And no, it doesn't annoy these NYC bar owners.

Hannah Frishberg

Published Jan 8, 2025

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People cheer at a bar.

Photo by Christopher Joseph Ryan

Hannah Frishberg

Published Jan 8, 2025

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The annual trend of going sober for the first month of the year is back.

The concept of Dry January may seem widespread today, but just a decade ago, it was “sort of a niche,” said Manhattan bar owner Zachary Mack, who has worked in the restaurant industry for 13 years.

Since he first opened Alphabet City Beer Company on the Lower East Side in 2012, he’s watched the overall demand for nonalcoholic drinks skyrocket. He's seen brands fully embrace Dry January to the point that “there’s, like, a million different things going on — it’s almost overwhelming.”

He said his bar would add a line of mocktails and dedicate a draft line to a nonalcoholic beer to coincide with the sobriety-focused month.

Some of Alphabet City Beer Company's alcohol-free offerings.

Courtesy of Zachary Mack

Dry January "used to be something that people were like, 'Oh, I hate this,' but now it's more of like, 'We're not fighting this,'” Mack said. “I think everyone's kind of come over to the side of this being something that you should support and embrace.”

Increasingly, bars are finding creative ways to deal with Dry January, and using it as an opportunity to expand their mocktail or "NA" (nonalcoholic) beer offerings — instead of writing the tradition off as a nuisance during what is already the worst month of the year for service industry business.

And the demand for booze-free booze is increasingly expanding beyond January. Many bars now carry nonalcoholic options year round, Mack said.

A selection of boozeless bottles at Hekate.

Courtesy of Abby Ehmann

The pandemic prompted many people to re-evaluate their relationships with alcohol, and the sobriety movement has since gained traction — especially among young people. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 62% of Americans under 35 say they drink alcohol — down from 72% of young adults 20 years ago.

Yet older Americans are drinking more, the same Gallup poll found. But that doesn’t mean vendors have it easy this month.

And while booze-free booze is increasingly big business, it still isn't as lucrative as the real thing for proprietors, Abby Ehmann said.

She would know: Ehmann owns Lucky (a traditional bar serving alcohol) and Hekate Café & Elixir Lounge (a sober bar), which are located across the street from each other on Manhattan’s Avenue B.

The front window of Hekate Café & Elixir Lounge at 167 Avenue B.

Courtesy of Abby Ehmann

For the sober bar, January is “the biggest month of the year, and it’s definitely the worst month of the year here [at Lucky] and at most regular bars,” she said.

But even during its biggest month, Hekate still doesn't outperform Lucky, according to Ehmann. Still, it’s doing much better now than when she opened it in January 2022.

“It was a lot for people to wrap their brains around, a bar that had no alcohol,” said Ehmann, who was inspired to open Hekate after many of her Lucky regulars stopped drinking around the time of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, in Long Island City, Queens, sobriety — or at least the all-or-nothing approach of Dry January — is less popular, said Patricia Boccato, a manager at the neighborhood’s Dutch Kills bar.

“ Dry January hasn't hit us too drastically,” Boccato said. While there are more orders for mocktails, Boccato suspects the neighborhood’s immigrant population insulates it from the very mainstream American all-or-nothing approach to sobriety.

“Americans, it’s always an all or nothing kind of thing, like this big declaration of ‘I'm doing this’ or ‘I'm not doing this,’” Boccato said. “Queens is the world’s borough. So I would say for sure that here [Dry January] isn’t something that’s as prevalent.”

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