London Inc. Winter 2023 - 10

Upfront Food & Beverage
Up ro
Food&Beverag
IT'S NOT JUST FLAVOURED
WATER ANYMORE
The alcohol-free beer market is bubbling,
and an online store making it easy to find
dozens of options is fizzing too
MIKE AND KRISTEN Norris' entrepreneurial journey started
in the grocery store, and its then sub-par product lineup of
non-alcoholic (NA) beers.
" When I stopped drinking alcohol, I felt like I was only
left with these macro-style beers, " Mike recalls. Grolsch 0.0,
Labatt Blue 0.5%, Beck's Non-Alcoholic - fine, for what they
are, he says, but for a craft beer guy like him they really weren't
lighting any fires.
Mike had given up drinking years earlier but hadn't found
much of a substitute for his beloved beers. And you can only
drink so many Diet Cokes before your stomach (or your teeth)
start calling mercy.
" Between the caffeine and needing to pee, I was like - this
sucks, " he laughs. " I tried the Heineken 0.0, and that was
pretty new to the market at the time. That sort of triggered
the journey. "
One of the first hurdles that new NA beer drinkers often
encounter - and indeed, the one that Mike ran into - comes
when they start trying to sample the market. Nothing like the
build-your-own pack of singles you can get from The Beer
Store or the LCBO exists for near-beers. New NA brands like
Partake and Sober Carpenter were just starting to appear
in grocery stores, but supply was often limited and it wasn't
unusual to find a store was out of stock.
" I was having to go to two or three different stores to stock
up for the weekend, " Mike says.
10 | londonincmagazine.ca | WINTER 2023
Designated Drinks founders Kristen and Mike Norris
In early 2022, after an idea born over discussion at
Christmas dinner, he and Kristen set out to change this.
Designated Drinks (www.designateddrinks.ca) would be
a business that would stock a wide variety of non-alcoholic
singles, selling them individually or as part of sampler packs,
with delivery available province-wide.
Even before devising an inventory plan, they set about
reaching out to breweries they knew were producing NA beers.
" They were on board right away, " Kristen says.
With some initial inventory in hand, they ran a few ads
on social media, " just to put some feelers out there - and it
exploded, " she continues. " Within a week, our living room was
full of empty boxes, because we were trying to source this stuff
from all over.
" It was very ironic. We started the business because it was
hard to find, and suddenly we were scrambling. "
" I didn't realize it was that popular, " Mike adds. " We had
no idea. "
Their appeal as a distributor makes sense. Brewers are often
hemmed in by regulations in terms of marketing distribution.
" It's sort of an unconventional way to distribute it, " Mike
notes, but adds because it is a non-alcoholic product, they can
do a lot more marketing.
http://www.designateddrinks.ca http://www.londonincmagazine.ca
London Inc. Winter 2023

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