Sans Drinks, Australia’s First Bricks and Mortar Booze-Free Bottle Shop, is Now Open in Freshwater

Sales of non-alcoholic drinks in Australia are booming. Chain supermarkets and bottle shops are expanding their ranges to include alcohol-free alternatives to meet growing demand. Even recent pictures from the upcoming Sex & The City reboot show Carrie Bradshaw – the world’s most famous Cosmopolitan drinker – sipping a booze-free rosé. It was only a matter of time before a dedicated store for alcohol-free beverages became a reality.

Sans Drinks, Australia’s first bricks and mortar non-alcoholic bottle shop, opened earlier this year in Freshwater on the Northern Beaches. Founder Irene Falcone chose to open directly opposite a well-known liquor store – “Why would I do it any other way?” she tells Broadsheet – and it’s a move that’s certainly paying off.

After launching as an online-only brand in early 2020, Sans is expanding to a second store in Rozelle before Christmas, and up to 20 new national locations are in the works over the next three years.

While lockdowns last year sent many of us reaching for the hard stuff, Falcone believes subsequent restrictions have altered peoples’ relationships with drinking.

“I’m finding that people are just sick and tired of drinking alcohol,” she says. “They’re putting on unwanted weight and they’re feeling like crap.”

She’s also noticed that most of her customers aren’t teetotallers, but rather people who are just looking to cut down. “It’s giving someone the placebo effect of something that they love and enjoy and that they don’t really want to give up. I’m here to give consumers better choices.”

It’s clearly a growing trend among Australians, but any retailer lives and dies by the quality of their product – this is where Sans Drinks has the edge on the local chain bottle-o. There’s a range of booze-free beers , wines and spirits, including mainstream favourites such as Heaps Normal XPA and Lyre’s gin, as well as more boutique offerings from independent beverage companies. There’s Melbourne’s boundary-pushing wine alternative Non , as well as Strangelove sodas, native-ingredient-led beer brand Sobah, and alcohol-free Negroni spritzes, “Whiskey” Sours and Palomas.

Falcone recommends English brand Thomson & Scott’s Noughty: a halal-certified imitation sparkling chardonnay that, in her words, “looks like champagne and tastes like champagne”.

Sans is soon set to move its shipping to a warehouse twice the size of its current premises, to keep up with demand, and has just launched same-day delivery options across Sydney, with Melbourne and Perth pencilled in before the year is out. Falcone’s enthusiasm for business is infectious – she also founded multimillion-dollar natural cosmetics company Nourished Life.

“There’s an appetite out there for people; they’re sick of alcohol. It’s very exciting.”

Sans Drinks
Shop/28 Lawrence Street, Freshwater

Hours:
Mon & Tue 12pm–5pm
Wed to Fri 10am–5pm
Sat 9am–5pm
Sun 10am–3pm

sansdrinks.com.au